Hagiographical Works Research Articles

The Publishing Policy of the Moscow Print Yard: From the Book on Faith to Anthologion

This article analyses the work of the Moscow Print Yard in the last years of the patriarchate of Joseph and during the tenure of Patriarch Nikon. The traditional idea that the reform of Patriarch Nikon radically changed the publishing programme of the Print Yard is based primarily on innovations made to liturgical books, but the same changes may also be observed in the repertoire of publications not related to public or private worship. The purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of the reader miscellanies printed in the years immediately before the reform and after it in order to show the continuity of the publishing programme of the Print Yard during this decade. The material for this study consists, on the one hand, of the works of the Ruthenian author Hieromonk Gideon, which were being prepared for publication: the Book on Faith, printed in 1648, and the Alpha and Omega – a work that remained unpublished in the seventeenth century but was subsequently printed by Old Believer publishing houses. On the other hand, the analysis also involves the Skrizhal (1655–1656) and the Anthologion (1660), a miscellany that, even though printed after Nikon left the patriarchal throne, represents the goals and principles of editing texts followed by the Nikonian scribes. The latter two miscellanies consisted mainly of new translations of unknown versions of hagiographical works and Byzantine patristic heritage; these new translations have been usually attributed to Arsenius the Greek. The new materials presented in the article testify to the fact that in the preparation of these books, earlier translations from European modern Greek editions were used, including those that existed in manuscripts that circulated at the Print Yard during its last years before the Nikonian reform. These texts include the treatise of Gabriel of Philadelphia On the Seven Mysteries of the Church published in the Skrizhal, as well as the gnomology Chapters… from the Book Named Paradeisos by Nilus (John Geometres) and Tetrastichae sententiae of Gregory the Theologian, whose translation was until recently known only in the form that was printed as part of the Anthologion. Based on the analysis of the themes, composition, and sources of these miscellanies, it is concluded that the general aims manifested by the printing programme of the Print Yard in the 1640s – catechesis and the theological and moral education of Muscovite society – were consistently followed in the first years of the post-reform programme, though with a natural reorientation toward new sources. This set of aims of the publishing programme of the sovereign’s Print Yard is associated with the work of the circle of zealots of ancient piety, in which the future Patriarch Nikon was an active participant. Work on the publication of books was carried out with the direct participation of the royal confessor Stefan Vonifantiev and with the support of Tsar Alexei. The interest of the representatives of the Muscovite enlightened elite close to the court in the works of the Ruthenian book and manuscript tradition contributed to the appearance in Moscow, already in the pre-reform years, of new sources of Byzantine patristic heritage and examples of European theology.

Melis Taner, Caught in a Whirlwind: A Cultural History of Ottoman Baghdad as Reflected in its Illustrated Manuscripts

