Religion: Russian OrthodoxyIn Rus’ the official conversion from paganism to Christianity tookplace in the tenth century. Paganism, thriving in the vast East Europeanterritory inhabited by different Slavic, Finno-Ugric, Lithuanian, andTurkic tribes was not an “organized” religion, which could be viewed assome kind of unified whole with common gods for all tribes or with acommon level of world understanding. There were, instead, higherdeities unifying the tribe or several tribes, and there were local deities, ofparticular settlements, and even of homes (for example, the house spiritsor domovye).With the adoption of Christianity in the population centers, only thehigher deities, such as Perun (in Finno-Ugric Perkun, god of thunder andwar), Veles (god of household animals and trade), and Daz˘ bog (god of theharvest), were deposed. The “lesser” deities, the house gods, those imaginedby the people to inhabit swamps, forests, rivers, and outbuildings,continued to be objects of worship – or, more exactly, superstition – intothe twentieth century. Faith in them coexisted with belief in Christianity,just as superstitions continue to exist to the present day in different varietiesof omens, fortune-telling, and so on.Such cultural conditions among the lower classes – including the preexistingbeliefs regarding the land and nature that supported the ethicsof common agricultural labor – made the transition from paganism toChristianity in the official sphere fairly rapid and painless. The need for asingle religion to bring together the Russian tribes was fully recognizedby Vladimir at the end of the tenth century. In 980, when he, the Prince ofKiev who already had done much in the way of Russian unification, gatheredand placed the idols of all the major tribal gods on the highestground of the city no great new unity between the tribes resulted.

Paganism was unsuitable for centralization and Vladimir chose anothermore fortuitous path to his goal: the official recognition of a single statereligion from the ones available.Christianity was adopted from Byzantium in 988–89 to serve thisfunction. Vladimir’s task was prepared by other historical conditions:Eastern Christianity previously had spread in a spontaneous fashionalong the Black Sea shore, and had taken root in the great Slavic centers ofTmutarakan (at present Taman) and Korsun (now Khersones in theSevastopol region). Vladimir brought into widespread social and politicalpractice many of the values of Christian culture already introduced inthese areas: they included charity and education (the “study of books”)both noted in the Primary Chronicle, democratic ideals, and the virtues ofan austere way of life.Certain differences between Eastern (Byzantine) and Western(Roman) Christianity, important for the future course of Russian history,were already determined in the tenth century. A general disposition ofByzantine religiosity that differed from Western tendencies was moresignificant than the commonly noted local divergences – perceptions ofthe Holy Spirit’s origin, the ways in which the Eucharist sacrament wascelebrated, or other ritual practices. In the words of the great Russianphilosopher Vladimir Soloviev, this crucial feature of ByzantineOrthodoxy was – and continued to be into the modern era – its firm andstubborn commitment to the traditions of the past. Christianity for theOrthodox was: “something consummated and complete, God’s truth oftruths; it figured only as a ready-made object for mystical contemplation,pious worship, and dialectical interpretation.”1Soloviev, in the main, saw this religious preoccupation to be a negativephenomenon. It was, however, precisely the vigorous adherence ofEastern Christianity to church traditions that helped it to survive theOttoman Turks’ occupation of the Byzantine Empire, Bulgaria, andSerbia, and in Russia to withstand the reign of Peter I, and to live throughseventy years of the Soviet government’s unrelenting atheism in thetwentieth century. Consciously or unconsciously the same sense of traditionled Orthodox believers to hold on to values from the past partly deemphasizedby Christians of other denominations.In any case, Prince Vladimir was very conscious and deliberate inselecting the Eastern Christian creed with its strong external and ritual

practices. When Vladimir began choosing a faith in 986 he received representativesfrom Islam, Judaism, and Rome; he heard them out but

