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[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 …

[German Version] (Warszawa), the capital of Poland, with a population of 1.71 million (2009), goes back to a trading settlement established in the 11th/12th century on the left bank of the Vistula; in 1413 it received Kulm rights. From 1406 to 1526, it was the official residence of the Piast dukes of Masovia. When the dynasty died out, Warsaw was incorporated into the crown of Poland. The Sejm met there for the first time in 1529; after 1569 it met there regularly, and as a result the royal court …

[German Version] (Aug 30, 1889, Vitebsk – Jul 25, 1946, Moscow), apologist and schismatic metropolitan. Originally a teacher and a military chaplain in World War I, in 1917 as archpriest of St. Petersburg and secretary of a leftist church organization he was already opposing the restoration of the Moscow patriarchate. When Patriarch Tikhon succumbed to house arrest, on May 18, 1923, Vvedensky and two ¶ other priests took over the patriarchal chancery, thus enabling the formation of the “supreme governing body” of the modernist “Living Church” movement. In rec…

[German Version] (pl. startsy) is the Russian equivalent to the Greek word γέρων/ gérōn; it denotes an experienced (and therefore usually elderly) ascetic, whose spiritual direction younger ascetics as well as Christians living in the world accept without question. The roots this phenomenon go back to Eastern monasticism in the Early Church. St. Anthony is the prototypical starets, but this form of spiritual direction did not fully come into its own until the late 18th century in Russia, when Paisius Velichkovsky left Athos for Moldavia with 60 discip…

[German Version] (1293, Moscow – Feb 12, 1378, Moscow), Metropolitan of Moscow, was a monk in the Epiphany monastery in Moscow at the age of 20 and was already involved in the administration of the Russian Metropolitanate at the age of 26. His appointment as “Metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia” was by his Greek predecessor, Feognost, in 1353 in Constantinople…

[German Version] (Polish: Warmia), as one of the four bishoprics established by the Orders of Germany in 1243 in Prussia and incorporated into the archdiocese of Riga in 1245/1246, initially encompassed the region between the River Elbing and Passarge and between Pregel and Angerapp. But only the region in which the bishop was also the ruler, comprising a third of the diocese, wa…

[German Version] (1875, Sep 10 – 1960, Paris) was one of the most prominent lay theologians of Russia in the 20th century. He lectured in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) until 1917, where he also chaired the Society for Philosophy of Religion, and was from 1925 at the theological institute of St. Serge in Paris (of which he was a cofounder), where he taught church history as well as Old Testament. In 1959, he was able to publish his main work in two volumes, Očerki po istorii Russkoj Cerkvi, sketches of the history of the Russian Church. Appointed chief procurator of the Holy Synod by…

[German Version] (c. 1036–1040, Szczepanów – Apr 11, 1079, Cracow), martyr bishop and patron saint of Poland. Initially a parish priest in Czembocz, as bishop of Cracow (from 1072) he came into bitter conflict with King Boleslav II, which cost ¶ him his life. Church tradition has it that he was slain by the king himself during mass in the Church of St. Michael because he had rebuked the king for his immoral way of life, but the alternative tradition is more believable – that he was condemned to death as a traitor for his political opposition and was gruesomely executed by truncatio membrorum. His…

[German Version] (c. 1520, Chios island – 1585, Rome), radical Antitrinitarian who claimed to be descended from the last imperial dynasty of the Byzantine Empire. In trouble with the Inquisition as a Dominican friar in Italy, he was able to flee in 1559. He was in Prague in 1570/1571, in Krakow in 1571/1572, and in Klausenburg from 1572 to 1574. In 1573, he traveled to Turkey and twice to Poland. In 1575, Palaeologus lived in Alzen near Sibiu (Ger. Hermannstadt), Romania, then in Poland and Moravi…

[German Version] (Goddert; c. 1517, near Lippstadt – 1587, Kurland) was the last grand master of the Teutonic Order in Livonia. Following the collapse of the order state, he accepted Polish suzerainty and became the first duke of Kurland in 1562, a part of the territory that had previously belonged to the order and for which the capital Mitau (Jelgava) was eventually built in the vicinity of an old castle. Marrying Anna of Mecklenburg in 1566, he established a dynasty which lasted until 1737. Kurl…

