Russian Orthodox Churches Research Articles

Intensification of the relationship between the Russian Orthodox and Anglican Church in the second half of the 1890s

The article analyzes the relationship between the Anglican and Russian Orthodox churches at the very end of the 19th century. The reasons why the Anglican — Orthodox dialogue received intensive development and significant theological content during this period are considered. Significant attention is paid to the mutual visits of the hierarchs of the two Churches, during which they discussed and agreed on numerous issues related to the rapprochement of the Anglican and Russian Orthodox Churches in connection with the prospect of planned interfaith unity. Emphasis is placed on the problem of recognizing the legitimacy of Anglican ordinations, which arose both due to the historical formation of Anglicanism and in connection with the peculiarities of the Anglican doctrine of the sacraments, particularly the sacrament of the priesthood. The author investigates the reasons why Russian theologians, who have carefully studied the historical, canonical and dogmatic sides of the issue, were forced at this stage to deny the Anglicans the recognition of the legality of their ordinations. In connection with this decision, the prospect of inter-church unity was postponed indefinitely so that Anglican theological thought could finally be defined in the sacramentology of the Anglican creed. At the same time, the dialogue between the two churches was not interrupted, but rather continued fruitfully in the 20th century.

SERBIAN SAINTS HAGIOANTHROPONYMS IN SERBIAN AND RUSSIAN (STRUCTURAL AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS)

The paper analyzes the structure of hagioanthroponyms of Serbian saints in the Russian and Serbian languages using a comparative method. Material for analysis are the hagioanthroponyms from the calendars of the Serbian and Russian Orthodox churches. The structure and composition of these hagioanthroponyms in the two languages differ in many ways. Not all the rules for transcription of Serbian anthroponyms and other lexemes in the structure of the hagioanthroponyms in Russian are followed.

Turning Point in Christianity: Eastern Europe in the Late 20th Century

Ten years before the collapse of communism, there were warning signs that the Soviet Union’s economy was becoming crippled. Soviet authorities controlled and influenced the Russian Orthodox Church and they jailed leaders of the church in all East European countries. The fall of the Berlin wall created a turning point in Christianity in 1989. More than 8 000 Russian Orthodox Churches were reopened between 1990 and 1995. The nineties could be described as a time of hope regarding religious revival in Eastern Europe. In this paradigm shift, freedom of religion became officially recognised as a basic human right and a multitude of denominations became free to compete for followers. In Prague, Cardinal Miroslav VIk had ministered clandestinely to Catholics while officially working as a window-washer during communist rule. He was known by the people as the “generous pastor.” After the Velvet Revolution, he became bishop and later cardinal in the Czech Republic. In many East European countries, religion and national identity are closely entwined. According to the Pew Research Centre report on Christianity, in Eastern Europe there was a sustainable increase in religious activities from the early 1990s until 2017. The fall of the Berlin wall had a significant influence on South Africa. It helped South Africa in its democratic process. The once dominating neo-Calvinistic control of society was replaced by a new paradigm of democratic freedom and an equal religious stance by the new government elected in 1994.

From Socialist Realism to Orthodox Christianity: “Blockade Temples” in Saint Petersburg

The article, based on the analysis of architectural and memorial complexes dedicated to the Siege of Leningrad in Saint Petersburg, investigates the processes of formation and transformation of historical memory of this event in the urban space. The secular language of the artistic representation of the blockade created during the years of the USSR was instrumentalized by agents of the politics of history on the eve of perestroika and reinterpreted through the categories of Orthodox Christianity in contemporary Russia. Following the cultural transformations that took place during perestroika, I identify new actors of the politics of history: organizations of blockade survivors, Russian nationalists, and the Russian Orthodox Church. They were the driving force behind many memorials and commemorative signs dedicated to the Blockade of Leningrad in and around Saint Petersburg in the 1990s and early 2000s. The construction of Russian Orthodox churches dedicated to the memory of the blockade, like the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Malaia Okhta and the Church of All Saints Resplendent in the Russian Land in Victory Park, testify to the emergence of a new language of historical commemoration in the post-Soviet Saint Petersburg. It also indicates the inclusion of the blockade in the category of events significant to the historical narrative of the Russian Orthodox Church. Using the example of the Russian Orthodox Church’s policy regarding commemoration of the blockade in the 1990s, I outline the reasons why a formerly marginal agent of the politics of history not only was able to mark its presence in the city’s cultural space, but also began to claim the place of the most influential interpreter of the past in contemporary Russia. The study is based on visual analyses of several memorials dedicated to the Blockade of Leningrad, the circumstances of the creation of monuments and other commemorative markers, their location in the city, and the discursive significance attached to memorials by the city’s community. The article is written at the intersection of research in history of memory and cultural studies. Article in English DOI: 10.25285/2078-1938-2018-10-3-79-105