responded immediately to his own ambassadors, who had returned fromConstantinople after attending a service in St. Sophia and who recountedtheir amazement at the grandeur of the church and the beauty of theservice. Vladimir made his choice on the basis of their testimony, and thatact shaped a cultural leitmotif – the idea that the Russian religion wasdetermined by aesthetic qualities (of Byzantine ritual and St. Sophiaitself ). Beauty determined the nature of Orthodoxy in Russia.Vladimir’s decision was not his personal whim. The chronicles of theeleventh and twelfth centuries typically note the construction of newchurches, and, if they are beautiful, describe their external facade alongwith their internal design and the splendor of the service. That is preciselywhy the concepts of the church as a building and the church as acongregation of believers often converge and blur in ancient Russian religiouspractice.2 Beauty beyond intellectual justifications allowed thecontent of church doctrine and its sanctity to be preserved. The oftenquotedwords of Fedor Dostoevsky “Beauty will save the world,” are evidentlyto be interpreted in this light: beauty will not allow faith tocollapse or disappear. As Soloviev points out: “In the East, the Church wasunderstood and defended mainly as a sanctuary, steeped in tradition – inits immobile [static] elements. This [tendency to preserve tradition] correspondedto the general spiritual disposition of the East.”3Churches constructed in keeping with this aesthetic sense of religioustradition mark the subsequent history of Russian architecture. After thebuilding of St. Sophia in Kiev (1037–41) and St. Sophia in Novgorod(begun 1045), with their overt references to Byzantium, a very abbreviatedlist of notable examples includes: the Uspensky (Assumption)Cathedral built in Vladimir (1158–60) for which Andrei Rublev andDaniel the Black painted icons in 1408, the Church of the Virgin of theIntercession on the Nerl, Bogoliubovo (1165), the Church of theAssumption on Volotovo Field near Novgorod (1370–80), the MoscowKremlin Churchof the Annunciation with an iconostasis (the partition oficons separating altar from worshipers) decorated by Theophanes theGreek and Andrei Rublev in 1405 and rebuilt by native Pskov architectsin 1484–89, the Kremlin Cathedral of the Assumption informed bythe Renaissance vision of Aristotle Fioravanti (1479), the Church of theAscension in Kolomenskoe near Moscow (1532), the Cathedral of theVirgin of the Intercession (known as St. Basil’s the Blessed) on Moscow’sRed Square (completed 1560), the Church of the Holy Trinity inNikitinki, Moscow (1643), the Church of Ilia the Prophet in Yaroslavl’

(1647–50), and a series of architectural projects combiningWestern andnative Russian elements such as Domenico Trezzini’s Saints Peter andPaul Cathedral (1712–33), Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli’s SmolnyCathedral (1748–64), the Kazan Cathedral (1811), and St. Isaac’s Cathedral(1818–58) all in St. Petersburg. One should also note the intricate woodconstruction of the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior on theIsland of Kizhi (1714), the imitation of Moscow’s St. Basil’s in Petersburg’sChurchof the Resurrection (built after Alexander II’s death in 1882 on theplace where he was assassinated and known as “Savior on the Blood”),and the monumental Cathedral of Christ the Savior opened in 1883,blown up by the Soviet government in 1930, and totally rebuilt in the1990s.The attention that the Russian ambassadors paid to external beauty inchoosing a faith, thus, left its mark on the entire subsequent course ofRussian culture. Within church history, it is most evident in the EasternOrthodox – especially Russian Orthodox – emphasis on ceremony,church singing, and the pleasing architectural forms we have noted, andchurch ornament and decoration. In the society at large the religiousbeginnings influenced a long history of profound and tangible interactionsbetween the search for knowledge and theology, and the artisticforms of culture. Theology in Russia expressed itself through the paintingof icons, through architecture, prose, and, especially, through poetry.This essential cultural characteristic was evident both in the nineteenth

and the twentieth centuries. For the most part, Russian theologians were– poets; poets such as Gavrila Derzhavin (particularly the ode “God”),Aleksandr Pushkin toward the later part of his life, Mikhail Lermontov,Fedor Tiutchev, and Vladimir Soloviev. A poetic sensibility inspires thereligious works of the greatest Russian theologian of the twentiethcentury, Pavel Florensky, and it lives on in the reflections of the philosopherNikolai Berdiaev.In all probability this preference for beauty influenced the compositionof Russian hagiography; the saints’ lives do not so much communicatethe facts of their existence as they use ceremonial aesthetic forms toembellish the few facts that are known. The ritual format conveying thebeautiful is linked firmly with another characteristic element of thesaints’ lives which gives the concept of beauty ethical and social dimensions:the saints, in the main, lead lives full of labor and creation – theyoriginate monasteries and build churches. Work, for them, often replacesphysical asceticism.

