Mi

Eastern Orthodoxy in Russia, I

Michael Makin, LHSP 100, 21 October 2003

Discussed today:•Ware, IV Formation of local community –language, national identity;

• Hence, mapping the original onto national territory – “desert” becomes forest; bathe in the Jordan in Vologda province.

•Hence, too – idea of “Moscow, the third Rome”, Monk Filofei to Vasilii (Basil) III, 1511, Russian “messianism”.

•Founding text – Hilarion (eleventh century), locate own community in tradition.

• (But remember, the church keeps the books – historians may see these processes quite differently)

• Ware, XV – community formed by calendar, everyday life and the sacred interact.

• The liturgy, the Cherubic Hymn; Orthodox syncretism.

• A qualification – language – Old Church Slavonic.

• The Old Believers – Avvakum writes his own hagiography; the Russian translations are more “authentic” than the Greek originals; the Old Believers, conservative in dogma and practice, are highly innovative in discourse and art (and can claim to be “more Russian” than everyone else, because they have preserved the “old ways”).

Timeline of Church History, from St Vladimir’s, Dexter. How an Orthodox Christian is invited to view Christianity

A question of location and perspective…

Moscow, the “third Rome” – religion and ideology joined in local specifics

The Moscow Kremlin, heart of Muscovite power and church

Orthodoxy forms community not only through texts

Andrei Rublev, “Old Testament Trinity”, early 15th century

Fresco by Dionisii, early 16th Century

The Ferapontov Monastery, northern Vologda Province

The entrance shrine, and the view from it. Such Russian monasteries were founded in the deserted north, and their relationship to community and to landscape is very significant. This monastery is famed for the frescoes of Dionisii.

Web Sites

The Internet offers many possibilities for exploring Russia. A good place for the English-speaking surfer to begin is the web site of the Russian

Department at Bucknell College (http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/index.html).

More locally, note our own sites:http://www.lsa.umich.edu/slavic/

http://www.umich.edu/stpetersburg/index2.htmlhttp://www.umich.edu/~iinet/crees/

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~resco/index.html

And don’t miss the opportunity to see a brilliant production of Pushkin’s play Boris Godunov, at the Sports Coliseum

29 October – 2 November (http://www.ums.org/season/artists/ap.asp?pageid=154) 

For more information, please do not hesitate to contact me at mlmakin@umich.edu