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[German Version] was originally the name of the fortress and episcopal see founded to replace the Estonian fortress of Lyndanisse taken by the Danish king Valdemar II in 1219. In 1227 it was taken over by the Livonian Brothers of the Sword; this led c. 1230 to the founding of a German city based on an earlier trading post. Once more left to the Danes in 1238, Talinn was bought back by the Teutonic Order in 1346. The bishops of Talinn, never having had their own territory, were suffragan to the arc…

[German Version] (May 30/Jun 9, 1672, Moscow – Jan 28/Feb 8, 1725, St. Petersburg), tsar of Russia since 1682, proclaimed emperor of all Russia in 1721. Initially he had to share rule with his half brother Ivan V (1666–1696) and allow his half sister Sofia to act as regent until 1689. After that he largely left the reins of government in the hands of his mother; only after her death in 1694 did he fully take up his role. His victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700–1721) gave Russia acc…

[German Version] From 1846, when the converted metropolitan Ambrosios of Sarajevo ordained the first bishops for the Old Believers in Belaya Krinica, Bukovina, this religious community became an important center for the Old Believer groups that retained the priesthood (Old Believers, Russian). Their congregations have since been under the “hierarchy of the Agr…

[German Version] (c. 1475, Hirschberg in Silesia – Sep 20/21, 1546, Gdańsk [Danzig]). After entering the Dominican monastery in Gdańsk, Klemme worked at the Johanneskirche from 1498, first as cantor and then, after returning from studies in southern Germany, where he was won over to the Reformation, as preacher from 1526. In the fall of 1529, he continued his preaching at St. Marien, where, in 1536, the council established an independent pastorate for him alongside the still Catholic pastorate. In…

[German Version] (Feb 4, 1505, Żórawno near Halicz – Oct 4, 1569, Rejowiec near Lublin), member of the landed nobility who, as a versatile and prolific poet, became the “father of Polish literature.” A staunch supporter of the Reformation, he published his extensive Postilla in 1557. The work was reissued many times and was also translated into Lithuanian and Ruthene. It is permeated with praise of simple trust in God. He had already published his Polish translation of the Psalms in 1546. His last prose work, The Mirror ( Zwierciadło, 1568), was the most highly regarded by his conte…

[German Version] (Ukrainian L'viv, Polish Lwów, Russ. L'vov, Ger. Lemberg). The variety of names borne by this city of some 733,000 (2001) in the heart of Galicia bears witness to its mixture of nationalities. Founded c. 1250 by the Galician prince Daniel and his son Leo, it was incorporated into Poland in 1366, fell to Austria in 1772, became Polish once more in 1919, Soviet in 1939, came under the German General Government in 1941, and in 1944 was restored to the Ukraine (until 1991 part of the …

[German Version] I. City and Bishopric Albert I, bishop of Livonia, founded the city of Riga in 1201 near a Gotland merchants’ trading center on the Daugava river, not far from the Baltic Sea. He immediately made it the seat of the mission diocese founded in 1186 by Bishop Meinhard at Ikšķile (about 25 km up-stream). Immigration from Germany began as early as 1202. Riga also became the seat of the master of the order of warrior knights in Livonia. From 1207, Riga was an imperial fief, and in 1255 it w…

[German Version] (also: Knopken; c. 1468, near Küstrin – Feb 18, 1539, Riga). Having studied in Ingolstadt (?) and Frankfurt an der Oder, Knöpken taught – as assistant to J. Bugenhagen, under whose influence he turned from Erasmus to Luther, – at the municipal school in Treptow an der Rega until 1517 and again from 1519 to 1521. From 1517 onward, he was chaplain at St. Petri in Riga and from 1522 Protestant preacher there. Having successfully participated in a disputation at Pentecost, 1522, he wa…

[German Version] (Polish Śląsk, Ger. Schlesien). The name of this historical region has survived all political, ethnic, and religious mutations. Derivation from the Silingi, a Vandalic people, appears dubious; more likely it goes back to a Slavonic root (cf. Old Polish ślęcgnącć, “wet”). As a region, Silesia has an area of almost 40,000 km2 on both sides of the upper and middle Oder; shaped somewhat like an oak leaf, it is bordered to the southwest by the Sudetes and to the south by the western Beskids. Western Slavs began entering Silesia in the mid- 6th century; at the end of t…

[German Version] was the name given to Russian Old Believers who emigrated between 1830 and 1840 to East Prussia and founded a number of villages in the Masurian region, of which Wojnowo (Eckertsdorf) with its monastery is the most important. They came ¶ from Poland, where they were considered Filipovcy, although they belonged to the less radical tendency of the Fedoseevcy. Between 1838 and 1968 their number declined from 829 to 412. Peter Hauptmann Bibliography E. Przekop, “Die Geschichte der Altgläubigen in den Masuren,” OS 27, 1978, 105–127.