Labor is one of the basic elements of saintliness in the cases ofTheodosius of the Caves, ascetic leader of the Kiev Monastery of the Cavesfounded in the eleventh century, Sergius of Radonezh, founder of theHoly Trinity Monastery northeast of Moscow in 1337, MetropolitanFilipp, Ivan the Terrible’s moral antagonist in the sixteenth century,Pafnuty Borovsky (d. 1477) descendant of Tatars and founder of themonastery which bears his name, Yulianiia Lazarevskaia, the matronsaint(d. 1604), Ksenia of Petersburg (Ksenia Piterskaia), the female holyfool of the eighteenth century who dressed in men’s clothing and waswidely respected for her untiring work, and others. And the most holyfeat of labor was considered to be the copying of books. From the eleventhcentury on this form of promulgating literacy and church doctrinebecomes a central occupation of monks and entire monasteries.Monasteries were established a certain distance away from the towns,and from the time of the Mongol-Tatar conquest monastic life “departs”to the forests and to the north. Even in the wilderness, however, themonasteries continued to maintain contacts between themselves and toexchange manuscripts for copying. It was at this time of the Tatar invasionthat the church center of Russia shifted away from Kiev. In 1300, theKiev based Metropolitan of All Russia, Maksim, moved to Vladimir, andthen to Moscow, retaining the title of “Metropolitan of Kiev andVladimir.”In the middle of the thirteenth century – during the period of theirRussian conquests – the Tatars were pagan and they were extremely cruelto the local inhabitants. It is known from the chronicles that if the peopleof a town or village opposed them in any way, the entire population wasdestroyed. Nevertheless, the Tatars were tolerant to the church and evengranted it certain favors. The reason for this attitude is probably that asbelievers in “multi-gods” the Tatars were ready to recognize evenChristian saints “just in case.” Their superstitions, however, were notconsistent in consequences, particularly after they began to convert toIslam following the conquest of Russia.One more historical factor complicated the external situation of theRussian church. Metropolitan Isidor, representing the Russians at theCouncil of Florence, accepted unification with the Catholic church andannounced the decision in Moscow in 1441. The union was rejected(Isidor was imprisoned), and the Russian church was confined to itsnational boundaries, which, in turn, led to reinforcement of its state andpolitical attributes: subjugation to the Moscow princes on one hand, and

submission to Tatar power on the other. Moreover, at the outset, theTatars themselves were interested in reinforcing the influence of theMoscow princes on the church since the princes tended to be obedientexecutors of the Khans’ will. Thus, the tradition of church obedience tothe state – although violated from time to time in short bursts of protest– was established as early as the fourteenth century. And in consequence,by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the church’s submission tothe state was complete, which led to the creation of sharply critical attitudestoward the church and toward religion as a whole. Eventually, this

negative perception of the church predominated in the intelligentsia andtook an especially virulent form among the revolutionary semi-intelligentsia.On this historical background the fourteenth century saw religiouslife flourish in particular forms connected with the development ofhermit monasticism in the Byzantine Empire and the Balkans, withseclusion, and with the search for profound prayer. In the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries, a large number of monasteries were founded in foresttracts and on lake and sea islands (Lake Seliger, Ladoga, Siver, the WhiteSea). During this period importation of South Slavic and Greek manuscriptsintensified. Particularly noticeable among them was ascetic literature,such as the works of Isaac the Syrian, Maksim the Confessor, Simeonthe New Theologian, Vasily the Great, and Gregory Palamas.Of the newly built monasteries, the Troitsky cloister, later named theTrinity-Sergius Monastery, founded by one of the most revered Russiansaints, Sergei Radonezhsky (the name comes from the small town ofRadonezh where he was born), assumed particular importance. Formermonks of Trinity-Sergius created an entire network of monasteries.Among the major and most attractive of them are: the Kirillo-BelozerskyMonastery, the Ferapont Monastery, where the famed frescoes ofDionysius are still preserved, the Spaso-Kamennyi Monastery onKubenskoe Lake, the Valaam Monastery on Lake Ladoga, the SolovetskyMonastery on the White Sea, and the Spaso-Prilutsky Monastery close tothe Vologda region. The monasteries not only spread spiritual enlightenment,but were large agricultural and craft organizations as well.If the culture of Western Europe predominantly was a universityculture – with all the specific features of university tolerance of other culturespast and present, Russian culture, from the fourteenth century andup to the beginning of the eighteenth, was one of monastic literacy and amonastic type of economic structure.