Reviewed by: Caught in a Whirlwind: A Cultural History of Ottoman Baghdad as Reflected in Its Illustrated Manuscripts by Melis Taner Guy Burak Melis Taner, Caught in a Whirlwind: A Cultural History of Ottoman Baghdad as Reflected in Its Illustrated Manuscripts. Leiden: Brill, 2019. 210 pp. Hardback, $154. ISBN: 978-90-04-41269-9. Remarkably little attention has been paid to the history of the Ottoman frontier province of Baghdad from its conquest in 1534 through the eighteenth century. This historiographical gap is intriguing. It may be attributed, at least in part, to the difficulty in classifying this province in the historiographical scheme that has shaped specialization within Ottoman studies. In the very rough classification of the Ottoman Empire's provinces, which to a large extent follows the modern nationalist categories, the province of Baghdad is typically described as one of the Arab provinces. Ottoman sources, too, often refer to it as Arab Iraq rather than "Persian Iraq" (ʿIraḳ-i ʿacem). However, this classification of Baghdad as Arab fails to account for the multiple connections that shaped the province's history. Over the course of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, Baghdad changed hands between the Ottomans and the Safavids, a situation Evliya Çelebi compared to a person caught in a whirlwind. The province was also connected to the Indian Ocean, the Levant, and Anatolia. Additionally, the province was home to a large Shiʿi population and famous for numerous important Shi'i and Sunni shrines. Melis Taner's richly documented and nuanced Caught in a Whirlwind: A Cultural History of Ottoman Baghdad as Reflected in Its Illustrated Manuscripts successfully fills a major historiographical gap in the history of pre-modern Baghdad by examining an idiosyncratic body of mostly Turkish and Persian manuscripts that were compiled and illustrated in the province in the decade that followed the 1590 Treaty of Constantinople between the [End Page 338] Ottomans and the Safavids. Several scholars have noticed and analyzed the corpus's distinctive visual idiom (occasionally referred to as the "Baghdad school"). While building on these scholars' work, Taner elegantly uses these manuscripts to narrate the cultural history of the province and, indeed, the Ottoman and the Safavid empires in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This unique textual and artistic production in the province of Baghdad overlapped with the emergence of a market for these manuscripts and single-page illustrations. The position of the province between the Ottoman and the Safavid empires created fairly unique opportunities for governors and local power brokers to amass political power and wealth, both crucial to the patronage of scholars, poets, and illustrators as well as architectural projects in the province and elsewhere. Moreover, certain governors and local chieftains took advantage of the distance from the imperial centers of Istanbul and Isfahan to promote their political claims. The texts they commissioned helped them articulate these claims at the provincial and imperial levels. The liminal position of the province is also reflected in the visual idiom of the manuscripts, which is in conversation with—but also distinct from—those evolving in the Ottoman and Safavid imperial capitals. Caught in a Whirlwind meticulously explores the dynamics between the Ottoman imperial center, the province of Baghdad, and the Safavid court across different works and genres. A universal history, titled Cāmiʿü's-Siyer, which was composed for the Ottoman governor of Baghdad, Sokulluzade Hasan Paşa, is a case in point. Hasan Paşa employed an Ottoman courtly genre to highlight his lineage and vizierial role. While emphatically engaging with an imperial genre, the work also served the governor to legitimize his rule and acts in the province. Other works, such as Fuzuli of Baghdad's Ḥadā'iḳü's-Süʿedā, a popular work on the Karbala tragedy, or the hagiographical works devoted to Sufi masters and Jalal al-Din al-Rumi, were primarily read by local Bektashi and Mevlevi circles in the province (although copies of these works found their way to Istanbul and other provinces as well). In other instances, compilations produced in Baghdad, such as the genealogical treatise (silsilanāma) studied in the book's fifth chapter, were made for Safavid patrons...

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Языковые особенности повести о Выдропусской иконе Божией Матери

The second half of the last century is characterized by an increased interest in the literature of Ancient and Medieval Russia. Since the 40s, a large number of fundamental studies dedicated to various works before the time of Peter the Great have appeared. This attention was accompanied by a more thorough study of the Church Slavonic language itself: its spelling, morphology and, of course, vocabulary, as evidenced by the work begun in the 70s on compiling a dictionary of the Russian language of the 11–17th centuries. But, unfortunately, many literary monuments still remain unaddressed by scientists. This article will provide a brief overview of the linguistic features of the hagiographic work of the end of the 16th century – the story of the Vydropus Icon of the Mother of God. First of all, the article will note the stylistic features that the author of the narrative drew on, the vocabulary, morphological and syntactic specific features. All these will be compared with the changes in the language and literature taking place at that time. At the same time, hagiographic and hymnographic texts are singled out as sources, from which the authors of hagiographic works often drew meaningful material. The study of such issues allows us to present a more detailed picture of the changes taking place in Russian literature and the prevailing trends in it during the selected period. This obtains a particular significance in case the literary monument in question is understudied, because this makes it possible to introduce new information into scientific circulation.

