История библиотеки Владимиро-Суздальской духовной семинарии (XVIII век)

The article is devoted to the history of creation and development of Vladimir-Suzdal Theological Seminary Library in the XVIII century. In the paper there are used the materials of the State Archive of the Vladimir Region (SAVR) and other sources, allowing to judge about the place of seminary library in the history of National Enlightenment of the XVIII century.Статья посвящена истории возникновения и развития Владимиро-Суздальской духовной семинарии и семинарской библиотеки в XVIII веке. В статье использованы материалы Государственного архива Владимирской области (ГАВО) и другие источники, позволяющие судить о месте семинарской библиотеки в истории отечественного просвещения XVIII века

Ivan the Terrible's Stichera: The Idea of Russia's Spiritual Elevation

The article was submitted on 21.09.2015.Based on extensive written sources, the authors of this article have for the first time examined two chant cycles created by Ivan the Terrible: one dedicated to St. Peter the Metropolitan of All Russia and the other in honour of the Vladimir Theotokos (Mother of God). The researchers have paid particular attention to the author’s realisation of a traditional Old Russian principle of hymnographical art: to compose chants on the basis of sample (“the podoben”). The implementation of this principle presupposes following a model completely or partially when the coincidence of separate lines (usually the initial or final lines, or those key to the formation of chants) is admitted. They conclude that Ivan the Terrible displayed a significant degree of creative freedom in revealing the images. He used not only the samples, but also some versions of earlier chants based on them. Ivan the Terrible demonstrated a deep understanding of the original sources, their artistic processing, as well as his education, expressed in the knowledge of the tradition and its creative implementation. In the new historical context of his reign, Tsar Ivan worked theintensively over these sources and added a more patriotic sounding content to the cycles. Thanks to the tsar’s skill, his stichera are a fine example of the creation of new meaning on the basis of the tradition.С использованием широкого круга письменных источников в статье впервые исследуется два цикла произведений Ивана Грозного – знаменные стихиры Митрополиту всея Руси Петру и стихиры празднику Сретения Владимирской иконы Богородицы. Особое внимание уделяется проблеме авторского воплощения в произведениях царя принципа создания песнопений «на подобен», который был традиционным для древнерусского музыкально-гимнографического творчества. Его применение предполагало либо полное следование образцу, либо частичное, когда допускалось совпадение отдельных, чаще всего начальных, заключительных или ключевых для формообразования произведений строк. Исследователи приходят к выводу, что в стихирах царя проявилась значительная степень свободы в раскрытии поэтических образов, при этом он использовал не только подобен образец, но и некоторые ранее созданные на его основе песнопения. Грозный глубоко осмыслил исходные источники, ему присущи художественность в обработке текста, образованность, нашедшая выражение в знании традиций и творческом их воплощении. По сравнению со стихирами предшествующих мастеров царь в сложных исторических условиях, проделал тонкую работу над гимнографическими источниками, придал своим циклам государственно-патриотическое содержание. Мастерство державного автора явило прекрасный образец создания в произведениях на основе традиции новых смыслов

Latin Christians in the Literary Landscape of Early Rus, c. 988-1330

In the wake of the recent wave of interest in the ties between Early Rus and the Latin world, this dissertation investigates conceptions and depictions of Latin Christians in Early Rusian texts. Unlike previous smaller-scale studies, the present study takes into consideration all indigenous Early Rusian narrative sources which make reference to Latins or the Latin world. Its contribution is twofold. Firstly, it overturns the still prevalent assumption that Early Rusian writers tended to portray Latins as religious Others. There was certainly a place in Early Rusian writing for religious polemic against the Latin faith, but as I show, this place was very restricted. Secondly, having established the considerable diversity and complexity of rhetorical approaches to Latins, this study analyses and explains rhetorical patterns in Early Rusian portrayals of Latins and Latin Christendom. Scholars have tended to interpret these patterns as primarily influenced by extra-textual factors (most often, a text’s time of composition). This study, however, establishes that textual factors—specifically genre and theme—are the best predictors of a text’s portrayal of Latins, and explains the appearance and evolution of particular generic and thematic representations. It also demonstrates that a text’s place of composition tends to have a greater influence on its depictions of Latins than its time of composition. Through close engagement with the subtleties and ambiguities of Early Rusian depictions of Latins, this study furthers contemporary debate on questions of narrative, identity and difference in Rus and the medieval world.Funded by the Centre for East European Language-Based Area Studies (CEELBAS

With the Bohoroditsa and Her Pokrov to Liberation: A Continuing Marian Presence in the History and Devotion of the Ukrainian Catholic Diaspora

The objective of this dissertation is to document a continuing Marian presence in the history of Ukraine, as expressed by the Ukrainian Catholic diaspora, by making original use of the material in the Ukrainian Marian Collection of the Marian Library

The Ritualisation of Political Power in Early Rus (10th-12th centuries)