The flourishing of monastery culture was supported not only by anabundance of holy places, but by the large number of saintly asceticsliving in the monasteries. Thanks to them basic Russian ideals of moralconduct were created during this time. This ideal moral structure wasmost fully embodied in the Izmaragd which received widespread distribution.In the sixteenth century, a collection of texts dealing with practicaladvice on household and everyday matters and titled Domostroiwas compiledout of excerpts from Izmaragd. Although Domostroi was not at all asinfluential as Izmaragd, thanks to a lack of discernment on the part ofmany in the nineteenth century, it became a source for false evidenceregarding the backwardness of Russian mores. To the present day, itshould be noted, Izmaragd has not been made available in a scholarlyedition and, for all practical purposes, is unknown even among educatedreaders.The non-possessors movement, led by monks who maintained thatpoverty in the monastery was a condition for profound spiritual life,marked Russian church history in the period toward the end of thefifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. Chief among thenon-possessors was Nil Sorsky, who advocated the abolition ofmonastery rights to land during a church council held in 1503. In additionto Nil Sorsky, other intellectuals among the clergy such as VassianKosoi, Artemy Troitsky, and Maksim Grek (well known due to his pastlife in Italy as a supporter of Savonarola), argued that spiritual fulfillmentwas unattainable except in conditions of personal poverty. Nil Sorsky andthe other non-possessors also supported evangelical tolerance of otherpoints of view, and wrote on the problems of spiritual self-realization,the dependence of spiritual life upon external stimuli, and the corporealnature of man.The non-possessor movement of Sorsky and his followers, to a considerableextent, continued to inform the most important and morally cultivatedtendencies in the further history of Russian Orthodoxy.At the same time, one cannot overlook the culturally vital and multifariousoffshoots of the official church among the Russian people.The Old Believer movement, in particular, not only exemplified butalso developed many characteristic features of Russian religiosity. TheOld Believers demanded that nothing be altered in the Russian service,

texts, or rituals. The Russian church had always followed this principleearlier, attempting to fix “distorted” texts and to deal with mistakes In

Russian orthography that were the result of countless copying. So, forexample, the orthographic reforms undertaken by the Bulgarian patriarchEvfimy in the fourteenth century were adopted in Russia becausethey were considered to be an attempt to return to the past and to traditionalways. The same goal of reviving past tradition led to an invitationto the learned monk Maksim Grek (a member of Aldo Manuci’s circle ofItalian humanists under his secular name Mikhail Trivolis) to come fromMt. Athos to Russia at the end of the fifteenth century.In 1550, at the Stoglav Council of leading religious figures which tookplace during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, attention once again concentratedon the revision of theological books (the minutes taken at thiscouncil were written in a hundred chapters and that is why their compilationand the conference itself took on the name “Stoglav” or “Hundredchapters”). In his keynote address to the council, Tsar Ivan observed: “thescribes copy books from inaccurate translations, and having copied, donot correct them.” It should be noted, once again, that this tendencytoward tradition in the external forms of belief was typical of Orthodoxythroughout the length of its history.The issue of divergence among the Russian, Greek, and Ukrainian ceremonialpractices and the texts of church books became especially acuteafter the so-called Time of Troubles – the period of anarchy and Polishinvasion at the beginning of the seventeenth century. After the restorationof the Printing House (the main Moscow printing facility) which hadbeen destroyed during the unrest, it became not only a center for printingbooks but also a type of learning establishment, where the editing oftheological editions to be published was undertaken. This work began in1616 and was initially considered to be a “local” task, concerning only theRussian church and predominantly carried on by Russians editingRussian texts. Subsequently, members of the Printing House beganworking with Greek books, since they considered the Greek texts to beolder than the available Russian ones. One of the most important stagesin the verification of Russian books was two trips of a Russian scholarnamed Arseny Sukhanov to the East, from where he brought backapproximately 500 Greek manuscripts. His detailed research in thematerial he gathered allowed Sukhanov to compile a detailed account –named by him Proskinitarii – regarding the differences between Russianand Greek rituals.

EASTERN ORTHODOXY, one of the major branches ofCHRISTIANITY, characterized by its continuity with the apostolicchurch, its liturgy, and its territorial churches.Eastern Orthodoxy is the large body of Christians whofollow the faith and practices defined by the first seven ecumenicalcouncils. The official designation of the church inEastern Orthodox liturgical or canonical texts is “the OrthodoxCATHOLIC Church.” Because of the historical links ofEastern Orthodoxy with the Eastern Roman Empire andByzantium (Constantinople), however, in English usage itis referred to as the “Eastern” or “Greek Orthodox”church. These terms aresometimes misleading, especiallywhen applied to Russianor Slavic churches and tothe Orthodox communitiesin western Europe and America.The SCHISM between thechurches of the East and theWest (1054) was the culminationof an estrangement thatbegan in the first centuries of