[German Version] (Makarij, birth name: Mikhail; c. 1482, Moscow – Dec 31, 1563, Moscow) was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church on Jun 6, 1988 at its Millennium Council in Sergiyev Posad. Having become a monk of Paphnutius Monastery in Borovsk at an early age and abbot of Luzhetsky Monastery in Mozhaysk in 1523, he remained deeply committed to the spirit of Joseph of Volokolamsk's monasticism as archbishop of Novgorod and Pskov (from 1526) and as metropolitan of Moscow (from 1542). He effecte…

[German Version] The expression Russian lay theology is really inadequate to describe a phenomenon that is unique to Russian Orthodoxy. It is neither a theology by and for laity as such nor a theology contrary to the doctrinal decisions reached by episcopal synods. It is in fact antonymic to the Russian scholastic theology that in the 19th century was still strongly shaped by the doctrinal content and ways of thinking of Western Scholasticism and was felt to be cut off from reality. There was a desire…

[German Version] (Nov 25, 1620, Grigorovo beyond the Kudma – Apr 14, 1682, Pústozersk), spokesman for the Russian Old Believers. Was designated protopope (archpriest)…

[German Version] (c. 960 – Jul 15, 1015, Berestovo), prince of Kiev. As the youngest son of Prince Sviatoslav of Kiev, Vladimir received the principality of Novgorod in …

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[German Version] In the early 7th century, the Slavs, expanding to the west and south from their original homeland north of the Carpathians between the Vistula and the Dnieper, reached the boundaries of the Carolingian empire and crossed the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire; now a mission to them was recognized as an urgent necessity. The first success came among the Alpine Slavs (Slovenes): around the middle of the ¶ 8th century, Borut, duke of Carantania, had his son baptized. The new abbeys of Innichen and Kremsmünster were founded to support the Slavic missi…

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[German Version] I. General – II. Non-Christian Religions – III. Christianity –…

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[German Version] (also Ermogen or Hermogenus; c. 1530 – Feb 17, 1612, Moscow). Already noted for his writings on religion as metropolitan of Kazan and Astrakhan, he was the author of 22 books. On Jun 2, 1606, after the death of Jove and the deposition of Ignatius, he became the third patriarch of Moscow (I) – as a friend of the tsar, Vasily Shuysky. After the tsar's abdication, Germogen refused to recognize Wladyslaw, the Pole elected tsar in 1610, unless he converted ¶ to Orthodoxy. The Poles thereupon had him deposed and incarcerated, but through his letters from prison – wh…

[German Version] (baptismal name, Constantinos; Nov 13, 1570, Herakleion, Crete – Jun 29, 1638, near Constantinople) was patriarch of Constantinople for five terms in office (brought about by depositions and reinstallations) between 1620 and 1638. He was a theologian open to Calvinism and controversial in Orthodoxy, and a martyr (strangled by a band of Janissaries). As the scion of a respected family of priests, he first worked, after studying in Venice and Padua, with his uncle Meletius Pegas, wh…

[German Version] (baptismal name: Markos; 1585, Heraklion, Crete – Apr 13, 1663, Constantinople), archimandrite and protosynkellos, an important preacher and theologian. Prevented by his father's death from continuing his studies in Italy, Meletius served first on Crete as monk and priest. He was expelled because of his combative attitude, and went in 1627 to Alexandria, where his sermons …

[German Version] (Ger. Danzig). The earliest literary reference to the settlement west of the mouth of the Wisla (Vistula) under the name Gyddanizc relates to the year 997 when Adalbert of Prague baptized a local prince and “many heathen” there. After the region was incorporated into the Polish church organization, German Cistercians worked there beginning in 1175, and Dominicans, too, from 1227. Around 1190, the churches of Sw. Katarzyny (St. Catherine) was erected for the Slavic and St. Nikolai …

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[German Version] I. Church History – II. The Branches of Orthodoxy – III. Orthodoxy throughout the World – IV. History of Orthodox Theology I. Church History 1. Terminology. The term orthodox (cf. also Orthodoxy: I) goes back to Hellenistic Judaism. Flavius Josephus, for example, commends τὴν ὀρϑὴν δόξαν περὶ Θεοῦ/ tḗn orthḗn dóxan perí Theoú instead of Greek myths and reports that the Essenes viewed other Jews as ἑτερόδοξοι/ heteródoxoi ( Apion. II 256; Bell. II 129). ¶ This idiom passed into Christian usage in the 2nd century. The critical moment for its ecclesiastica…