This dissertation examines the ceremonies and rituals involving the princes of early Rus’ and their entourage, how these ceremonies and rituals are represented in the literature and artefacts of early Rus’, the possible cultural influences on ceremony and ritual in this emergent society, and the role of ceremony and ritual as representative of political structures and in shaping the political culture of the principalities of early Rus’. The process begins by introducing key concepts and historiographic considerations for the study of ceremony and ritual and their application to the medieval world. The textological survey that follows focusses on the chronicles of Rus’, due to their compilatory nature, and discusses the philological, linguistic, and contextual factors governing the use of chronicles in this study. This examination of the ceremonies and rituals of early Rus’, the first comprehensive study of its kind for this region in the early period, engages with other studies of ceremony and ritual for the medieval period to inform our understanding of the political culture of early Rus’ and its influences. The structure of this dissertation is dictated by the chronology of ceremonies and rituals that structure the reigns of Rus’ princes in literary sources. The first chapter investigates—both comparatively and locally—the development of enthronement rituals depicted in textual sources and on coins. The second chapter focusses on rituals of association that are represented as mediating relations between princes in a non-central functioning dynastic culture. Oath-taking (and breaking) and association through commensality—dining and gift-giving—are examined in terms of historical context and the internal categorisation of associative acts in textual sources from Rus’. The final chapter builds on recent studies of ritualised warfare in early Rus’ and examines the ritualisation of princely movement—the most common action associated with the princes of Rus’ in textual sources—in times of war. The celebration of triumph and princely entry along with ritualised invocations for intercession in war are acts examined—both in textual sources and iconographic artefacts—as rituals of triumphal rulership reflecting both Byzantine and wider medieval culture. This study concludes with a discussion of the themes explored in its three chapters and offers further considerations about the influence of the Church and monastic culture inherited from Byzantium (and developed in Rus’) on the preservation, creation, and promulgation of ritualised political power.Cambridge Commonwealth Trus

Bridgewater College Catalog, Session 1988-89

https://digitalcommons.bridgewater.edu/college_catalogs/1099/thumbnail.jp

Of fools and men: Iurodstvo in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Russia

This thesis investigates the emergence and rise in popularity of a type of saint known in Russian as iurodivyi, and in English as holy fool or fool for Christ, in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Russia. In doing so, it breaks with past scholarship on the topic, which has often depicted iurodstvo as a monolithic phenomenon shrouded in myth, and contributes to the scholarly understanding of the pre-modern cult of saints, while offering a fresh perspective on a period of Russian history often labelled ‘of state formation’. Three main arguments are made here about fifteenth- and sixteenth-century iurodstvo, or holy foolery. Firstly, that iurodivye were primarily known in this period as saints, whose tombs worked posthumous miracles of healing. In this, their rise in popularity was indissociable, on the one hand, from the growth of the cult of saints and the multiplication of miracle cults; and, on the other hand, from the development of a Moscow-based Church, which claimed spiritual authority over the vast, and still expanding, territories controlled by its grand prince and later tsar. Secondly, by analysing a large corpus of texts and images, this study argues that there were two occasionally overlapping understandings of iurodstvo in this period: one found mostly in ecclesiastical works, focused on the extreme asceticism of its practitioners; the other, apparently vernacular in origin, that conceived of iurodivye as charismatic, frequently aggressive living prophets. Thirdly, by investigating sponsorship patterns behind the cults of iurodivye, this thesis identifies the ideological narratives running through writings about iurodivye and shows that most cults played a role in supporting the rise of Russian autocracy, rather than being opposed to it, as past studies have claimed

Bridgewater College Catalog, Session 1989-90

https://digitalcommons.bridgewater.edu/college_catalogs/1100/thumbnail.jp

An Academy at the Court of the Tsars

The first formally organized educational institution in Russia was established in 1685 by two Greek hieromonks, Ioannikios and Sophronios Leichoudes. Like many of their Greek contemporaries in the seventeenth century, the brothers acquired part of their schooling in colleges of post-Renaissance Italy under a precise copy of the Jesuit curriculum. When they created a school in Moscow, known as the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy, they emulated the structural characteristics, pedagogical methods, and program of studies of Jesuit prototypes. In this original work, Nikolaos A. Chrissidis analyzes the academy's impact on Russian educational practice and situates it in the contexts of Russian-Greek cultural relations and increased contact between Russia and Western Europe in the seventeenth century. Chrissidis demonstrates that Greek academic and cultural influences on Russia in the second half of the seventeenth century were Western in character, though Orthodox in doctrinal terms. He also shows that Russian and Greek educational enterprises were part of the larger European pattern of Jesuit academic activities that impacted Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox educational establishments and curricular choices. An Academy at the Court of the Tsars is the first study of the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy in English and the only one based on primary sources in Russian, Church Slavonic, Greek, and Latin. It will interest scholars and students of early modern Russian and Greek history, of early modern European intellectual history and the history of science, of Jesuit education, and of Eastern Orthodox history and culture