scholarly journals Problematic Sources

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (44) ◽  
pp. 71-91
Author(s):  
Evgenii Platonov
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Water Sources ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Mineral Springs ◽  
Governing Body ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
The Church

Traditional Russian worldviews explained healing from water sources in terms both Protestants and Catholics would have used elsewhere in Europe: as the grace of God or as the intervention of saints through associated relics or wonder-working icons. Holy wells were freely venerated within parishes until the eighteenth century when Peter the Great and the Holy Synod (the Russian Orthodox Church’s highest governing body) forbade pilgrimage to holy wells in a reformist drive to eradicate religious “superstitions.” This essay employs primary sources to consider how nineteenth-century developments at Russian holy wells and mineral springs related to social class, economics and those eighteenth-century reforms that merged the church with government structures. While liturgical activities at holy wells and the designation of new holy wells was criminalized, mineral springs gained appeal for “scientific” cures and as resort enterprises for the upper classes

scholarly journals Russia’s Scriptural “Reformation” in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 73-102
Author(s):  
Barbara Skinner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Biblical Translation ◽  
The Church

The Russian Orthodox Church never experienced a movement that placed the authority of Scriptures over that of the Church, which was characteristic of the Protestant reformations in Western Europe. Nevertheless, an increased emphasis on the Scriptures and a desire to translate the Bible into the vernacular arose in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Russia. Aside from the work of the Russian Bible Society, scholars have not shed much light on this trend as it occurred within clerical education. This article argues that the episode of the Bible Society was a critical chapter within a larger story of important theological and pedagogical shifts within Russian Orthodox education and values. The roots of the Russian biblical translation effort extend back to the eighteenth century, when ethnic Russian clerical scholars gained the linguistic abilities in Greek and Hebrew to translate based on the ancient texts, and when more attention began to be paid to both vernacular Russian instruction and Scriptural study in the ecclesiastical schools. These trends flourished more deeply in the first half of the nineteenth century. Thus, although Russia did not undergo a reformation in the Western sense of the word, it underwent similar internal reforms that brought the Scriptures into a more central role in the church without undermining Church authority and tradition.

Handmaiden of the State? The Church in Imperial Russia Reconsidered

1985 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. L. Freeze
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
Restricted Access ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

The history of the Russian Orthodox Church, especially in the modern imperial period (1700–1917), has been a woefully neglected field of scholarly research. That neglect antedates the collapse of the ancien regime in 1917, for pre-revolutionary historiography on the Church was neither abundant nor sophisticated; rarely did it produce more than myopic diocesan histories, fatuous accounts of the local seminary, or hagiographic paeans devoted to some prominent clergyman. The reasons for this neglect of so fundamental an institution in ‘Holy Rus’ are many – restricted access to ecclesiastical archives, difficulties in publication because of vigilant censors, but above all the intelligentsia's indifference to an apparently moribund and state-controlled institution. Paradoxically enough, Catholic polemicists, Orthodox Slavophiles, anticlerical intellectuals and reform-minded clergy all concurred – from different motives, for different reasons – in believing that the Church had become a mere instrument of the secular state, and that this change derived from ‘revolutionary’ and ‘Westernizing’ reforms in the Church imposed by Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century.

Post-Byzantine hermeneiai zographikes in the eighteenth century and their dissemination in the Balkans during the nineteenth century

2006 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-79
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Moutafov
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Balkan Peninsula ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

This article focuses on the significance of the Orthodox painters’ manuals, called hermeneiai zographikes, in the development of post-Byzantine iconography and painting technology and techniques in the Balkans during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Using a number of unpublished painters’ manuals (Greek and Slavonic) as primary sources for the study of Christian and Ottoman culture in the Balkan peninsula, it is possible to examine perceptions of Europe in the Balkans, in particular the principal routes for the transmission of ideas of the European Enlightenment, as well as the role of artists as mediators in the processes of ‘Europeanization'.

scholarly journals Fra eneveldets scene mot representative forsamlinger: visitasen som offentlig arena i Norge, ca. 1750–1850

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 183-211
Author(s):  
Trond Bjerkås
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Public Participation ◽  
General Public ◽  
Common People ◽  
Lay Members ◽  
The Common ◽  
Control Apparatus ◽  
The Church

