Orthodox Monks Research Articles

ORTHODOX MONASTIC EXPERIENCE AND HERMITIC PRACTICE IN THE POLISH-LITHUANIAN COMMONWEALTH

This paper is dedicated to a famous Ukrainian monastic saint – Jov Knjahynyc’kij (ca. 1550–1621), a founder of Manjava Skete (also known as the Great Skete) in the Carpathian Mountains, an Orthodox monk, who spent a big part of his life en route between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Mount Athos, Moldavia, and Muscovy. His itinerary can be reconstructed on the basis of his Vita, which was composed probably soon after his death. Its author is known as hieromonk Ignatij from Ljubarov. Vita was published in 1860 by Anthony Petrushevych (1821–1913), a Ukrainian historian and linguist. It was also Petrushevych, who edited the most important sources for the early history of the Manjava Skete – the Spiritual Testament by Theodosius as well as the monastic rule of the skete. Already the first monograph on the history of Manjava Skete, from its establishment in 1611 until its closure in 1785 by Julian Celevič (1843–1892), was based on Petrushevych’s editions. The translation of Jov’s Vita and of the spiritual testament of Theodosius into English was prepared in a critical edition with commentaries by Sophia Senyk.

Review of An Orthodox Monk Watching Films

The text reviews the book of Daniel Cornea: Cinema: A Reading inside the Church. For an Orthodox Theology of Culture (Romanian: Cinema-ul, o lectură îmbisericită. Pentru o teologie ortodoxă a culturii), Christiana Publishing House, 2017.

Rola utworu paraliturgicznego „Krestnaja piesń” w prawosławnej diecezji chełmsko-warszawskiej na przełomie XIX i XX wieku

One of the forms of the internal mission of the Orthodox Chełm-Warsaw diocese at the turn of the 19 th and 20 th centuries was publishing activity. From 1875, the missionary work of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Kingdom of Poland focused on the former Uniate population. The author conducted an internal analysis of a song written by the Orthodox clergyman Krzysztof (Sakowicz). The text of the Orthodox monk from the monastery in Radecznica was one of the tools in the missionary work of the Russian Orthodox Church in Poland. The song is still performed in many parishes of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

Orthodox joke as a phenomenon of modern Orthodox culture

The purpose of the article is to reveal the specifics of the Orthodox joke as a phenomenon of modern Orthodox culture. Methodology. In the context of the culturological approach, the method of comparative analysis, induction, deduction, typology, and classification was used. Scientific Novelty. For the first time the phenomenon of the Orthodox joke was investigated in the context of cultural studies; assumptions were made regarding the time and reasons for its appearance; its sources are highlighted, the typology of the Orthodox joke is proposed; supplemented with data on the cultural specificity of this phenomenon. Conclusions. In secular and folk culture, a joke is a form of uncensored folk art, a sphere of dissent. The Orthodox joke, by contrast, is one of the ways of preachingand does not oppose the official church line. A parable in the form of a joke is more understandable and acceptable to the cultural consciousness of a modern person. The following types of Orthodox jokes are distinguished: curious cases from the history of the church, the life of individual parishes, or pastoral practice; «Children's perception of religion»; «In front of Paradise doors»; «Dialogue between a believer and an unbeliever»; self-irony of Orthodox monks and laity. The development of the genre of the Orthodox joke testifies to the processes of adaptation of the Orthodox culture, which exists under the prevailing secular culture.

Church and the War. The Vision of the Orthodox Monk Nicola Velimirović about World War I

Using documents, books and articles written by Nicola Velimirović during World War I, this article investigates his attitude towards this conflagration and shows how his Christian views influence his outlook on this topic. Shared during his visits to the USA and England and via lectures given in venues like Westminster Abbey or Oxford University, his ideas make him a militant for peace and, at the same time, a man who defends his country's cause in front of the Austro-Hungarian abuses. Investigating his writings from this point of view is important because he manages to show a different face of the future Serbian bishop and brings to the fore his concerns regarding his contemporary society.