Here the Russian Settlements and Orthodox Churches in California, The United States of America, 19th Century

The article deals with the architecture of the first Russian Orthodox churches in the state of California that were formed with the appearance of Russian settlements on the North American continent at the end of the 18th century. We consider the examples of constructing the churches in California in the 19th century; both volumetric and spatial solutions that are traditional for Russian Orthodox architecture, and peculiarities of forms and elements that reflect the interaction of different cultures, are seen. The work describes the history of the construction and architectural features of the first Russian settlement in California - Fort Ross, the chapel of St. Trinity, which is located on its territory, as well as features of the cathedral of St. Trinity in San Francisco.

Rotundal temple in Russia: european roots and Russian traditions

The article presents the results of a comprehensive study of rotundal religious architecture, presented in the world and Russian architectural theory and practice. The appeal to this topic is due to the extreme rarity of the rotundal forms in the cult architecture with the high architectural and artistic merits of the rotundal temples, created during the centuries-old period from the 6th century B.C. to the 19th century A.D. The sequence of the development and inner interrelation of rotund-temples of different times and peoples is briefly described. The historical analogies of rotundal form development in the world and the Russian architecture are conducted. The ideological, aesthetic and socio-economic origins of the emergence and active use of rotundal forms in the Orthodox church architecture of Russia from the middle of the 18th to the first third of the 19th centuries are analyzed. Attention is drawn to the volume-planning and compositional solutions of Russian rotund temples that distinguish them from the rotundal churches of other countries. The symbolic significance of rotundal forms in the cult architecture in its historical development is considered. It is pointed out that the rotundal form corresponds to the sacred significance of the architecture of Russian Orthodox churches.

St Archbishop Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki Against the Positivist Ideology of Separating Science and Religion

We consider the life feat and professional activities of St Luke Wojno-Jasieniecki, Archbishop, the Saint of the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches, and show that they were aimed at restoring the integrity of knowledge, the ideal of knowledge that was lost under the influence of the positivist ideology widely spread in the Russian and Soviet science and society of the twentieth century.

Two Orthodox Churches (the Old and the New) of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Kalisz

The Kalisz Orthodox church from the 1870s (Fig. 1) was demolished in the interwar period and quickly replaced by a “new” Orthodox church by the same name (Fig. 6). The surviving official correspondence reveals a specific set of arguments for the dismantling of the “old” church, e.g. that it was becoming dilapidated, was a threat to public safety and constituted an alien addition to the architectural landscape of the city. The demolition of the Orthodox church was to provide jobs for the unemployed and to open up the possibility of erecting a post office in that spot. The municipal authorities convinced the Ministry of Culture and Art that the local Orthodox parish was not interested in reclaiming the church for their own needs, even though this was not the case. The community ultimately conceded to having the church dismantled but demanded that a new temple be erected as compensation. The example of Kalisz aptly illustrates the attitude the authorities of the Second Republic of Poland had towards Russian Orthodox churches that had been erected in the partition period. The situation mirrored the controversies around the fate of the Orthodox church in Saski Square in Warsaw, if in a more provincial environment. The architectural style of the “new” Orthodox church in Kalisz puzzles many authors – the building, clearly representative of Russian historicism, is associated with Rundbogenstil and Latin- and Occidental-style Orthodox churches, which were spared by the interwar Polish authorities who wished to convert Orthodox citizens to Catholicism within the framework of the so-called neo-Union.

