Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou ed. by Lucien J. Frary

Abstract

Reviewed by: Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou ed. by Lucien J. Frary Jennifer Spock Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth: Essays in Honor of Theofanis G. Stavrou. Edited by Lucien J. Frary. (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2017. 687xii, pp. ISBN 978-0893574680. An ambitious collection representing many disciplines, Thresholds into the Orthodox Commonwealth delivers rigorous scholarship, creative works, and thoughtful commentary reflecting the academic interests of [End Page 220] Professor Theofanis Stavrou of the Department of History at the University of Minnesota. The volume, whose title echoes Dimitri Obolensky's "Byzantine Commonwealth," contains forty-five articles and essays by forty-four scholars. Obolensky's phrase sparked competing interpretations of Byzantine history, and Theophilus C. Prousis notes that Stavrou utilized "Orthodox Commonwealth" both to support Obolensky's views and to describe the "shared interests and challenges" (677) across the Eastern Orthodox community. Although most articles touch on regions to which Orthodoxy spread, not all focus on Orthodox culture or its commonwealth—the book is a festschrift, with the almost inevitable problem of that genre, namely, the disparate projects of the contributors. Yet, this volume holds together, in perhaps unanticipated ways and despite its inclusion of fruits not born of Slavic and/or Greek history and culture, presenting an occasional new taste to those who enjoy a cornucopia. Despite its seemingly eclectic nature, multiple connecting threads bind the collection. The editor organized it around the main topics of Stavrou's work—Eastern Orthodoxy, Greece and Cyprus, and Russia and Eastern Europe—while the "Prolegomena" and "Epilegomena" serve up mini-florilegia of essays outside these categories. Alternative groupings come to mind: interaction within the Orthodox churches, external influences on Orthodox culture or experience, local and geopolitical stresses, analyses of literary and historical texts including travelogues, the manipulation of folk culture, and reflections on the spiritual or human condition, to name those that most naturally align. Seven scholarly articles directly address Orthodoxy in Slavic societies, and all show the flexibility within the overall structures of Orthodoxy. David Goldfrank examines the influence of eleventh-century Timothy of Evergetis on later Byzantine and Russian monastic structures, arguing that the push toward equality of food and clothing, a co-governing council, communal property, and a communal table are Evergetian features. James Cracraft revisits his work on Peter the Great's church reform, concluding that Peter's piety and goals replaced institution and ritual with practice, duty, obedience, and the church as an educational structure. Stephen K. Batalden illuminates the rift within Russia's church circles over the Masoretic and Septuagint Old Testament texts, writing of the late nineteenth-century arguments over textual criticism, and Gregory Bruess's work could also have been placed in the section on Eastern Orthodoxy, for he explores Catherine II's relatively tolerant policies dealing with the Armenian Church. Aaron Michaelson sees the nineteenth-century Orthodox Church as lacking aggressive missionary structures in contrast to the organization of the Russian Orthodox Missionary Society, whose work, while patient and slow, was well organized and extensive. External influences also highlight the flexibility of Orthodoxy as Josef Altholz presents a movement in the Anglican Church that pursued church reunification with Constantinople (not realized) and Dyrud's research unearths American court decisions giving jurisdiction over a church building in New York City to Moscow's patriarchate even though the patriarchate cooperated with the Soviet government in the 1950s. Two articles focus on the press of western Christianities against Russia's Orthodox foundations. For example, Heather Bailey investigates Russian society's reception of Ernest Renan's Life of Jesus, explaining his popularity in part because Renan offered a replacement for empiricism and materialism and simultaneously presented a substitute for the church when he separated "religious consciousness" from dogma. Matthew Miller examines linked politics and religious alliances when he explores the American YMCA's vacillating attitude toward Russian Orthodoxy, and the Y's ultimate support of its mission work in the face of Soviet atheism. Local and international political stresses weave connecting themes in Thresholds. Twelve articles, most on investigations of political topics in the modern period, show [End Page 221] the permeability of borders and flexibility of political action regardless of religious doctrine...