«La mort: passage ou limite ?» Introductory note on the methodology of an unpublished lecture offered by André Scrima at the Saint-Joseph University in Beirut (1978)

The proposal for an extremely original lecture – La mort: passage or limit? – will be developed in the classroom of the Faculty of Religious Studies, in the academic year 1978, at Saint Joseph University, Beirut. This course was transcribed by students of the Department of Religious Studies in Beirut in 1978. The recent discovery of this unpublished manuscript in the Augustin Dupré La Tour S.J. archives prompts me to make its first presentation to the academic world here. The Orthodox monk, from Romanian origins, André Scrima basically suggested that the theme of death should develop into various elements of reflection related to the comparative study of religions and modern thought in comparison to the Christian faith. Therefore, if the theme of death arises in a historiographical context related to the study of the History of Religions, the history of reflection on death in Western philosophical thought also plays its interpretative part. Finally, with respect to the two perspectives a third one is instilled: the problem of death for man from the point of view of Christian anthropology. The article also aims to contextualize the conceptual diagrams with which André Scrima works in his exposition on death through two parameters: the limit of the discourse on death – frontière logique – and the limit of death for itself – frontière existentielle. The subject is divided by Scrima into two conceptual diagrams: a. en deçà – death both as a subject within a discourse, of an observed fact, and as part of a noetic, reflexive exposition and questioning within consciousness and by our consciousness; b. au-delà – death as a mystery: the non-talking of death in itself; the invention of a “grammar” of the death of the human being.

The American Orthodox Churches and Clergy in the 21st Century

In 1794, the foundation of a mission on Kodiak Island in Alaska by the Orthodox monks from Russia marked the entrance of Orthodox Church in America. Two centuries later, the presence of over one million faithful gathered into more than 2,400 local parishes bears witness to the firm establishment of Eastern Christianity in the US. The notion of "one state - one Church" was historically very characteristic of Orthodox Christianity. When the Orthodox Church is mentioned, one tends to think of its ethnic aspect, and when Orthodox Christians are asked about their religious affiliation, they almost always add an cthnic qualificr: Grcck Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, etc. Consequently, many Orthodox Churches — Byzantine and Oriental alike — that have faithful in the United States have organized their own jurisdictions in North America: the individual "ethnically based" parishes were later united into centrally administrated dioceses subordinated to the "Mother Churches" in the Old World. The original goal of American Orthodox jurisdictions was clear: to minister to the religious needs of the diverse immigrant ethnic communities: the Greeks, Russians, Serbians, Romanians, Armenians, Copts, etc. There is no doubt that for the first generation of immigrants these ethnically based Orthodox jurisdictions brought a big measure of order and unity to ethnic groups that otherwise would have remained fragmented and enfeebled in an "American melting pot".

Maxim the Confessor about Perfect Love

Introduction. The subject of study in the article was the experience of the ascent of the famous Byzantine theologian to the mystical-metaphysical contemplation of divine reality, embodied in his book “Chapters on Love”. According to the Orthodox version of the metaphysics of the Way, this ultimate goal can be achieved during life only in the process of hard and practical work of an ascetic, during which the task is set not only to kill worldly desires, but also to ultimately spiritual and moral purification of the monk’s soul. In this small work, Maxim the Confessor described in detail the technology of advancing an ascetic to the last stop and staying in a blissful state of perfect love for God. Materials and Methods. The source of the research was the works of the ancient Indian, Orthodox and Sufi ascetics, which are different versions of the metaphysics of the Way. During the work, mainly thematic and transcendental analysis methods were used, which together made it possible to track the desire of Maxim the Confessor to describe and comprehend the ascent of the Orthodox monk to the mystical-metaphysical contemplation of the Lord. Discussion. The author of the article in numbered and distributed throughout the chapters of the statements of the Byzantine theologian revealed a complex system of mystical and metaphysical views, which can be called the metaphysical theory of theology. From the point of view of modern methodology and philosophy of science, he created effective theoretical constructs “pure mind”, “perfect love”, “selfishness”, “thoughts” and others, which together fully describe the mystical existential reality of a harsh Orthodox monk, which is difficult to reflect by means of language. However, his reasoning is not speculative thoughts. It is quite obvious to the researcher that they are based on rich personal experience and other prominent ascetics of Byzantine Orthodoxy. Results. The study of the soulful book of Maximus the Confessor “Chapters on Love” allows you to advance in understanding one of the most important and the most difficult moments of the Orthodox version of the metaphysics of the Way.