Making Martyrs East & West: Canonization in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches, written by Cathy Caridi

Making Martyrs East & West: Canonization in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches, written by Cathy Caridi

Kelly, Catriona Socialist Churches: Radical Secularization and the Preservation of the Past in Petrograd and Leningrad, 1918–1988 (review)

SEER, 96, 2, APRIL 2018 378 as it was) at the top level. There has been exploration elsewhere of the role of military leaders, for example in Brock Millman’s article, ‘The Problem with Generals’ (Journal of Contemporary History, 33, 1998, 2, pp. 291–320; not cited here), which examines the liability presented by British generals in the field of the intervention, who, fired up by anti-Bolshevism, interpreted the instructions they were given very loosely. There is still a lot of interesting work to do on the activities of the plethora of political, economic and voluntary representatives working in the field, and the experiences of ordinary soldiers. The vast memoir literature stemming from the intervention, not to mention the many collections of private papers belonging to agents in the intervention, are a valuable resource for the exploration of these topics which are not drawn on here. There are some stylistic and typing errors that might have been picked up by copy-editing (‘Wrangle’ for Wrangel´ a total of six times on page 261 is the worst). The book offers a solid, archivally-based overview of some of the key episodes in the intervention. The structured account it gives of some of the key phases of military activity may be useful. Its attempt to speak about the Allied intervention as a whole while employing primary material relating to only Britain and Canada, and a very limited selection of reading on the other participating governments, is disappointing. And there is still plenty for future studies to do in broadening our understanding of agency in the intervention, and our understanding of the intervention as an international phenomenon. Northumbria University Charlotte Alston Kelly, Catriona. Socialist Churches: Radical Secularization and the Preservation of the Past in Petrograd and Leningrad, 1918–1988. Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, IL, 2016. xx + 413 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. $59.00. Much has been written over decades about how the Soviet state treated (or mistreated) religious communities. Here, in her ‘microhistory of church preservation and destruction’ (p. 16) focusing on one city, the former Russian imperial capital, Catriona Kelly studies the way the state — in all its various manifestations — treated their places of worship. ‘Under Lenin they took [the churches] away, and under Stalin they took them away’, Kelly quotes one city priest as telling her, ‘during the War they gave them back, under Khrushchev they closed them again, and then under Brezhnev things stayed as they were, then under Gorbachev they started giving them back, and under Yeltsin’ (p. 275). If this is the (not inaccurate) perspective of one cleric, Kelly takes a more rounded view. She examines the stances of ideologues in the Communist party seeking to close as many places of worship as possible; REVIEWS 379 officials desperate for premises for homes, enterprises and cultural institutions (including anti-religious museums); heritage enthusiasts seeking to preserve what they considered important (curiously they disdained neo-Byzantine and style russe buildings of the 1840–1900 period and removed traces of this period from earlier buildings); proponents of turning the imperial capital — with all its backward-looking connotations — into a socialist city; and local people who tried to make their views on preservation of churches heard. Kelly’s findings are, for non architectural specialists, at times surprising. Leningrad saw fewer churches demolished than other cities, but one key factor was how a church fitted into the ansambl´ (the urban surroundings), ‘an enormously important value term in St. Petersburg preservation’ (p. 305). While the imperial city contained a range of Christian churches (including Old Believer, Catholic, Lutheran and Armenian, alongside German, Dutch, English, Swedish) as well as places of worship of other faiths (Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist), Kelly focuses mainly on Russian Orthodox churches. These of themselves made up a variety, including cathedrals, streetside churches and ‘house churches’ within institutions (which faced a ‘far more energetic drive’ [p. 56] to close them after the Decree on the Confiscation of Church Property). By the 1920s, far from all of these churches were in the hands of the newlyrecreated Moscow Patriarchate — internal theological and external political rifts, exacerbated by Metropolitan Sergii’s 1927 declaration of loyalty to the Soviet regime, saw rival...

Making Martyrs East and West: Canonization in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches Cathy Caridi Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, IL, 2016, ix + 200 pp (hardback £44.50) ISBN: 978-0-87580-495-8

Making Martyrs East and West: Canonization in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches Cathy Caridi Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, IL, 2016, ix + 200 pp (hardback £44.50) ISBN: 978-0-87580-495-8

Making Martyrs East and West: Canonization in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches. By Cathy Caridi . De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016. vii + 254 pp. $59.00 cloth.