Vida y muerte de San Cristóbal

Vida y muerte de San Cristóbal

Holy Healers in Rome

Abstract The article is dedicated to four saints represented in the Chapel of Holy Physicians in Santa Maria Antiqua church in Rome. Two saints are identified for the first time (Jonas and Procopius), one previously hypothetical identification is confirmed (Barachisius), and the meaning of the cult of St Dometius in Rome is discussed. The hagiographical dossier of Sts Jonas and Barachisius is examined in detail. Based on this examination, it is argued that the earliest recensions of their martyrdom must go back to the Syriac Chalcedonian archetype written in the 590s, which, in turn, derived from a Syriac “Nestorian” hagiographical work produced in sixth-century Iran and related to the mid-sixth-century rebellion of prince Anōšazād against his father Khosrow I. The Chalcedonian counterpart of this lost hagiographical work was paraphrased by Ferdowsi.

New holy russian patericon by A. I. Yurievsky: reconstruction project and search for sources

The “New holy russian patericon”, created in Siberia (Tobolsk, 1912), is a hagiographic monument that hardly attracted the attention of researchers. The article examines the relationship between A. I. Yurievsky’s work and such outstanding papers by hagiologists and hagiographers of the late XIX - early XX centuries, as the saints by Archbishops Dimitri (Sambikin) and Sergius (Spassky), N. Barsukov, Archimandrite Nicodemus, E. Poselyanin. The Patericon by A. I. Yurievsky is considered, on the one hand, as a project related to the activities of the Tobolsk Brotherhood in the name of Saint Demetrius of Thessalonica, on the other hand, as a part of the All–Russian project to familiarize the Russian Orthodox shrines, which was considered as a mean of countering the process of secularization which seized the Russian society at the beginning of the XX century. The article traces the specific connection of the patericon with the hagiographic works of the epoch: highlights the moments of conceptual influence, as well as their use as sources, in particular, when forming the list of ascetics. The paper presents the content of the available issues of the patericon, lists external characteristics of the publication, chronological frameworks of the collection.The process of A. I. Yurievsky’s working on the patericon text retained in the publications of the Tobolsk Diocesan Bulletin: the writer’s hagiographic works not presented in the patericon were revealed, showing possible directions of his searches.The article concludes that the material presented is only the first step of this topic study. Possible findings of the patericon other texts, use of textual analysis methods will allow to reveal the significance of the monument and more fully represent its place among the hagiographic monuments of the epoch.

Протоиерей Иоанн Восторгов и развитие агиографии в Сибири в начале XX века (на материалах торжеств по случаю канонизации Митрополита Тобольского Иоанна (Максимовича))

The article examines the hypothesis on a possible participation of Archpriest Ioann Vostorgov, famous missionary, preacher, journalist and publicist, new martyr, in creating the project "Siberian Patericon", which is a collection of Siberian saints’ biographies appeared in Omsk at the early XX century. This possibility is associated with the events of the solemn canonization of Metropolitan of Tobolsk and All Siberia Ioann Maksimovich (1916). The analysis of sermons delivered during the celebrations and other publicistic works of the Archpriest, diary entries, as well as the presence in the missionary's library of unique hagiographic works published in Siberia, made it possible to reconstruct I. Vostorgov's views on the significance and growth of venerating saints in Russia at the early XX century, reveal special attention of Archpriest to the exploits of the Holy Russia Siberian constituent. Ioann Vostorgov emphasized that holiness manifestation in the region was closely related to the missionary activities of the Siberian clergy; noted that missionary work was an important aspect of the asceticism of the Siberian hierarchs. Moreover, the missionary viewed the preaching of Christianity as a historical mission of the Russian people perceived by them in baptism. He confirmed that preaching by Siberian missionaries clearly demonstrated this side of the historical task of the Russian people. The Archpriest considered St. Ioann canonization significance as a continuation of the canonization process, the Synodal period of the Orthodoxy history in Russia, namely, as a guarantee of these saint help in the conditions of coming trials and challenges facing Russia.Tobolsk celebrations turned out to be a convenient platform for all-Siberian discussion of the patericon. St. Ioann sermons included both historiosophical discourses on the Orthodoxy role in forming the peculiarities of Russian history, and formulated tasks of the of hagiography development taking into account developing events. Unpublished "Notes related to the trip to Siberia" by the Archpriest made him during Tobolsk celebrations found lists of Siberian saints including a significant group of missionaries, an aphoristic formulation of the missionary feat - "missionary is being driven primarily by holiness" - and, possibly, mentioning the "Siberian patericon".