The influence of Hesychast philosophy on the monks’ speech practice (the case of the epistolary texts of the Russian Orthodox monasticism of the 20th century)

This article deals with issues related to the interaction of language and religion, such as the influence of Hesychasm philosophy on the speech of Russian Orthodox monks, which shows itself primarily at the ideological level. Referring to the epistolary texts of Russian Orthodox monks-writers of the XX century, the author shows the features of the fundamental ideas of the religious and philosophical doctrine of Hesychasts represented in the language. It is stated that the main representatives of the Hesychast ideas in the epistolary texts of Russian Orthodox monasticism of the XX century are overwords units and words nominating these ideas, as well as derivatives of nominees. It is noted that representatives of the ideas of salvation, theosis, transfiguration, silence, seclusion, etc. belong to the Orthodox vocabulary corpus of spiritual and moral content. The author refers to the use of words and verwords units from the subject area of Hesychasm and specific etiquette speech formulas of greetings and farewells to the distinctive linguistic features of the epistolary texts of Orthodox monks-writers. The question of the influence of prayer making on monastic speech, which forms its distinctive character, is discussed separately: the monk's speech is unique in its prayerfulness and richness with prayers lexis (which reflects a deep mental immersion in prayer texts of different eras).

Общемонгольская лексика в названиях предметов одежды и украшений в «Сокровенном сказании монголов»

The article deals with the vocabulary which was used for the denotation of pieces of clothing and adornments in The Secret History of the Mongols. The study aims to analyze — where possible — the etymology of the lexical items in question or, at least, if the relevant data are not available, find respective lexical parallels in the modern Khalkha, Buryat and Kalmyk languages, figure out whether they belong to the common Mongolic vocabulary, and draw conclusions concerning the way the layer of household vocabulary has been formed in the Mongoliс languages. Being the oldest surviving literary work in the Mongolian language, The Secret History of the Mongols has been thoroughly studied, and dozens of articles, monographs and other works of scholarship have been published since the 19th century when this written artifact was introduced into European scientific discourse by Palladius (Kafarov), a Russian Orthodox monk and, by a twist of fate, one of the first Russian sinologists. Still, there are no lexical studies specifically focusing on the 13th-century household vocabulary which has left traces in The Secret History of the Mongols, while research of that kind could give clues to the so called ‘Altaic problem’. The article is intended to fill this gap (partially). The paper examines the following lexical items: deel/degel ‘long garment, dress, gown, robe; clothes’, qubcasun/qubca ‘clothes’, emusgel ‘garment’, daqu ‘coat with fur outside’, ormuge/ormege ‘overcoat, bast mat’, nemurge ‘raincoat’, heligebci ‘abdominal band’, emudun ‘pants’, camca ‘shirt’, dotoaǰi ‘underwear’, buse ‘belt’, γudusu(n) ‘footwear’, ǰaqa ‘collar’, qancu(n) ‘sleeve’, qormoi ‘bottom of one’s item of clothing’, maqalay ‘hat’, eemeg ‘earring’. It has been found that all the words listed have common Mongolic stems, and the words daqu ‘coat with fur outside’, ormuge/ormege ‘overcoat, bast mat’, and ǰaqa ‘collar’ are related to their common Turkic equivalents.

The Coat of Arms of Moses of Mardin

Abstract The core of this paper is an edition of Moses of Mardin’s grant of arms, which, accompanied by relevant excerpts from his unpublished Syriac correspondence, provides new information on the life of this 16th-century Syrian Orthodox monk, who played an important role at the dawn of the European Syriac scholarship. He was not only granted with a coat of arms, but he was also received by Ferdinand I, which shows the importance of his major achievement, the edition of the Syriac New Testament. The paper points out that he lived in the Jesuit college in Vienna with the scions of the most influential noblemen, which illustrates his social milieu. It will be argued that he remained Syrian Orthodox despite his earlier Catholic profession of faith. It will also be argued that Moses acquired the right to bear the described coat of arms without ennoblement, and he probably did not use it.

Did Two Zlatousts from the Collection of the Princes Chartoryski Library in Cracow Once Belong to Fr Iwan Wiszeński?

In the collection of manuscripts of the Princes Chartoryski Library in Cracow, there are two manuscripts (from the beginning of the 17th century) which are related, in academic literature, with the person of Orthodox monk, Iwan Wiszeński. The volumes, described in catalogues as Zlatousts, were to be brought by him directly from the Mt Athos. Codicological and textual analysis of the manuscripts shows that the tomes are not the Zlatousts, but two volumes (Lent and Paschal period) from an extensive collection of Byzantine and Slavic panegyrical works, known as Studios Monastery Homiliarium. Characteristic features of both the books show that the manuscripts were written on the area of the former Polish Republic (The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), thus they may only be copies of the originals brought from the Balkan region (not necessarily the Mt Athos). It is possible that Iwan Wiszeński was engaged personally in the delivery of manuscripts of this type, unpopular in Orthodox literature in the Ruthenian territory, but not of these particular ones.