From the Stage of State Power to Representative Assembly?: The Visitation as a Public Arena, 1750–1850In the eighteenth century, the bishops’ visitations to dioceses constituted an important part of the control apparatus of the Church and the absolutist state. The article examines visitations in Norway in terms of public arenas, where the common people interacted with Church officials. During the period 1750 to 1850, the visitations were gradually transformed from arenas in which the state manifested its power towards a largely undifferentiated populace, to meeting places that resembled representative assemblies with both clerical and common lay members. Thus, it adapted to new forms of public participation established by the reforms of national and local government in the first half of the nineteenth century. At the same time, the process amounted to an elitization, because a few representatives replaced of the congregation as a whole. It is also argued that parish churches in the eighteenth century functioned as general public forums with a number of other functions in addition to worship, such as being places of trade and festivities. This seems to change in the nineteenth century, when churches became more exclusively religious arenas. The transition can be seen in the context of new forms of participation in Church matters. Many clerics wanted greater participation by sections of the commoners, in order to strengthen control in moral and religious matters.

The Spa: Emotional Economy and Social Classes in Nineteenth-Century Pyrmont

2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heikki Lempa
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Mineral Springs ◽  
Mineral Spring ◽  
German Speaking

In 1835, Ferdinand Gustav Kühne, a Saxon writer and teacher, estimated that the Germanic realm was inundated with spas and that nowhere else were there as many as in Central Europe. In France there were “only ten springs, in Italy eight, Hungary had twelve, Sweden three, Spain two, England two, in Denmark and in vast Russia there was only one mineral spring of note in each, whereas in German-speaking countries, that is, including Bohemia and Switzerland, 149 facilities claimed to possess healing springs.” Although Kühne's estimate of foreign spas was too low—according to recent studies, the number of spas in England and France was significantly higher—contemporary accounts and recent local studies support his finding that Germans had the most bathing facilities in Europe. Fred Kaspar has isolated ninety-nine spas and mineral springs in Westphalia alone. Beginning in the last third of the eighteenth century, the number of spas and spa goers in particular increased rapidly in the Germanic realm. Only 200 guests came to the Kissingen spa in the summer of 1800, whereas fifty years later there were close to 4,000 and by the turn of the century 15,000 guests proper and more than 20,000 day visitors. Pyrmont, one of the most popular spas in the eighteenth century, started with 1,424 guests proper (not including peasants who were not considered guests proper) reaching 2,800 guests by the middle of the century, and around 19,000 by 1900.

scholarly journals Peter the Great as Antichrist: The Secular Sources of an Old Believer Compilation from Holy Scripture

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen Perrie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old Believers ◽  
Similar Role ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Made In

This article is devoted to an Old Believer work about Peter the Great, known as A Compilation from Holy Scripture about the Antichrist, which was first published in 1861. Some scholars have suggested that the work dates back to Peter’s reign, when many traditionally minded Orthodox Christians regarded the tsar as the Antichrist. The author of this article argues, however, that the work dates from the early nineteenth century, and that the case it makes for Peter’s identity as Antichrist is based primarily on tales about the tsar which were published in the late eighteenth century. On the basis of anecdotes about Peter’s conception, for example, the author of the Compilation drew a comparison with the Annunciation, the Epiphany, and the Feast of the Circumcision, to demonstrate a sacrilegious parallel between Peter’s biography and that of Christ, which “proved” that Peter was the Antichrist. The Compilation also cites works which seem to blasphemously suggest that Peter was God incarnate, in order to argue that the tsar was the embodiment not of God, but of Satan. Finally, when one work praised Catherine the Great for representing “the spirit of Peter the Great”, the compiler concluded that the spirit of all subsequent Russian rulers was also the spirit of Peter, that is, the spirit of the Antichrist. This is an idiosyncratic version of the argument made in the late eighteenth century by Evfimii, the founder of the Old Believer sect of the beguny, that Peter had founded a dynasty of Antichrists, and that all “true Christians” should flee from his realm. The distinguished Russian scholars Viktor Zhivov and Boris Uspenskii have argued that the metaphorical sacralisation of the monarch, in secular eighteenth-century panegyrics, was interpreted literally by some Old Believers and contributed to their identification of Peter as the Antichrist. The author of this article suggests that a similar role was played by more popular works such as the collections of anecdotes which presented the tsar as a God-like figure.