[German Version] (Matěj Pavlík; May 26, 1879, Hrubá Vrbka, near Hodonín – Sept 4, 1942. Prague). Gorazd, bishop of Moravia and Silesia, was the founder of Czech Orthodoxy. Having been a Roman Catholic chaplain in ¶ Kromeríz, in 1920 he joined the Czechoslovakian Church, which had broken its ties with Rome. In 1921 he was sent to Belgrade to be consecrated bishop by the Serbian patriarch, thus securing apostolic succession. As this went together with a sincere conversion to Orthodoxy, in 1924 he broke with the Czechoslovakian Churc…

[German Version] (Polish Chełmno), a city founded on the lower course of the Weichsel River in 1232 and a bishop's seat from 1243. The cathedral chapter established there by Bishop Heidenreich in 1251 was incorporated into the Teutonic order (Orders of Germany) from 1264 to 1466. Originally suffragan to the archbishopric of Riga, the diocese was integrated into the ecclesial province of Gniezno (Gnesen) in 1466. Bishop Johannes Dantiscus (1530–1538) and S. Hosius (1549–1551) succesfully warded off…

[German Version] (Dimitrii Aleksandrovich; Feb 5, 1807, Pokrovskoe, near Gryazovets – Apr 30, 1867, Nikolo-Babaev, near Kostroma) was a Russian ascetic, spiritual writer, and bishop. In 1827, when the aristocratic graduate of the St. Petersburg Engineering School was released from military service for medical reasons, he struck up an acquaintance with the monk…

[German Version] (12th/13th cent.), has a place in world literature as the greatest Georgian poet, earned by his Vephistqaosani (“The Knight in the Panther’s/Tiger’s Skin”), an epic poem of 1669 four-line stanzas. Hundreds of legends, stage plays, and stories about his life and work bear witness to the central place he holds in the Georgians’ sense of identity. But regarding his life and person – like Homer’s – we have no reliable sources. The territorial epithet tells us little, since there are many places in Ge…

[German Version] (c. 1501, Mantua – Nov 12, 1574, Sopnica, near Sandomierz), Hebraist, physician, and theologian, whose contentiousness triggered violent disputes wherever his unsettled life took him. Probably of Jewish descent and initially a priest or monk, after studying in Basel and in southern Germany he was appointed professor of Hebrew in Vienna in 1544 and in Cracow in 1549. Called to the University of Königsberg (Kaliningrad), he left after three months because of a clash with A. Osiander…

[German Version] (Olmütz) is a city on the middle reach of the March river (Morava; Czech Republic) with 106,000 inhabitants (1989). First mentioned in records in 1055, Olomouc developed from a settlement at the foot of the Fürstenberg, subsequently in the center of the city. The cathedral of St. Wenceslas was erected on the site of an old castle complex between 1107 and 1131, rebuilt in the 13th and 14th centuries, and again between 1883 and 1890. As a bishop’s seat from 1063 (until 1344 under Mainz, and from 1344 to 1421 under Prague), and an archbishop’s seat from 1777 (with suf-¶ fragans in …

[German Version] (Palaiohemerologites) is the name given to the opponents of change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian system in the Church of Greece from Mar 10 to 23, 1924, which happened under state pressure. They understand themselves, however, as the “true Orthodox Christians” who stand for the maintenance of tradition in its entirety. Individual circles quickly grew into a church organization which since 1932 worships in its own buildings, and since the accession of three bishops in 1…

[German Version] (Nov 1, 1844, Khalan, near Kursk – Feb 17, 1925, Prague), pioneer Russian art historian and student of iconography. Kondakov began to teach at the university in Odessa in 1871, went to St. Petersburg in 1888, to Sofia in 1920, and finally to Charles University in Prague in 1922. Of his three-volume iconography of the Theotokos ( Ikonografiia Bogomateri), he was able to publish the first two volumes in 1914/1915 while he was still in St. Petersburg; the third remained in manuscript, kept in the Vatican Library. His incomplete magnum opus on Russian icons ( Russkaia ikona) was…

[German Version] (May 30, 1220, Jaroslav – Nov 14, 1263, Gorodok) was Prince of Novgorod from 1236 and Grand Prince of Vladimir from 1252; he defeated the Swedes on the Neva in 1240 (whence his nickname) and the Knights of the Teutonic Order on the ice of Lake Peipus; in contrast, he submitted to the Tatars whom he saw as less of a threat to Russian Orthodox identity than the Latin West. He died as a monk and has been venerated as a saint since as early as the 14th century. Peter the Great transported his remains to the Lavra in St. Petersburg, which was named after Alexander in 1724. Peter Hauptmann Bibl…