Этикетный речевой жанр «обращение» в зачине духовного письма (на материале текстов русских церковных писателей-монахов ХХ века)

The peculiarities of etiquette speech genre of “compellation” in the Russian spiritual letter are discussed. The relevance of the study is determined by the importance of studying the Church-religious style and written spiritual heritage of Russian Orthodox monasticism, by the interest to Russian speech etiquette and Russian epistolary traditions. The novelty of the study lies in the author’s reference to not previously studied texts of spiritual letters of the Russian Orthodox monks of the 20 th century, study of the interaction of language and religion, identification of the specifics of etiquette genres in religious style. The article focuses on the question of how the Hesychast idea of deification is embodied in the language of the genre of “compellation.” Also the attention is paid to the principles of theocentrism and christocentrism, determining the linguistic embodiment of the genre of “compellation.” With the help of illustrations it is shown that the specifics of the genre of “compellation” in the opening sentence of Russian spiritual letter is linked with the Christian worldview of the authors, adherence to ethical Hesychast doctrine. On the basis of involved linguistic material it is concluded that etiquette units which embody the idea of deification ( о Gospode , vo Gospode, vo Khriste, vo Khriste Iisuse, bogolyubivyy, bogolyubiveyshiy, rab Bozhiy ) become a stylistic marker. The analysis of complaints in the letters of clerical writers-monks from the point of view of their functions shows that, in addition to the usual functions of compellations, the texts of this genre realize the function of spiritual rapprochement of the author and the addressee.

Philoumenos of Jacob's Well: The Birth of a Contemporary Ritual Murder Narrative

In 1979, the Orthodox monk Philoumenos Hasapis was violently murdered in Jacob’s Well Church in Nablus. His death was described as a ritual murder performed by a fanatical Jewish-Israeli group. Philoumenos was later sanctified by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The story gained publicity among Orthodox Christian communities around the world and was accredited by various NGOs and scholars. However, the factual basis of the event dismissed any ritualistic motives or collective accusations for the murder. The development patterns of the popular narrative are assessed against the backdrop of similar accusations levied against medieval Jewish communities in Europe, as well as contemporary framing of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in the media. The conclusions suggest reasons for the wide publicity that the narrative received, based on the cultural context of its target audience, the interests of the Orthodox Church, and the role of political actors involved.

Sense of Coherence (SOC) in Christian Orthodox Monks and Nuns in Greece.

This paper aims to investigate the stress management skills of Christian Orthodox monks and nuns, as measured by Antonovsky's scale sense of coherence (SOC). A case-control study was designed to test the hypotheses whether monks and nuns have higher SOC than secular people. The study population consisted of 193 individuals, 96 monks and nuns (study group) and 97 secular men and women (control group). SOC score was higher in monks and nuns as compared to the secular population (p=0.002), men as compared to women (p=0.012) and persons of older age (p=0.004) as compared to younger individuals.

An Early Case of the Printer's Self-Censorship in Constantinople

This article focuses on the printing activities of Nicodemos Metaxas, a Venetian subject and Orthodox monk of Greek origin, hailing from the Ionian island of Cephalonia. Nicodemos learned the art of printing in London's Fleet Street and published five volumes, forming an exquisite collection of theological and rhetorical works by select Greek scholars and Orthodox clergymen. In 1627, he established the first Greek printing press in Constantinople with equipment transferred from England. The editing process of Patriarch Cyril Lucaris's Against the Jews, a tract Nicodemos published in the same year, reveals a curious example of the printer's self-censorship. The official Ottoman stance towards non-Muslim publishing in the Empire is manifested through the arrest, trial, and subsequent release of the Greek printer.

Mitropolia de Karlowitz şi relaţiile sârbo-române din cuprinsul Monarhiei habsburgice / The Metropolitanate of Karlowitz and Serbo-Romanian Relations within The Habsburg Monarchy