Сonveying Love: Amor, Caritas, Affectus and Dilectio in the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People and Its Old English Version

This article is devoted to the analysis of the semantic and functional features of the words used by the Venerable Bede in Ecclesiastical history of the English people (as well as in his other historical and hagiographic works) to convey the emotional component of the relationship between its characters, namely the concept of love, and the specifics of its translation into Old English. We have identified and analyzed the Latin words used by the author of Ecclesiastical history to express the concept in question. We came to the conclusion that the main term conveying the concept of love in the most general sense was the word amor. It was used most often by the author of Ecclesiastical history and was a neutral word indicating the presence of a certain attitude / commitment / inclination of one person to another, or to an inanimate object. A positive or negative connotation was imparted to it by the object of love or the character love had. Caritas indicated charity as a Christian virtue, which consisted not in experiencing a special attachment to someone or something but in keeping the commandments. Bede used the word affectus to indicate a feeling of love that was experienced more strongly than was customary in a given situation or between certain categories of people. By dilectio, he apparently understood love for God, which was supposed to underlie relations between Christians, love as a Christian virtue. The translator, unlike the Venerable Bede, used only one word to convey the identified nuances of perception of love. He coped with this task by using linguistic and grammatical transformations. We have identified a certain similarity in their perception of the concept under consideration. At the same time, the translator, apparently, perceived love between secular people as existing not only at the level of feelings, but also at the level of actions. This is evidenced by his use of the combination of the Old English verb lufian and the noun lufu. The same feature, in his opinion, was also characteristic of the feeling described by Bede as affectus. He firmly linked caritas with love for Christ. In addition, the translator mentioned love where it was not used in the Latin text of Ecclesiastical history to mitigate Bede's criticism of the representatives of the Celtic Christianity, which was one of the tasks that he faced when creating the translation.

The image of the pious boy in Muslim hagiographic works (<i>manakib</i>)of Mawarannahr in the 16th century

The image of the pious boy in Muslim hagiographic works (<i>manakib</i>)of Mawarannahr in the 16th century

The «Fatherland» of the Serbian Kings Milutin and Dečanski or Some Additional Thoughts on the «Medieval Serbian Oecumene»

Mihailo St. Popović, in his part of the Study, follows up on the premise that an own local concept of ecumene was emerging during the reigns of Stefan Uroš II Milutin and Stefan Uroš III Dečanski. In his analysis, he relies on Serbian medieval charters and inscription. Following the analysis of the charter of Serbian King Stefan Uroš II Milutin for the Ulijare settlement, he recognizes the clear antithesis between the fatherland and the Serbian Land of the Serbian King on one hand, and Great Romania and the Greek Empire of the Byzantine Emperor, on the other. According to him, the narrative part of the manuscript clearly proves that it is not possible to notice the concept of universality in Milutin’s politics. Inspired by the research of Paul Nick Kardulias, he considers the Kingdom of Serbia as a self-contained space. With an emphasis on the examination of the charters and inscriptions, he states that during the reign of Milutin, such a space was probably created. From the World System Analysis perspective, charters and inscriptions from the reign of Stefan Uroš III Dečanski paint a slightly different picture. They probably illustrate the transition from selfcontained space to the great realm. In his part of the study, Vratislav Zevran focused mainly on the semantic level of the use of Slavic pendants of the Greek word οἰκουμένη and expressions otьčьstvije and otьčьstvo. The most common equivalent of the word οἰκουμένη was the loan translation vъseljenaja. By analyzing the use of the adjective derivative vьseljenьskyi in connection with the Byzantine common titles, he finds that the idea of universality prevailed only in the titles of general councils, and the only Byzantine Emperor thusly named was Andronikos II. Although he does not recognize the use of the adjective derivative vьseljenьskyi anywhere near the Serbian monarch, he believes that based on several examples, Serbian panegyric probably promoted the idea of a Serbian ruler who was also vьseljenьskyi. The key concept of a fatherland still lacks a comprehensive analysis of sources. Two forms otьčьstvije and otьčьstvo have settled in Church Slavonic. Over time, the ambivalence of both forms merged into a concept that implied the meaning of «family», «genus» and/or «generation». At the same time, they were joined by the attributes «royal» or «rulers», which indeed emerged on the basis of the word otьcь and worked with the meaning of the authority and power of the father. This concept then also appears in the hagiographic work of Danilo and his disciple.