[German Version] (1589, Krempe, Holstein – 1657, Danzig [Gdańsk]), polymath adherent of Socinianism (Socinians). While Ruarus was studying at Altdorf, the physician E. Soner won him to the Socinian cause. After traveling through Denmark, Holland, England, France, and Italy, in 1621/1622 he served as rector of the academy of the Polish Brethren in Raków, near Sandomierz; after further travels, he settled in Danzig in 1631. Coupled with these travels, his extensive correspondence served to propagand…

[German Version] (Čavčavadze, Ilja) (Oct 27, 1837, Qvareli – Aug 30, 1907, Cicamuri), Georgian poet and writer, journalist and politician of royal origins, who was canonized as “St. Ilia the Righteous” on Jul 20, 1987. ¶ After studying philosophy as well as administration and economics in St. Petersburg, he worked as a magistrate in Georgia from 1864, and from 1874 as the chair of the administration of the Bank of the Nobility. In 1906, he was elected to the State Council of the Russian Empire. His verses and …

[German Version] (Mar 25, 1886, Vasilikon, Epirus – Jul 7, 1972, Istanbul). The ecumenical patriarch Athenagoras I (born Aristokles Spyrou) was the son of a physician. After completing his theological studies at the seminary on Halki (1910), he was ordained hierodeacon and assigned administrative duties in the metropoly of Pelagonia. In 1919, after half a year on …

[German Version] This term, first used in the 17th century, denotes the main stream of the anti-Trinitarian movement (Antitrinitarians), moderated in many respects by F. Socinus after 1579. The Socinians explicitly kept the Trinitarian formula in the command to baptize (Matt 28:19). According to the Racovian Catechism, anyone who rejected it could not be a Christian. It was the Early Church’s doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son and the personhood of the Holy Spirit that the…

[German Version] (Ger. Gnesen), a town situated roughly 50 km east of Poznań with approx. 50,000 inhabitants, which, as the seat of the first Piaste kings and the center of the archdiocese established in 999, was the cradle of both the Polish state and its church (Poland). The original suffragans Krakow, Wrocław (Ger. Breslau) and Kołobrzeg (Ger. Kolberg) were joined in subsequent centuries by Poznań (Ger. Posen), Włocławek (Ger. Leslau), Płock, Lebus, Vilnius, Łuck and Samogitia. The addition of …

[German Version] (Sep 4 or 16, 1893, Odessa – Dec 4, 1966, Paris) was a Russian Orthodox theologian, forced from his homeland with the White Army, who studied theology in Belgrade from 1921 to 1925 and immigrated to Paris in 1929, where, beginning in 1932, he taught at the Orthodox Theological Institute of St. Serge. He was ordained as a priest in 1940; he led a community in Tunis from 1941–1947, then returned to St. Serge where he was named professor of canonistics in 1950. His main achievement was the rediscovery of the original ecclesiology (Church) which, in …

[German Version] (1478 – Apr 28, 1550, Balga am Frischen Haff [Kaliningrad]), bishop of Samland from 1519. Polentz belonged to the Meissen nobility; after studying in Leipzig and Italy, he was a lawyer in papal and imperial service, before entering the Teutonic Order (Orders of Germany) in 1511 and becoming commander in Königsberg (Krolewiec, Poland) in 1516. Between 1522 and 1525 he ruled the order’s territory of Prussia as the grand master’s deputy. Converted to the Reformation from 1522, he ced…

[German Version] Lebus, a small town approx. 10 km north of Frankfurt an der Oder, on the left bank of the river, shares its name – which recalls the Lutiz prince Lub (Lubosłav) in the 9th century – not only with its vicinity but also with the diocese bequeathed in 1124 by the Polish duke ¶ Bolesłav III Krzywousty. The diocese kept the name, although in the years 1276 to 1326 the see was in Göritz (Górzyca), to the right of the Oder approx. 10 km upstream, and since 1385 it was in Fürstenwalde on the Spree, where the Marienkirche was elevated to a ca…

[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 familiar with the Orthodox Church at an early age. As an orphan, he was brought up in the household of a professor of medicine in Kiev, and spent years traveling throughout Russia in the employ of a trading company. Working as a professional journalist and employed by the ministry of culture from 1862 onward, he reflected the numerous experiences g…

[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 expanded his capital after the model of Constantinople; among other building projects, he oversaw the building of the stone Cathedral of St. Sophia in K…