Making Martyrs East and West: Canonization in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches. By Cathy Caridi . De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016. vii + 254 pp. $59.00 cloth.

Making Martyrs East And West: Canonization in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches. By Cathy Caridi.

Making Martyrs East And West: Canonization in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches. By Cathy Caridi.

Making Martyrs East & West: Canonization in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches by Cathy Caridi

Reviewed by: Making Martyrs East & West: Canonization in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches by Cathy Caridi Per-Arne Bodin Making Martyrs East & West: Canonization in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches. By Cathy Caridi. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. 2016. Pp. x, 200. $59.00. ISBN 978-0-87680-495-8.) Cathy Caridi's study consists of four chapters on martyr-making in the East and the West. The first deals with the united church, the second with the Russian church from the Christianization in 988 up to our time, the third with the Catholic Church from the great schism, and the last chapter with a comparison of canonization processes in East and West. Canonization of martyrs would at first glance seem to be a strictly historical theme, but it is quite the opposite; for example, the canonization of 2000 new martyrs in Russia in the beginning of this century shows the topicality of this phenomenon. The study is asymmetric in construction; the Catholic Church is discussed and compared to the Russian Orthodox tradition and not to the Orthodox Church in general. The impression therefore gets somewhat one-sided, and some of the findings would certainly be different if the symmetry had been observed. The study follows the procedure of canonization through history and notes that the Catholic practice is more formal and more centralized than the Russian one, the former resting on the authority of the pope. Caridi maintains, however, that many of the early martyrs have never been officially canonized. Scrutiny of different sorts of lists of saints (diptychs, saints' calendars) plays an important part in the study. There are many categories of saints defined in the book, but the difference between saints in general and martyrs is sometimes blurred. Caridi rightly notes that miracles are more important for canonization in Russia than in the [European?] Catholic Church, but is somewhat overstating the difference between the traditions. Also studied is the view of the incorruptibility of saints' dead bodies, which is very salient in the Russian context as a sign of holiness. Yet other themes dwelt on include the role of relics and the translation of them in the canonization process. The most interesting finding in this study is the result of the scrupulous comparison of the criteria (or lack of criteria) for canonization in different times and different traditions, since there are so many different procedures through the ages. Sometimes it seems to be impossible to know if a martyr has existed at all. The subject is huge and has been much studied. What is missing in Making Martyrs is a firm relation to earlier research, which is, however, known to the author, as can be seen by the extensive bibliography. Caridi uses primary sources [End Page 323] instead, which gives impressing results; but still more could have been obtained by bringing earlier research to the fore. Especially the chapter on the Russian church would have gained much if more recent studies had been considered. One issue that would have been interesting to include is that of decanonizations in the Russian Church, a topic of recent debate and investigation which is only touched on in Making Martyrs. In the last pages Caridi lists the formidable problems it would raise to merge the lists of names in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox calendars. It is a sad reading but ought to be an ecumenical challenge. The author calls herself "a legalistic Westerner," a characterization that is borne out in the book. Caridi is preoccupied with the need for a correct procedure of canonization and resolving which martyrs are the authentic ones. And a final remark: All these lives and deaths more or less outlined in the vitae bear witness to so much of human suffering and so much of Christian faith in East or West, in distant times or just a while ago. Per-Arne Bodin Stockholm University Copyright © 2017 The Catholic University of America Press

PROBABILISTIC FEASIBILITY OF THE RECONSTRUCTION PROCESS OF RUSSIAN-ORTHODOX CHURCHES

Abstract. The cultural human heritage is important for the identity of following generations and has to be preserved in a suitable manner. In the course of time a lot of information about former cultural constructions has been lost because some objects were strongly damaged by natural erosion or on account of human work or were even destroyed. It is important to capture still available building parts of former buildings, mostly ruins. This data could be the basis for a virtual reconstruction. Laserscanning offers in principle the possibility to take up extensively surfaces of buildings in its actual status. In this paper we assume a priori given 3d-laserscanner data, 3d point cloud for the partly destroyed church. There are many well known algorithms, that describe different methods of extraction and detection of geometric primitives, which are recognized separately in 3d points clouds. In our work we put them in a common probabilistic framework, which guides the complete reconstruction process of complex buildings, in our case russian-orthodox churches. Churches are modeled with their functional volumetric components, enriched with a priori known probabilities, which are deduced from a database of russian-orthodox churches. Each set of components represents a complete church. The power of the new method is shown for a simulated dataset of 100 russian-orthodox churches.