ЭЛЬФЛЕДА, ИГУМЕНЬЯ УИТБИ, В АНГЛОСАКСОНСКОЙ АГИОГРАФИЧЕСКОЙ ТРАДИЦИИ РУБЕЖА VII–VIII ВЕКОВ

The paper focuses on the representation of Aelffled, abbess of Whitby, in hagiographical works of Anglo-Saxon church writers at the turn of the 7th and 8th centuries. The research is based on Stephen of Ripon’s live of Saint Wilfred of York and two lives of Saint Cuthbert, composed by an anonymous monk of Lindisfarn and Bede the Venerable. Within the first centuries after the Christianization of England, the authority of noble Anglo-Saxon abbesses was based on their kin relations with the ruling houses. A member of Northumbrian royal dynasty, Aelffled was one of the most powerful women in England of her time. She took interest in written culture, succession strategies, and church politics. Her circle of social contacts stretched far beyond the monastery walls. In the life of Saint Wilfred, Aelffled is shown as a prominent public figure. The hagiographic tradition devoted to Cuthbert of Lindisfarn reveals her emotional world, personal interaction with the wonderworker and her involvement in the affairs of Northumbrian royal house. Literary portraits of the second abbess of Whitby illustrate the high social position of noble ladies who were at the head of Anglo-Saxon double houses, as well as the dubious attitude of church milieu towards their political activities. Among other factors that determined Aelffled’s portrayal by her contemporaries were the circumstances of their works’ composition, individual biographic features of the saints to whom the vitae were devoted to, and the narrative’s micro-context. Based on the comparative and contextual analysis, the author attempts to revise the attitude expressed by modern gender historians about Bede’s hostility towards abbess Aelffled.

Who was the «first Vsevolod»? A new interpretation of the ktetor inscription in the Saviour Church on Nereditsa Hill

The article discusses a praise inscription in the Saviour Church on Nereditsa Hill, built and decorated with frescoes at the end of the 12th c. In the church there is a portrait of the ktetor, Prince Yaroslav Vladimirovich of Novgorod, with an inscription praising him, in which he is called «the God-loving prince, the second Vsevolod». The question arises: who was meant by the «first Vsevolod»? Scholars offered two candidates: the Vladimir Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest, whose protégé was Yaroslav, and the Novgorod Prince Vsevolod Mstislavich, driven out of Novgorod in 1136. Vsevolod the Big Nest, as has been shown in previous scholarship, does not fit this role, because at the time of the temple`s painting he was alive, and such exaltation did not comply with the Old Russian traditions. The main argument in favour of the candidacy of Vsevolod Mstislavich is an account of the hagiographic work, written in Pskov on the occasion of the transfer of his relics. However, it turns out to be a late and unreliable text. The author substantiates the idea that by the «first Vsevolod» may have been implied the Prince of Kiev Vsevolod Yaroslavich (1077, 1078–1093), who was the great grandfather of Yaroslav Vladimirovich. In annals there are evidences of veneration of Vsevolod Jaroslavich by his descendants, the eldest of which in the late 1190s was Yaroslav. Besides, it was Vsevolod Yaroslavich who according to some evidence was considered as a donator of the Novgorod liberties at that time. On the other hand, Yaroslav’s father Vladimir Mstislavich and Vsevolod Mstislavich were the sons of the prince of Kiev Mstislav the Great from different marriages, and belonged to the princely clans mostly warring with each other. Both for Yaroslav Vladimirovich and for Novgorodians Vsevolod Yaroslavich was a much more acceptable figure to be praised and to serve as a model for descendants. The article shows that historiography was influenced by late hagiography and modern historians’ perceptions of the Novgorod «revolution» of 1136, of which Vsevolod Mstislavich was a victim. At the same time real dynastic beliefs of Riurikids in pre-Mongol Rus and the elite surrounding them have turned out to be almost completely forgotten.