scholarly journals Ruská pravoslavná církev a ochrana křesťanů jako směr zahraniční politiky

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-38
Author(s):  
Maria Avanesova
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The State ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Church

The Russian Orthodox Church has become a significant actor in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. This text is dedicated to its role in Russiaʼs foreign policy, specifically to the topic of the Russian interest in problems and protection of Christians, which is one of the most essential parts of the cooperation between the state and the Church. Analyzing primary sources (state and Church documents), the author shows when and under what circumstances this topic became relevant to both actors, what role the Russian Orthodox Church played in this regard and how the topic of protecting Christians is used by the Russian regime today. The study shows that the interest in protection of Christians did not arise simultaneously on both sides and that it is connected mainly with situations where a threat for Christians is posed by unfriendly actors.

Anglicanism and Art

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Haynes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

The relationship between art and Anglicanism had many aspects. The chapter begins with a very brief exploration of clerical portraiture, religious satire, Bible illustration, and topographical prints. The rest is dedicated to the visual culture of the church interior. It surveys the use of ornament on fittings, including fonts and pulpits, before exploring the expanding repertoire for painting at the altar. The extent to which paintings of Moses and Aaron, the apostles, and subjects narrating the life of Christ were admitted to Anglican churches during the period may surprise. Over a thousand examples have been identified. Although many of them were lost during nineteenth-century campaigns of ‘restoration’, sufficient were recorded or survive to recover a just sense of the vivid visual culture of eighteenth-century Anglicanism. The chapter also offers some observations about the largely tacit system of visual decorum that operated to guard the Church from the dangers of idolatry.

Xenia the Servant of God, or Andrey Fyodorovich the Holy Fool

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-120
Author(s):  
Dmitry Bulgakovsky ◽  
Nick Mayhew
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Holy Fool ◽  
Gender Transformation ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The One

Abstract Xenia the Servant of God, or Andrey Fyodorovich the Holy Fool is a hagiography written by Russian Orthodox priest and publicist Dmitry Bulgakovsy (1843–ca. 1918). Published in Russia in 1890, it is one of the first full accounts of the life of a saint variably referred to by two names: one feminine, Xenia, and the other masculine, Andrey. The saint ostensibly lived in St. Petersburg in the eighteenth century. Identified female at birth and named Xenia, after the death of their husband Andrey, at the age of twenty-six the saint took on the identity of their deceased husband. The saint is popular in Russia today, and stories about their life are disseminated widely. Although they were canonized in 1988 as St. Xenia and are now venerated as a holy woman, accounts of their life always include the story of their gender transformation. In twenty-first-century narratives, this episode tends to be glossed over briefly as proof of the saint's extraordinary love for their husband, serving to embellish their role as a devoted wife. However, in the original nineteenth-century stories of the saint's life—such as the one translated below—there is greater ambiguity in the depiction of their gender.

‘A Just and Sufficient Maintenance’: Some Defences of the Clerical Establishment in the Eighteenth Century

1987 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 321-332
Author(s):  
Jeremy Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Black Book ◽  
Pastoral Leaders ◽  
The Church ◽  
Established Church ◽  
Church Historians

Arguments in justification of the Church’s wealth can be illuminating in any age. The wealth of the Church of England in the eighteenth century has had a particularly bad press. Nineteenth-century reformers portrayed the Established Church of the previous century as a money-grabbing institution; clergy being too concerned with lining their own pockets to be effective pastoral leaders. John Wade in his Extraordinary Black Book wanted to expose the rapaciousness of clergy who, ‘with the accents and exterior of angels … perpetuate the work of demons’. He concluded that true Christianity was ‘meek, charitable, unobtrusive and above all cheap’. Clergy were castigated for holding a materialistic outlook which seemed to hinder their religious role and which has been taken by both subsequent Church historians and historians of the left as a sign of the clergy’s involvement with secularizing trends in society. Even the work of Norman Sykes leaves the impression that the clergy’s defence of their wealth went no further than jobbery and place-seeking. Like Namier he played down the ideological nature of such arguments, relegating them to the realm of cant and hypocrisy.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document