PROBABILISTIC FEASIBILITY OF THE RECONSTRUCTION PROCESS OF RUSSIAN-ORTHODOX CHURCHES

The cultural human heritage is important for the identity of following generations and has to be preserved in a suitable manner. In the course of time a lot of information about former cultural constructions has been lost because some objects were strongly damaged by natural erosion or on account of human work or were even destroyed. It is important to capture still available building parts of former buildings, mostly ruins. This data could be the basis for a virtual reconstruction. Laserscanning offers in principle the possibility to take up extensively surfaces of buildings in its actual status. <br><br> In this paper we assume a priori given 3d-laserscanner data, 3d point cloud for the partly destroyed church. There are many well known algorithms, that describe different methods of extraction and detection of geometric primitives, which are recognized separately in 3d points clouds. In our work we put them in a common probabilistic framework, which guides the complete reconstruction process of complex buildings, in our case russian-orthodox churches. <br><br> Churches are modeled with their functional volumetric components, enriched with a priori known probabilities, which are deduced from a database of russian-orthodox churches. Each set of components represents a complete church. The power of the new method is shown for a simulated dataset of 100 russian-orthodox churches.

Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches on European integration

This article analyzes the attitudes of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church on Europe and European integration, through the activities such as the writings of Bishop of Vienna - now Metropolitan of Volokams - Hilarion Alfeyev and cardinal Joseph Ratzinger-Pope Benedict XVI. Furthermore, it perceives their reflection on moral pluralism, the role of Christianity in foundation of modern Europe and in process of European integration as well as their attempt in establishing the creative answer to militant secularism. The culmination of the cooperation between the two churches was the joint Catholic-Orthodox forum in Trent in 2008 and joint declaration of prolonging family values in European Union.

The Start of Old Belief Dissemination in the Yaik Cossack Troop

The article considers the initial process of Old Belief dissemination on the territory of the Yaik Cossack Troop. Special attention is paid to the emergence of the Yaik Troop as the historiography of this issue directly affected the hypothesis that Old Belief came to the Yaik from the Don. On the basis of a wide range of sources the author confirms the original date (proposed A. B. Karpov) and the way the penetration of the first preachers of Old Belief to the Yaik. This casts doubt on the fact that the Don Troop had a direct influence on the process on the Yaik, and also allows one to include the territory of the Cossacks in the Southern Urals into one of the earliest centres of Old Belief. Based on the comparison of the two armies, the author considers the reasons for Yaik Cossacks’ not participating in the disturbances in the Don Region between 1688 and 1689. The disposition of the Yaik Cossack Troop on the outskirts of the state, and their relations with secular and church authorities largely influenced the formation of the distinctive features of Old Belief in the region. Unl ike in the Don Troop , here fugitive priests were taken to the local churches. This lay the foundation for liturgical practices based on old books and rituals which existed in Russian Orthodox churches for more than a century and a half.

“As the Measure and Beauty Suggest”: Traditional Principles of geometry in Russian Orthodox Churches

This article proposes that the “Trinity diagram” was used for designing the plans for Russian churches. The “diagram” is a combination of squares which form the principal structure of the building; it has a semantically rich meaning refiecting the doctrines and ideology of the Middle Ages. The hypothesis is con.ftrmed by numerous examples from Western European, Byzantine, and Russian church architecture.

Константинопольский патриархат и православная диаспора в XX в.: полемика вокруг создания экзархата православных русских церквей в Западной Европе

Константинопольский патриархат и православная диаспора в XX в.: полемика вокруг создания экзархата православных русских церквей в Западной Европе