Zabić księcia! „Oprawcy” księcia Andrzeja Bogolubskiego w świetle ruskiej tradycji historiograficznej XII–XV w.

The article was devoted to the circumstances of the murder of Andrei I Yuryevich, Grand Prince of Vladimir-Suzdal. In the presented text, the attention is put on the reasons for the murder of the prince and on his assassins, who in the literature on the subject were said to have a different social status and ethnic origins. After the analysis of the oldest chronicle and epigraphic records concerning the events of June 29, 1174, a hypothesis appeared that the motives for the murder of the prince can be found not only in the context of social conflicts, but also complex ethnic relations that probably took place during the period of intense colonization between the Volga and the Oka rivers. The motifs taken from previously written stories and hagiographic works about the torment of other Ruthenian rulers ( Lives of Boris and Gleb , the story of the torment of Wasylek Trembowelski) played a significant role in the arrangement of events presented in the texts about the murder of Prince Andrei I Yuryevich. They influenced the way of presenting the „tormentors of the prince”, among whom a special role was assigned to „foreigners” – coming from outside the „Ruthenian World” – Ossetian, Ambał, or Bulgarian, the prince's wife, while the other participants of the murder identified with people of low social status.

Noisy medieval data, from digitized manuscript to stylometric analysis: Evaluating Paul Meyer’s hagiographic hypothesis

Abstract Stylometric analysis of medieval vernacular texts is still a significant challenge: the importance of scribal variation, be it spelling or more substantial, as well as the variants and errors introduced in the tradition, complicate the task of the would-be stylometrist, by inducing noise and perhaps even interferences in the authorship signal. Basing the analysis on the study of the copy from a single hand of several texts can partially mitigate these issues (Camps and Cafiero, 2013, Setting bounds in a homogeneous corpus: a methodological study applied to medieval literature. Revue Des Nouvelles Technologies de l’information (RNTI), SHS-1, pp. 55–84), but the limited availability of complete diplomatic transcriptions might make this difficult. In this article, we use a workflow combining handwritten text recognition and stylometric analysis, applied to the case of the hagiographic works contained in MS BnF, fr. 412. We seek to evaluate Paul Meyer's hypothesis about the constitution of groups of hagiographic works, as well as to examine potential authorial groupings in a vastly anonymous corpus.

He Principles of Early Asceticism (Based on Data Sources)

The vital activities of representatives of early asceticism have not been studied deeply enough. The author of the article set herself the task of highlighting the principles of the life of Sufis, who became famous for holiness throughout the Muslim world. The issue is considered on the basis of data from manuscripts of hagiographic works and narratives. Manuscripts of the collections of stories about the life of Saints, “Qissa-i Ibrahim ibn Adham”, as well as translations of “Tadhkiratu-l-awliya’” by Farid ad-din ʻAttar into Turkic, carried out in the 15th–16th centuries, are involved in the circle of studied sources. On the basis on data of the Tashkent list of the manuscript of translation “Tadhkiratu-l-avliya’” by Nizam ad-din ‘Ali Shir Navaʼi, the assumption of the place and date of death of one of the representatives of early asceticism Ibrahim ibn Adham is put forward. In addition to these sources, other hagiographic works are involved in the study. The sources studied made it possible to determine the principles of the life of representatives of early asceticism and their path in the search for Truth,which contributed to the improvement of personality.

Information on Ibrahim ibn Adham's life in written sources

The article considers data about the life of one of the first Sufis – Ibrahim ibn Adham, known for holiness in the Muslim world. The author set the goal – to study the life of Saint on the basis of source data. Biographical data is rather scarce. In Arabic-language sources there is data on the date of Saint death. The main source is oral narratives, which are used by aqyns, storytellers. Verbal texts among the people served as an excellent source in the creation of qissa. In the Turkic world, there was an idea of the worthiness of creating works on Shaykh Saints. In turn, the belief contributed to the emergence of many versions of “Qissa-i Ibrahim ibn Adham”. The value of the studying source lies in the fact that they raise moral and ethical standards that guided the Shaikh Saints in their activities. In the process of work, Kazakh, Uyghur and Turkish versions of the narrative and translations of hagiographic works into Turks were revealed, which indicates the wide distribution of such works. Interest in such texts remained until the 20th century. The rare collections of libraries in Almaty contain lithographic editions of the studied source. The sources identified in the process of work were studied in a comparative aspect, the works of well-known orientalists on Sufism were involved. The study contributes to the expansion of the source base on Sufism, the results achieved can be used not only by specialists of orientalists, but also by University teachers. Keywords: Islam, manuscript, life of a Sufi, translations of treatises, Central Asia.