The connections between Serbian and Romanian orthodoxy reach far into the past. Orthodox Romanians, monks and rulers have close connections to the Serbian monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos, and those relationships were further expanded during the era of the Branković, with Maksim as a Romanian metropolitan and the foundation of monastery Krušedol on Fruška gora in Sirmium, under the patronage of the Vlach Duke Basaraba. Upon the establishment of the Metropolitanate of Krušedol and afterwards the Metropolitanate of Karlowitz (Sremski Karlovci) all Orthodox believers, even the Orthodox Romanians, came under the spiritual protectorate of the Serbian Church in the Habsburg Monarchy. In the struggle for preservation of orthodoxy among Romanians in Transylvania, in the middle of the 18th century, under the guidance of metropolitan Pavle Nenadović, a Serbian monk, reverend Visarion Saraj stood out. He was beatified bz the Romanian Church. In the first half of the 19th century, under the influence of lay people, among Romanians arose the idea about allocating their own, Romanian hierarchy, and separate from the protectorate of the Metropolitanate of Karlowitz. This process had already been institutionally approved (at the May 1848 Assembly in Sremski Karlovci) and it ended with the creation of the Romanian Metropolitanate of Sibiu in 1864, with the support of first the Austrian and later the Hungarian, in the legal form of an act from 1868. Separation of Orthodox Serbs and Romanians into two Church organizations was achieved by a mutual consensus, and the only controversies arose during the division of Church proprieties and possessions in some mixed municipalities in Banat. In some cases, the issues of what belongs to whom were resolved in court. When they were embroiled in these disputes, the mutual acts of Serbian and Romanian civil forces were reinforced with the participation of Slovakian middle class, with the goal of resisting hungarization, wich tended to efface the national identity of both Serbs and Romanians in Dualistic empire, after the Austro-Hungarian agreement in 1867. The process was ended with the Congress of Minorities (1895) where non-Hungarians showed they were a majority in the Hungarian part of the Monarchy. After the doom of Austro-Hungary (1918) and the creation of modern Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia (The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians), the Serbo-Romanian relations continued to develop in completely new historical circumstances.

St. Symeon the New Theologian and Western Dissident Movements

The trial at Orleans in 1022 of a group of aristocratic clergy, who included the confessor of Queen Constance of France, and their followers on the charge of heresy is the most fully reported among the group of heresy trials which were conducted in the Western Church during the first half of the eleventh century. Although the alleged heretics of Orleans are usually considered a part of a wider pattern of Western religious dissent, the charges brought against them differ considerably from those levelled against the other groups brought to trial in that period. The heterodox beliefs with which the canons of Orleans were charged bear a strong resemblance to the teachings of the Byzantine abbot, St. Symeon the New Theologian, who died in 1022. St. Symeon taught that it was possible for a Christian to experience the vision of God in this life if he or she received ascetic guidance from a spiritual director, who need not be a priest. In the late tenth and early eleventh centuries a significant number of Orthodox monks visited northern Europe, including Orleans, and some of them settled there. It is therefore possible that the Canons of Orleans who were put on trial had been trained in the tradition of St. Symeon by one of those Orthodox monks who were familiar with it. St. Symeon was part of the Hesychast tradition in the Byzantine Church. Even so, his emphasis on the supremacy of personal religious experience at the expense of the corporate worship of the institutional Church was strongly criticised by some of his contemporaries. A study of his writings shows that he was, in fact, completely Orthodox in faith and practice and that these criticisms were ill-judged. Nevertheless, if, as we have suggested, the Canons of Orleans had tried to live in accordance with his teachings, the hostile reactions of the Western hierarchy would be comprehensible. For there was no tradition of Hesychasm in the spirituality of the Western Church, and the fact that the dissidents at Orleans saw little value in observing the rituals of the established Church would have alarmed conventional churchmen.

Diverging realities of a Christian vakıf, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries

This article aims to investigate the adaptation of the Christian monastic foundations to the Islamic vakıf and to demonstrate the often flexible and equivocal way the term vakıf was applied by the Orthodox monks and the state officials in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The question of the Christian vakıf is important, since a significant part of the agricultural property of many Orthodox monasteries in the Greek lands was vakıf, owned since the Byzantine period and acknowledged as such by the Ottomans, or property acquired during the Ottoman period and characterized as vakıf through the legal procedure or perceived as such by the monks themselves. The article also refers to the importance of the study in a comparative perspective of Greek monastic documents issued in the Ottoman period, since they may contribute to a better understanding of the Ottoman landholding reality.

The Life and Mission of St. Paisius Velichkovsky. 1722–1794. An Early Modern Master of the Orthodox Spiritual Life

St. Paisius Velichovsky is a major figure in the Philokalic revival of Eastern Orthodox Spirituality – that tradition of spiritual practices that prioritised the Jesus prayer, the affective spirituality of the heart, and which was famously summed up in the Russian ‘Way of the Pilgrim’ composed by one of his later followers. This essay considers Paisy’s life and ministry in its historical context, something relatively inacccessible in the English language, and demonstrates the coherence of the mysticism, the political, and the reformatory work of this great Ukrainian Orthodox monk, Church reformer, and mystic.