the Christian Era. At thetime of the Schism of 1054,the membership of the EasternOrthodox Church wasspread throughout the MiddleEast, the Balkans, andRussia, with its center inConstantinople. The vicissitudesof history have greatlymodified the internal structuresof the Orthodox church,but, even today, the bulk ofits members live in the samegeographic areas. Missionaryexpansion toward Asia andemigration toward the West,however, have helped tomaintain the importance of Orthodoxy worldwide.The Orthodox church is a fellowship of “autocephalous”churches (governed by their own head bishops), with theEcumenical PATRIARCH of Constantinople holding titular orhonorary primacy. The number of AUTOCEPHALOUS CHURCHEShas varied. Today there are many: the Church of Constantinople(Istanbul), the Church of Alexandria (Egypt), theChurch of Antioch (with headquarters in Damascus, Syria),and the churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia,Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Albania, Poland,the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and America. Severalare de facto national churches, by far the largest beingthe Russian Church; however, it is not the criterion of nationalitybut rather the territorial principle that is thenorm of organization in the Orthodox church.All Orthodox credal formulas, liturgical texts, and doctrinalstatements affirm the claim that the Orthodox churchhas preserved the original apostolic faith. The Orthodoxchurch recognizes as ecumenical the seven councils ofNICAEA (325), CONSTANTINOPLE (381), EPHESUS (431), CHALCEDON(451), CONSTANTINOPLE (553), CONSTANTINOPLE (680), andNICAEA (787) but considers that the decrees of several otherlater councils also reflect the same original faith (e.g., thecouncils of Constantinople that endorsed the theology ofST. GREGORY PALAMAS in the 14th century). Finally, it recognizesitself as the bearer of an uninterrupted living traditionof true Christianity that is expressed in its worship, inthe lives of the saints, and in the faith of the whole peopleof God. When expressing the beliefs of his church, the Orthodoxtheologian, rather than seeking literal conformitywith any of these particular confessions, will rather lookfor consistency with SCRIPTURE and tradition, as it has beenexpressed in the ancient councils, the early Fathers, and theuninterrupted life of the liturgy.The Greek Fathers of the church always implied that thephrase found in the biblical story of the creation of manGenesis 1:26), according to “the image and likeness of God,” meant that humans are not autonomous beings andthat their ultimate nature is defined by relation to God, thehuman “prototype.” Thus, the concept of SIN implies separationfrom God and the reduction of humans to a separateand autonomous existence, one deprived of both naturalglory and freedom. In this perspective, “original sin” is understoodnot so much as a state of guilt inherited fromAdam but as an unnatural condition of human life thatends in death. From this vicious circle of death and sin, humansare understood to be liberated by the death and RESURRECTIONof JESUS CHRIST, which is actualized in BAPTISM andthe sacramental life in the church. Hence the aim of theChristian is communion with God and deification. Thechurch is regarded as a communion in which God and humansmeet and a personal experience of divine life becomespossible.The stress on Jesus Christ’s identity with the preexistentSon of God, the LOGOS (Word) of the Gospel According toJohn, characterizes Orthodox Christology. Similarly, theliturgy consistently addresses the Virgin MARY as THEOTOKOS(“God-Bearer”); this term reflects the doctrine of Christ’s

unique divine Person, and Mary is thus venerated only becauseshe is his mother “according to the flesh.” The theopaschiteformula (“God suffered in the flesh”) became astandard of orthodoxy in the Eastern church, especially afterthe second Council of Constantinople (553). It impliedthat Christ’s humanity was indeed real not only in itselfbut also for God, since it brought him to death on the cross,and that the salvation and redemption of humanity can beaccomplished by God alone—hence the necessity for himto condescend to death, which held humanity captive.Normally, the content of the Orthodox liturgy is directlyaccessible to the faithful through use of vernacular languagein the liturgy, though liturgical conservatism leads tothe preservation of antiquated languages. The liturgies ofST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM and of ST. BASIL THE GREAT are most generallyused in Orthodox worship. These liturgies differ onlyin the text of the eucharistic canon: their overall structures,established in the high Middle Ages, are identical.The church recognizes seven mysteria, or “SACRAMENTS”:baptism, chrismation, communion, holy orders, penance,anointing of the sick (the “extreme unction” of the medievalWest), and marriage. The underlying sacramental theologyof the church is based on the notion that the ecclesiasticalcommunity is the unique mysterion, of which thevarious sacraments are the normal expressions.