[German Version] (Francesco Lismanino; 1504, Corfu – April 1566, Königsberg [Kaliningrad]). Originally a Franciscan provincial, Lismanini came to Poland as confessor and court chaplain to Queen Bona Sforza from Italy in 1546; there he took over leadership of the circle of Humanists in Krakow. Won to the cause of the Reformation by the writings of Calvin and the Bohemian Brethren, he converted to Calvinism in Geneva in 1553. In 1556 he accepted the call of the Protestants in Malopolska to head thei…

[German Version] (Dec 4/16, 1831, Gorochovo near Orël – Feb 21/Mar 5, 1895, St. Petersburg), Russian author. The grandson of a clergyman, Leskov became f…

[German Version] (Mudry; c. 978 – Feb 20, 1054), son of St. Vladimir the Great. As vice-regent of Novgorod, in 1019 he expelled his elder brother Svyatopolk from Kiev; in 1036, after the death of his younger brother Mstislav of Chernigov and Tumutarakan, he became sole ruler of the Kievan Rus’ empire, which experienced its golden age under him. He expan…

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[German Version] (Aleksandr Grenkov; Nov 23, 1812, Bolshie Lipovicy near Lipeck – Oct 10, 1891, Shamordino near Kozelsk). Amvrosii was the son of a cantor. After seminary studies at Tambov, he became a tutor and then language teacher at the seminary in Lipeck. In 1839 he entered the Optina hermitage near Kozelsk, where he was clothed as a novice in 1842. In 18…

[German Version] (Dec 5, 1539, Siena – Mar 3, 1604, Lucławice, near Cracow), a leading thinker of the antitrinitarian movement (Antitrinitarians, Socinians) of his era, shaped its churches in Poland and to some extent in Transylvania. Born a patrician, he served from 1562 to 1574 as a jurist at the Medici court in Florence; inspired by his uncle Lelio Sozzini, who did not believe the doctrine of the Trinity, he devoted himself to theological study, primarily at Basel, from 1572 to 1578, attracting attention with his first writings (including De Jesu Christo servatore, printed in 1594).…

[German Version] a large city in southern Poland, has been an episcopal see since 1925 (in 1995, with a Catholic population of 837,500 in 286 parishes). A monastery of Pauline hermits (originally Hungarian but now represented only in Poland), founded in 1382 on the Jasna Góra (“Shining Mountain”), is the most important pilgrimage destination in Poland. Devotion centers on the …

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[German Version] (Nikita Minich; May 24, 1605, Veldemanovo near Nizhny Novgorod – Aug 17, 1681, Yaroslavl), patriarch of Moscow. Initially a secular priest, after the death of his three children he persuaded his wife to take the veil and in 1635 became a monk (taking the name Nikon) in a hermitage in northern Russia; in 1642 he became abbot of a desert monastery. There in 1646 he met Tsar Alexis, then 17 years old; he greatly impressed the tsar, who had Nikon appointed archimandrite of the Novospa…

[German Version] (c. 1188, near Magdeburg – after 1259, Papendorf). Henry of Livonia was educated in the canon seminary of Segeberg, went to Riga as a student of Bishop Albert of Buxhöveden in 1205, was ordained to the priesthood in 1208, and spent his entire life as pastor among the northern Latvians in Papendorf (Latvian Rubene) near Wenden (Latvian Cēsis). From this location, he participated in over 30 military campaigns against the still heathen Livonians and Estonians, while he and his assistants baptized more than 10,000 people during his numerous…

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[German Version] (Fedor Kolyčev; 1507 – Dec 23, 1569, Tver’), metropolitan of Moscow. As boyar, Philip was involved in a conspiracy at the tsar’s court, but then escaped to Solovki monastery and became abbot there. In 1566 he was elevated to the position of metropolitan of Moscow, but soon fell out with Ivan IV Grozny because of the latter’s reign of terror. After he had publicly reproached Ivan in Uspensky cathedral and refused to bless him, Philip was deposed by a compliant church court, and on …

[German Version] Slavophiles are exponents of Russian intellectual and spiritual life; under the influence of Romanticism, since the early 19th century they have assigned the unique character of the Slavic people a critical role in deciding the future. They are opposed to the so-called “Westerners” who would unconditionally impose the heritage of the Western European Enlightenment. The question of Russia’s relationship to Europe was raised by P.Y. Chaadayev in his “Philosophical Letters,” which be…

[German Version] (Antonij; Mar 17, 1863, Vatagino – Aug 10, 1936, Belgrade) was a towering figure both as theologian (rector of the Spiritual Academies of Moscow [1890] and Kazan'; harsh critic of the Western theology of satisfaction) and as hierarch (1900 bishop of Ufa; 1902 bishop of Zhytomyr; 1914 archbishop of Kharkov; 1981 Metropolitan of Kiev). At the election of the Moscow Patriarch in 1917 he assembled the most votes, but fate decided otherwise. Forced to flee in the civil war, after 1920 he led the Russian Orthodox Church in exile. Peter Hauptmann Bibliography Manuil (Lemeshevsk…