Public practices of the Christian saints in the Eastern Mediterranean during the IV – V centuries

  This article examines public practices of the Christian saints in the Eastern Mediterranean during the IV – V centuries, and leans on studying the hagiographic works. The traditional Roman public events in the period of Late Antiquity with the advent of Christianity gradually ceased their popularity, particularly die to the state and church policy. Along with church liturgies, festivities, and sermons, Christianity offered a new type of public events – ascetic pageantry. Publicity as an important aspect of ascetic practices practically is outside the scope of attention of the modern historians. The author reviews public practices as an informal act of impacting viewers with a profound cultural meanings. The conclusion is made that holy ascetics represented a new Christian pageantry that contributed to dynamic Christianization of the empire and fulfillment of important social functions. Public actions of the ascetic resembled the true faith, such as of the martyrs. The first crucial function carried out by the ascetic in performing public asceticism is the concentration of sizeable Christian population that had a need for such event. The second one consisted in teaching to discern who is a real Christian and how to become one.  

A Handwritten Greek Hagiography of Russian Saints from Mount Athos: The Life of St Mitrofan of Voronezh

Modern methods for studying old Russian texts are based on the reconstruction of foreign translations: this makes it possible to define the extent to which the world of the Middle Ages and the early modern period was acquainted with them. Post-Byzantine translations of the hagiographic works of old Rus’ and later periods are rare cases of such texts. The archive of the Athos Russian Monastery of St Panteleimon contains a text which makes up part of the Greek manuscript Cod. Athos. Panteleemon. gr. 283 (1848): it speaks of the life of St Mitrofan of Voronezh (†1703), a famous associate of Peter the Great canonised by the Russian Church in 1832. At the time of his canonisation, a handwritten abridged hagiography was released: this was followed a few years later by a longer version which the Greek text relies on. A codicological investigation has helped to identify the codex’s author and scribe: the monk Jacobos Neaksytiotes (1790s–1869), an outstanding theologian and historian (his opus magnum was Athonias) of Athos. The reconstruction of his biography and legacy allows the author of this article to understand this monk’s interest in Russian history and his translations of some hagiographic works from Russian into Greek. The article also contains a Russian translation of the Greek hagiographic text.

Judicial practices of the Eastern Christian saints in the beginning of the IV – middle of the V centuries

This article is dedicated to the study of activity of the saints in the area of justice during the Late Antiquity, and is structured upon the examination of theirs hagiographical works. The period of Late Antiquity, with its peculiar attitude towards the questions of crime and punishment and their social meaning is virtually out of the field of regards of modern historians. This article places emphasis no so much on the legal issues as on the social aspects of the practice of saints. The object of this research is the phenomenon of the saint, which emerged on the East of the Late Roman in the early IV century with the advent of the Christian monasticism and asceticism. The subject of this research is the practical activity of the saints associated with dispute settlement, conflict resolution, and crime prevention. The conclusion is made that the judicial activity of the saint reflects the perspective on justice that differs from the traditional systems. The saint uses an informal mechanism of mediation for reconcilement of adversaries and bringing them to a compromise. It is based on the need for a new outlook upon the problem of aggression that existed in society of the Late Antiquity, as key source of criminality. The actions of the saint are aimed at alleviation of human aggressiveness and rejection of violence and policy of frightening that were typical at that time, thereby preventing the offender from committing an offence. The main instrument in activity of the saint is the ability to accomplish a miracle, which reflects the power of the saint to overcome the traditional principles of justice.