Myrrha Lot-Borodine: Philosophy of Love

Abstract

This article examines the literary work of the first Orthodox woman theologian Myrrha Ivanovna Lot-Borodine, in the context of her profound research on the theme of love. Her life journey from St. Petersburg to Paris and her varied activities in theology, philosophy, history, and literature are briefly presented and analyzed in the article. In addition, the evolution of Lot-Borodine’s philosophical and theological interests, from the study of medieval chivalric romance to investigations in patristic studies, is presented. The article provides a brief analysis of Lot-Borodine’s many years of research into the development of the two competing forms of love in the medieval literature: passionate human love (love to a secular lady) and divine love (love to God and the Virgin Mary). The author also considers the interpretation of symbol by Lot-Borodine. Based on the study of Lot-Borodine’s biography and her creative evolution, it is concluded that she can rightly be regarded as a philosopher who developed an original doctrine of different kinds of love ‒ romantic and Christian. In this respect Lot-Borodinе is proved to be not only a follower of the Russian and French traditions of medieval studies, but also one of the most outstanding, though undeservedly forgotten, representatives of the neopatristic synthesis, i.e. the renewal and creative development of the heritage of the Church Fathers in the twentieth century. The article emphasizes the fact that her authority was taken into consideration by a number of prominent philosophers and theologians of the last century, among them Fr. George Florovsky and Etienne Gilson.