[German Version] has become the widely accepted title of the most important doctrinal text of the Antitrinitarian Church of the Polish Brethren. Valentin Schmalz, Johannes Völkel, and Hieronymus Moskoszowski were the authors of this catechism, which includes preliminary work by F. Socinus; they worked as teachers in the secondary school founded in 1603 in the small town of Raków near Sandomierz. It was also there that the catechism was printed in Polish in 1605, in German in 1608, and in Latin in …

[German Version] The see of Poznań was erected in 968 as a missionary bishopric for all Poland, after the Piast duke Mieszko I began the process of Christianizing Poland with his baptism in 966. By 999/1000, however, it had already been superseded by the erection of the archiepiscopal see of Gniezno, to which it became suffragan at the beginning of the 11th century. From then on, it included the center of Great Poland and the southern part of Mazovia. In 1232 Bishop Paweł Grzymała was granted the …

[German Version] (c. 1120 – post 1177). Helmold worked in eastern Holstein from 1143, after attending the cathedral school in Braunschweig, and as pastor in Bosau on the Plöner See (from 1156). Between 1163 and 1172, he composed, from the notes of Adam of Bremen, oral tradition and his own experience, his Chronica Slavorum which covered the time period up to 1170. In it, despite clear partisanship, he reports vividly and generally reliably the Christianization and Germanization of the Slavs settled east of the lower Elbe (Slavic missions). His wor…

[German Version] (Martinus Polonus; before 1230, Troppau [today Opava] – Jun 12, 1278, Bologna). Initially a Dominican in Prague, Martin became papal chaplain and apostolic penitentiary in Rome; on May 21, 1278, he was consecrated archbishop of Gniezno in Viterbo. He is best known as a chronicler. His Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum (Chronicles: IV), replete with anecdotes and fables, was widely read; its many extensions and imitations gave rise to a genre of “Martin chronicles.” Peter Hauptmann Bibliography A.-D. v. den Brincken, LThK 3 VI, 1997, 1429 (bibl.).

[German Version] During the Middle Ages, the West Slavic tribes behind the original eastern boundary of Germany living between the Baltic and Upper Franconia along the Elbe and Salle, Havel, and Spree, and as far as the Main became known collectively as the Wends. The name comes from the name of the Veneti, an Illyrian tribe. It also served as a name for the Slovenes, especially the Slovene minorities in Austrian territories. Evangelism of the Wends proved uncommonly difficult. The Great Slav Risi…

[German Version] (1st half of the 4th cent.), “enlightener” of Georgia. Tyrannius Rufinus tells in his church history of a female prisoner of war who, c. 330, converted the king and queen of Eastern Georgia to the Christian faith by her asceticism and miraculous cures, and persuaded them to invite Greek missionaries to their country (PL 21, 480–482). Not until local 10th-century sources, heavily embroidered with legend, does this woman appear under the name of Nino, probably a contracted form of “…

[German Version] (Aug 26, 1797, Anginskoye, near Irkutsk – Mar 31, 1879, Moscow). Born Ivan Popov, he was orphaned at an early age. At the seminary in Irkutsk, his patron Bishop Veniamin (Benjamin) of Irkutsk gave him the new patronymic Veniaminov. In 1840, when he was made a monk, his baptismal name was replaced by Innocent. In the same year, Innocent – who had been ordained to the priesthood in 1821 and had been working as a missionary in the Aleutians and Alaska since 1824 – was made bishop of Kamchatka. He took up residence as archbishop in 1852…

[German Version] capital of the Republic of Lithuania (Baltic countries), with a population of 554,060 (2011); it is situated in southeastern Lithuania where the Vilnia joins the Neris, a tributary of the Memel. Its earliest mention in a document is in a 1323 letter of Grand Duke Gediminas. When Grand Duke Jogaila accepted baptism in 1387 and saw to the building of a cathedral, he also granted Vilnius a city charter modeled on the Magdeburg Law. The personal union of Lithuania with Poland in 1385 …

[German Version] I. History of Religion – II. The Early Church – III. Middle Ages, Reformation, Counter-reformation – IV. The Modern Period – V. Martyrs of the Orthodox Church – VI. Judaism – VII. Islam – VIII. Missiology I. History of Religion The term martyrium (Greek μαρτύριον/ martúrion) was coined in early Christianity, where it denotes a self-sacrificial death in religious conflict as a witness to faith Historical and systematic references are found in many contexts, in which comparable terms imply something slightly different. For example, the Islamic šahīd, “witness…

[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] (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…