Power, Sainthood, and the Art of Myth
Pierre Gonneau, A l'aube de la Russie muscovite: Serge de Radonege et Andre Roublev. Legendes et images (XIVe-XVIIe siecles) (At the Dawn of Muscovite Russia: Sergius of Radonezh and Andrei Rublev. Legends and Images [14th-17th Centuries]). 357 pp., illus., appendices. Paris: Institut d'etudes slaves, 2007. ISBN-13 978-2720404351. 24.00 [euro]. Elisabeth Teiro, L'Eglise des premiers saints metropolites russes (The Church of the First Saintly Russian Metropolitans). 418 pp., illus., appendices. Paris: Institut d'etudes slaves, 2009. ISBN-13 978-2720404511. 24.00 [euro]. During the Soviet era, publications covering the religious life of medieval and early modern Rus' tended to emphasize land issues and the condition of the peasantry. The scope of this area of scholarship has broadened considerably in recent years to encompass the cultural and spiritual aspects of Muscovite church history. This expansion has been aided significantly by the publication of documents supplementing fundamental collections of source materials created in the 20th century. Rich collections in Russian museums and art restorers' revelations are becoming increasingly accessible through the bountiful production of high-quality albums and exhibit catalogues as well as the development of websites devoted to art and architecture. The two excellent monographs reviewed here will further expand our understanding of the formative period of the Muscovite polity because they underscore the crucial interconnections that permitted church leaders and Moscow's princes to construct the symbiotic relationships that promoted their mutual success. Both books reveal the importance of sainthood as the social and political "glue" holding together the rising status of rulers and church hierarchs, while simultaneously laying out the widely divergent itineraries for future saints to follow during their earthly lives. The saints who figure in Elisabeth Teiro's examination of the Russian metropolitanate during the 14th to 16th centuries are cut from very different cloth from the legendarily humble monk Sergius of Radonezh--adviser of princes, conciliator, counterpart of St. Francis in giving away worldly possessions, and source of inspiration for unity against the Tatars and rebuilding Russian spirituality. In contrast, the saintly metropolitans contribute to the building of church and state as political activists who move to Moscow and thereafter link the destiny of their church to that of the local rulers. Sergius and the metropolitans alike were then posthumously claimed as wonder-working intercessors for Moscow, an image fostered both by church hierarchs and by Moscow's rulers. Teiro's study begins with Peter's relocation of the seat of the metropolitan to Moscow, his initiation of the construction of the Dormition Cathedral, and his burial in 1326 in his unfinished church. His relatively rapid recognition as the first saint associated with the principality of Moscow was initiated by his successor, Theognost, backed by Ivan Kalita of Moscow; and the Byzantine patriarch agreed to canonization. Metropolitans before Peter had not been the focus of special veneration, but thereafter his successors came to be given serious consideration for this status. Analyzing the grounds for sainthood, Teiro concludes that after Peter "admission to the ranks of the saints" (199) rather than canonization, with its connotation of the procedure used in the Roman Catholic Church, better describes the process at work in Muscovy, especially before Metropolitan Makarii's councils of 1547-49 made glorification a more formal process. Incorrupt relics served as an indication of worthiness for sainthood, but the indispensable requirement was that the potential saint perform miracles, in life or after death (and a candidate's record in this regard might be "improved" to strengthen his claim). After the Russian church became autocephalous in 1448, candidates native to the Russian lands were more likely to be canonized. …
Saint Sergius of Radonezh, His Trinity Monastery, and the Formation of the Russian Identity
When Sergius of Radonezh founded a monastery near Moscow, his example spawned a movement of monastic foundations throughout Russia. Within three decades of his death in 1392, Sergius was recognized as a saint, and by 1450 many considered him the intercessor for the Russian land who freed its people from Mongol rule. Over the next century and a half, thousands sought St. Sergius s intercession with gifts to the monastery. Moscow s rulers made Sergius patron saint of their dynasty and of the Russian tsardom. By 1605, the Trinity-Sergius monastery was the biggest house in Russia.Miller presents Trinity s dramatic history from the 14th century to the beginning of the Time of Troubles. Using extensive archival materials, he traces the evolution of Trinity s relationship to Sergius s venerators and its traditions, governance, social composition, and the lifestyle of its members. In lucid prose, Miller argues that St. Sergius s cult and monastery became integrating forces on a national scale and vital elements in the forging of a Russian identity, economy, and cohesive society. The power of religion to shape national identity is a lively topic today, and Miller s study will interest both medievalists and modern historians, as well as readers of Orthodox Church history."
At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia
Georg B. Michele. At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. x, 345 pp. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $60,00, cloth. This thought-provoking study of religious dissent in seventeenth-century Russia is sure to stimulate further research into the religious and social history of one of the more volatile periods in the national story of the Russian people. Relying on archival evidence from relatively remote parts of Russia, Georg B. Michels breaks new ground in the field of research concerning the Old Believers' Schism. He offers substantial proof of a multiplicity of organized and spontaneous reactions against the theology, politics and pastoral care of the official Orthodox Church in the aftermath of the great church council of 1666. He shows that these dissenters had little or no relationship with what eventually came to be known as the Old Believers' Schism. Rather than focus his attention on the leaders of a presumed mass protest movement, Michels reconstructs the religious sentiments of the underclass of Russian society to show that eighteenth-century Old Belief historiography and mythology have prejudiced modem attempts to understand the religious and social turmoil of the previous century. In order to accomplish this, Michels set for himself two important tasks: to distinguish Old Belief from schism, and to distinguish varieties of religious dissent from Old Belief. The results, also well documented, are surprising. Those traditionally identified as the founders of Old Belief such as Avvakum, Neronov, Longin and Fedor Ivanov actually had far less impact on seventeenth-century religious dissent than has been taken for granted in standard histories and specialized studies. The Zealots of Piety presented a very strict form of Christian morality and piety that had little broad appeal. The fact that dissent occurred across the vast Russian landscape and affected all levels of society is not evidence of a mass protest movement. Rather, depending on the social milieu and local circumstances, opposition to the church arose out of a combination of personal spiritual needs not met by the official church and frustration with various forms of social injustice particular to a given individual or group. Only later would these separate pockets of dissent be incorporated into the all-inclusive term "schism" and exploited either in support of, or opposition to, the Old Belief Before commenting on the elaboration of Michels' thesis, I must draw attention to a significant shortcoming. On page 75 where he comments on Savvatii, a monk of the Chudov monastery, Michels states: "The person of Christ, he concluded, had been isolated from the other components of the Trinity..." Trinitarian theology is admittedly complex, but to use the word "component" shows a deficient appreciation of the history of Christian doctrine. Since at least some of the dissenters about whom Michels writes were deeply worried that doctrine itself had been compromised by the revisions to the liturgical books under Nikon's supervision, I think more care ought to have been taken when commenting on theological matters. Throughout the book Michels refers to the principal Orthodox worship service as Mass. This is inaccurate. Orthodox Christians do not attend Mass, their clergy do not say Mass. They participate in and celebrate the Divine Liturgy. On page 189 Michels lets slip another religiously imprecise remark when he writes that "the first archbishop of Ustiug sent a memorandum to his priests complaining that the parishioners of his new eparchy did not know the Lord's Prayer or the Hail Mary..." The Orthodox do have a prayer similar to the Roman Catholic "Hail Mary," but it is not the Hail Mary. The proper way to translate this is "Rejoice, Theotokos." The impression Michels gives is that the Ustiug archbishop was castigating his flock for not being Roman Catholic enough in their piety! …