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The Holy Land in Old Russian Culture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
After the Muslim conquest of Palestine there was a comparative lull in Holy Land pilgrimage until a revival in the more settled conditions of the tenth century. The first half of the eleventh century saw a marked increase in the number of pilgrims, most notably but not exclusively from the West, as well as the restoration of the Church of the Anastasis by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX. This context explains the enthusiasm with which in the same century the Christians of Russia, within decades of their adoption of the faith, took up Holy Land pilgrimage with all the enthusiasm of recent converts.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 36: The Holy Land, Holy Lands, and Christian History , 2000 , pp. 250 - 262
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2000
References
1 See Colin Morris, ‘Memorials of the Holy Places and blessings from the East: devotion to Jerusalem before the Crusades’, above, pp. 90-109.
2 Nestor, , Life of Feodosy in Tschižewskij, Dmitrij, ed., Das Paterikon des Kiever Höhlenklosters (Munich, 1963), p. 24.Google Scholar
3 For the idea that a Russian pilgrim to the Holy Land was a privileged intercessor for the Russian nation, see Kniga khozhenij. Zapiski russkikh puteshestvennikov XI-XV vv. (Moscow, 1984), pp. 74 (Daniel), 127 (Zosima).
4 See Likhachev, D. S., Slovar’ knizhnikov i knizhnosti Drevnej Rusi, Pt 1 (Leningrad, 1987), p. 110.Google Scholar
5 Igumen Daniil, Khozhenie (Munich, 1970) [hereafter Khozhenie], pp. 2-3 (here and elsewhere in this paper the translations from the Russian are my own). There is an English translation of Daniil in Wilkinson, John, Hill, Joyce, and Ryan, W. F., Jerusalem Pilgrimage 1099-1185 (London, 1988), pp. 120–71 Google Scholar. See K.-D. Seemann, Die altrussische Wallfahrtsliteratur (Munich, 1976), esp. pp. 173-98, which discuss the difficult problem of Daniel’s literary sources.
6 Khozhenie, pp. 40-1.
7 Pamyatniki Literatuty Drevnej Rusi, XIV-seredina XV veka (Moscow, 1981), p. 46. See Rozhdestvenskaya, M. V., ‘Obraz Svyatoj Zemli v drevnerusskoj literature’, in Batalov, A. and Lidov, A., eds, Ierusalim v russkoj kul’ture (Moscow, 1994), pp. 8–14 Google Scholar. An English translation, entitled Jerusalem in Russian Culture, is due for publication by Melissa Media (New York) in 2000.
8 Khozhenie, p. 19.
9 See Fedotov, G., Stikhi Dukhovnye (Paris, 1935), p. 13 Google Scholar, and Golubinaya Kniga: russkie nawdnye dukhovnye stikhi XI-XIX vekoh (Moscow, 1991), p. 12. For information on Western views I am endebted to Dr Faith Wigzell of SSEES, London.
10 The theme of Jerusalem as the mother of cities can be traced back in Russian culture to the eleventh century, the date of the Old Russian version of the Life of St Basil the Younger. See V. Ya. Petrukhin, ‘Gorod i sakral’noe prostranstvo’, in A. L. Batalov and L. A. Belyaev, Sakral’naya topografiya srednevekovogo goroda (Moscow, 1998), p. 25.
11 Golubinaya Kniga, pp. 37-9, 44, 50-4, 169, 176-9, 187.
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13 Although the related expression ‘the bright Russian land’ (i.e., illuminated by the faith) occurs already in eleventh-century Russian literature, the first ostensible occurrence of the expression ‘Holy Russia’ or ‘holy Russian land’, outside the ‘Spiritual Verses’, is in certain passages by Prince Kurbskii (writing in the 1570s), of disputed authenticity, and the earliest certain occurrence in a text of 1619. Between this date and the nineteenth century, the expression ‘Holy Russia’ was used mainly by the Old Believers, to refer to the authentic Russian tradition, rejected (in their view) by the state and the established Church. It is significant that the expression never became part of the official ideology. See M. Cherniavsky, ‘“Holy Russia”: a study in the history of an idea’, AHR, 63 (1957/8), pp. 617-37.
14 Tyutchev, F. I., ‘Russkaya geografiya’, in Sochineniya [Works], 2 vols (Moscow, 1984), 1, p. 305 Google Scholar. This poem dates to around 1848.
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16 Khozhenie, p. 40.
17 Khozhenie, p. 47.
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19 See Morris, Colin, ‘Bringing the Holy Sepulchre to the West: S. Stefano, Bologna, from the fifth to the twentieth century’, SCH, 33 (1997), pp. 31–59.Google Scholar
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21 Nikon had obtained a model of the Anastasis from the patriarch of Jerusalem himself: Tumins and Vernadsky, Patriarch Nikon, p. 161.
22 For two contrasting views of Nikon’s objectives see I. F. Kapterev, Patriarkh Nikon i tsar’ Aleksej Mikhajlovich, 2 vols (Sergiev Posad, 1909-12), and M. V. Zyzykin, Patriarkh Nikon: yevo gosudarstvennye i kanonicheskie idei, 3 vols (Warsaw, 1931-8). The essential source material is in William Palmer, The Patriarch and the Tsar, 6 vols (London, 1871-6). Nikon was accused of imitating the theocracy of the popes of Rome. It was noted that he had a fondness for wearing a cardinal’s hat, and that his mitres were reminiscent of papal tiaras; see Shlyapkin, I. A., Sv. Dmitrij Rostovskij (St Petersburg, 1891), p. 64.Google Scholar
23 The first full publication of the Russian text of Nikon’s Refutation of the Questions of Streshnev and Answers of Ligarides is Tumins and Vernadsky, Patriarch Nikon. An English translation appeared long before in Palmer, The Patriarch and the Tsar, [Vol. 1]: The Replies of Nicon (London, 1871). The section of the text devoted to the New Jerusalem is on pp. 149-68 of Tumins and Vernadsky, and pp. 67-89 of Palmer.
24 See O. M. Ioannisyan, ‘Khramy-rotondy v Drevnej Rusi’, in Batalov and Lidov, Ierusaltm, pp. 100-47.
25 Tumins and Vernadsky, Patriarch Nikon, p. 159.
26 Byseva-Davydova, in Batalov and Lidov, Ierusalim, pp. 178-9.
27 Tumins and Vernadsky, Patriarch Nikon, pp. 155-8.
28 For a moving evocation see Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity (London, 1971), pp. 70-80.
29 Likewise Rorgo Fretellus, Archdeacon of the Latin bishop of Nazareth, writing in 1137, describes entry into Jerusalem, after a good confession, as equivalent to entry into the heavenly Sion. See Raedts, Peter, ‘Jerusalem als Bild des heiligen’, Bijdragen, 50 (1989), pp. 122–38 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 133.
30 Tyutchev, Sochineniya, 1, p. 171.