[German Version] (Petro Mohyla; Petrus Mogilas; Petru Movilă; Dec 21/31, 1596, Suceava – Dec 22, 1646/ Jan 1, 1647, Kiev), metropolitan of Kiev (from 1633) and abbot of the Cave Monastery there (from 1627). He had become a monk there in 1625, after having had to abandon his attempts to regain rule over Moldavia, lost in 1607 by his father, Prince Simion Movilă. As the son of a Moldavian prince he had connections in Poland-Lithuania that favored his rise. With the confirmation by Vladislav IV of hi…

[German Version] (1st half of the 5th cent. – 502), king of Iberia (East Georgia). His byname, which means “wolf ’s head,” relates to the decoration on his helmet. After his accession c. 446, he pursued the goals of strengthening his royal authority, extending it throughout Georgia, and freeing Georgia from dependence on the Persian Sassanian Empire. He achieved these goals temporarily in 483. At the same time, he persuaded the patriarch of Antioch to consecrate his candidate Peter as catholicos a…

[German Version] ( Groznyj, better: the Harsh; Aug 25, 1530, Moscow – Mar 18, 1584, Moscow), was the first grand duke to be crowned tsar of all Russia in 1547. He laid the foundations of Russia's rise to a major power by pursuing a policy of territorial expansion in the east (conquest of Kazan in 1552 and of Astrakhan in 1554, beginning of the subjugation of Siberia in 1582), but also contributed to its ruin by engaging in unsuccessful wars (esp. for Livonia, 1558–1582) and implementing cruel measu…

[German Version] (Albert of Riga; 1165/1170, Bremen – Jan 17, 1229, Riga), of the ministerial line of Buxhöveden. A Bremen canon and scholaster, he was ordained the 3rd bishop of Livonia in 1199. In 1200 he was the first to sail with a crusader army to the Daugava estuary, where in 1201 he founded the city of Riga, in which he set t…

[German Version] I. The believers who, from 1653, were expelled from the Great Church because of their rejection of the liturgical reforms of the Moscow patriarch Nikon, gathered in their own communities in order to maintain the Old Russian forms of devotion laid down by the Moscow Hundred Chapter Synod of 1551. The authorities first called them “schismatics” (Raskol’niki), and later “Old Ritualists,” while for the people they were the Old Believers. They did not contest the necessity for correcti…

[German Version] (or Sohner; Dec 1572, Nuremberg – Sep 28, 1612, Altdorf, near Nuremberg), appointed district physician in Nuremberg in 1603 and professor of medicine at the Reichsstädische Akademie in Altdorf in 1605. In 1607/1608 he served as its rector. During an educational tour in 1598, he had been converted by Andreas Wojdowski and Christoph Ostorodt in Leiden to the theological views of their teacher F. Socinus; on his return to Altdorf, he promoted their ideas among his close friends. He w…

[German Version] I. Terminology – II. Catholic Catechisms – III. Orthodox Catechisms – IV. Protestant Catechisms – V. Catechetical Instruction I. Terminology Linguistically and semantically, the word catechism is derived from the Greek verb κατήχειν/ katḗchein, “to echo.” This etymology suggests a semantic connotation, according to which the transmission of the faith is fundamentally seen as a mediation of the content of the faith through personal testimony (cf. the Lat. personare, “to sound through”). Only when used in a transitive sense does κατήχειν acquire the meani…

[German Version] (Leont'ev; Jan 13, 1831, Kudinovo near Kaluga – Nov 12, 1891, Sergiev Posad), was initially a physician before entering the diplomatic service and finally becoming a censor. As a cultural philosopher, his worldview was shaped by aesthetic considerations. Beauty in the sense of diversity, power, and fullness was for him an objective fact. He thus became the advocate of Byzantine theocracy, ¶ aristocracy, and popular culture against democratic liberalism, petit-bourgeois attitudes, and egalitarianism. His return to the Orthodox faith following…

[German Version] I. City and Bishopric Tartu (Estonian; Ger. Dorpat, Russ. Yuryev) is the oldest city in Estonia (Baltic countries); with a population of 103,000 (2009), it is also the second largest. It was founded in 1224 by the Livonian Brothers of the Sword after their capture of an ancient fortress on the Emajogi, connecting Lake Võrtsjärv with Lake Peipus. Bishop Hermann, appointed as bishop for the Ests, established his residence in Tartu in 1224 and in 1228 began construction of the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, in the 14th and 15th centuries the largest spec-¶ imen of sacred …