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[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, …

[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 S…

[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. Soc…

[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). Called to Transylvania in 1578 by G. Biandrata, he worked to counter the confusion stirred up there by F. Dávid with his denial that Jesus was worthy of veneration. After 1579 he lived in Poland, married to a ¶ Polish noblewoman. His theological ideas provided the foundation for the Racovian Catechism. Peter Hauptmann Bibliography …

[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 Black Madonna, a miraculous image of the Virgin Mary dating from the 14th century, which has been blackened by the smoke of candles. Since 1655, when the monastery was …

[German Version] (“spiritual warriors”) is the appellation given to adherents of the “Spiritual Christians,” an extremely spiritualist wing of the Old Russian sectarian movement (Russian sects) which separated in the last third of the 18th century from the equally anti-cult, but still Scripture-bound Molocanes (see also All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians and Baptists). They set a direct, internal revelation against the Bible; anyone who claims to have experienced it becomes a Christ in their eyes. They thus gathered around dynasties of leaders in theocratic communities with communal property. In the first half of the 19th century, they were forcibly settled, first north of the Crimea and, finally, in Transcaucasia. There, their number was estimated at up to 20,000 around 1917. In 1898/99, some 7500 …

[German Version] The Eastern Church, following 1 Cor 4:10ff., describes as such the ascetic practice of publicly ¶ exposing oneself to mistreatment and isolation through feigned mental incapacity and, thus, of protecting oneself from the danger of popular admiration. It presumes a Christian environment and the absence of institutions for the mentally ill. Holy folly appeared first in the 4th century in a nun in Egypt, then occasionally in the Near East; it came to Russia in the 11th century and reached its greate…

[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…

[German Version] (1757, Serpuchov, Russia – Dec 13, 1837, Spruce Island, Alaska). Herman entered the Trinity-St. Serge Hermitage near St. Petersburg at the age of 16 and transferred to Valaam Monastery in 1778. In 1793, the abbot sent him with seven other monks to Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska to care for the Russian trappers and furriers there, but also in order to evangelize the native population. Apart from a few minor interruptions, the conduct of the Kodiak mission was effectively in hi…

[German Version] (Michael Triboles; c. 1470, Árta, Ípiros – Jan 21, 1556, Sergiyev Posad), major mediator of Greek theology to the church of Moscow, canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church at its millennial council on Jun 6, 1988. Born to an aristocratic family, Maksim grew up on Corfu; after studies at Italian universities, he entered the Dominican order in 1502 but in 1504 became a monk on Athos. In 1518, at the request of Grand Prince Vasily III, he was sent to Moscow to translate biblical and…

[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 …

[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). …

[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 a…

[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 the…

[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 educa…

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[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

[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…

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[German Version] (Polish: Warmia), as one of the four bishoprics established by the Orders of Germany in 1243 in …

[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 b…

[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…

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[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] 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] (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 s…

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[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 t…