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When Russian philosophy became independent in the early 19th century, a prominent question was that of the relation of Russia to Europe, which J. P. Chaadayev (1794–1856) raised in his Lettres philosophiques (1827–31; ET Philosophical Letters [Knoxville, Tenn., 1969]). A “Western” group of thinkers wanted a full and swift adoption of the achievements of the West, but another group, the Slavophiles, argued for Russia’s independence and even superiority and hence advocated separate enterprises. It is hard to draw a distinction betwee…

Stundism refers to a free church movement that arose in 1861 in southern Russia. It called itself the Brethren of the Friends of God, but it came to be known as Stundism (Ger. Stunde, “hour”) because of its link with the German Reformed “observing of the hours” at Rohrbach, near Odessa. For the Stundists, reading and discussing the Bible came to be viewed as more important than maintaining the external Orthodox rites of worship (Bible Study). The movement arose in the context of other indigenous sects going back to the middle o…

A starets (Russ., lit. “old man, elder”; pl. startsy) is a spiritual adviser in the Orthodox Church, not necessarily a priest, recognized for his piety and spiritual insight. The choice of an experienced ascetic (Asceticism) who deserved special honor as an older Christian (Gk. gerōn = Russ. starets) to act as a confessor was an early feature of Eastern monasticism (Orthodoxy Christianity). In view of the Russian term for gerōn, such men came to be known as startsy toward the end of the 18th century, when they became most influential in Russia. With the developme…

“Old Believers” (Russ. Raskolniki, “Schismatics”) is the name given to those Christians in the Russian Orthodox Church who in the mid-17th century opposed the liturgical reforms of the Moscow patriarch Nikon (1605–81). They themselves took the name “Old Ritualists” or “Old Orthodox,” claiming to be the only ones to continue true Orthodoxy (Orthodox Christianity; Orthodox Church). Those reforms were avowedly to restore ancient uses but were in point of fact an importation of contemporary Greek pract…

[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] (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) for Jur'evec – Povolžskij in 1652, and after 1653 moved to the forefront of the opposition against the cultic reforms of Patriarch Nikon with the consequence that he was immediately dispatched to Siberia until 1663. Excommunicated in 1666, from 1667 onwards he was held prisoner on the lower reaches of the Pechora. There he carried on with the fight until his death – he was burned at the stake – by composing his own vita ( Zhitiye…

[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 969 but had to give it up in 977 as he fled from his two elder brothers. After winning it back with the help of Varangian mercenaries, he advanced against Kiev, which fell into his hands in 980 without a fight. As autocrat of the Kievan kingdom, he decided the urgent question of a religious reorientation in favor of his grandmother…

[German Version] (Michail Petrovič; Sep 19, 1816, Surkovo near Novyj Oskol –Jun 9, 1882, Moscow), metropolitan of Moscow (from 1879), previously (from 1857), successively bishop of Tambov, Char'kov, and Lithuania (Baltic countries). He was particularly influential as a teacher of theology. Initially, he was active at the Spiritual Academy of Kiev (II) as professor of history and church history, then from 1842 at the St. Petersburg Spiritual Academy (St. Petersburg: II) as professor of theology (dogmatics);…

[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…

[German Version] is the name for the priestless Old Believers under the leadership of the monk Philipp (Fotiy Vasilyev) who separated themselves off in monasteries ¶ on the Vyg beginning in 1737 after taking up intercession for the tsar; in 1743, Philipp and about 70 followers burned themselves to death on the Kola Peninsula to avoid imminent arrest. Only small remnants of their communities exist today. Peter Hauptmann Bibliography P. Hauptmann, “Das russische Altgläubigentum 300 Jahre nach dem Tode des Protopopen Avvakum,” KO 29, 1986, 69–135, esp. 125–27.

[German Version] I. General – II. Non-Christian Religions – III. Christianity – IV. Religion, Society, and Culture in the Present I. General 1. The name Baltic derives from the term “mare Balticum,” commonly used for the Baltic Sea since the High Middle Ages. At first it applied only to later Estonia and Latvia as the Baltic provinces of the Russian empire, which had earlier simply been called Livonia after…

[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] ( 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] (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] (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] (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 made a great impression. Appointed by C. Lucaris to support him in Constantinople, in 1630 he was put in charg…

[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 …

[German Version] (Grzegorz Paweł; c. 1526, Brzeziny – c. 1591, Raków), Polish theologian. After studies at Cracow, Königsberg (Kaliningrad), and Wittenberg, he turned from Lutheranism to Calvinism and finally became a radical Antitrinitarian. In 1551 he became a Reformed pastor in his place of birth; in 1556 he became one the seniors of the Reformed congregations of Lesser Poland and in 1558 a pastor in Krakow. In 1562 he began publishing attacks on the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. At the Diet of Piotrków in 1565, he broke with the Reformed ecclesia maior, thus becoming one of …

[German Version] (Feb 9, 1898, Uman’ – Nov 2, 1970, Berlin), independent scholar who became the outstanding Russian church historian of the 20th century. After involvement in war and civil war and a stay in Constantinople, he was unable to resume his studies until 1923 in Berlin, initially at the Russisches Wissenschaftliches Institut, founded by émigrés, and then at the university, where he received his doctorate in 1934 with a dissertation on I. Kireyevsky. His subsequent research led to several…

[German Version] (Semën Ivanovič; 1658, Javorov near Lemberg – Nov 24, 1722, Moscow). After studying in Polish Jesuit schools, he returned to Kiev in 1689 where he taught in the college and served as abbot. As metropolitan of Rjazan', he was appointed by Peter the ¶ Great administrator of the patriarchate in 1700 and president of the newly created Holy Synod in 1721, although he inwardly opposed Peter's reform plans. Thus, when Peter commissioned an expert's opinion on a union project by the Sorbonne in 1717, the elaboration by Javorskij's …

[German Version] I. General The name Poland derives from the name of one of the West Slavic tribes that joined together in the 9th and 10th centuries to form the Polish nation; it characterizes the members of this tribe as field-dwellers ( Polani or Poleni). The kingdom, founded by the Piast dynasty, was first called Polonia around the year 1000. Today the official name of the state is Rzeczpospolita Polska (Republic of Poland). ¶ Geographically, Poland is bounded by Germany to the west, by the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian Federation to the north, …

[German Version] (Petr Egorov, later Levšin; Jun 29, 1737, Chashnikovo near Moscow – Nov 11, 1812, Vifaniya near Sergiyev Posad), metropolitan of Moscow. After study at the Moscow academy, Platon taught there, and later at the seminary of Trinity St. Sergius Monastery. As its rector from 1761, and a gifted preacher, he made such a strong impression on Catherine II that she appointed him as her son’s tutor in religion. In 1766 he became archimandrite of the monastery, which he had already led from …

[German Version] 1. Nicholas the Red (Mikołai Rudy Radziwiłł; Apr 27, 1512 – Apr 27, 1584, Vilnius), high chancellor and high hetman of Lithuania, from 1566 (following his cousin Nicholas the Black [see 2 below]) voivode of Vilnius; he became a Calvinist c. 1564. His descendants remained faithful to the Reformed confession and, until the line failed in 1667, ensured the continuation of Reformed parishes on the Radziwill estates (of the Birse branch) in Lithuania. Peter Hauptmann Bibliography T. Nowakowski, Die Radziwills. Die Geschichte einer großen europäischen Familie, 1968, 79–…

[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] (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] (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…