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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 …

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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 monasti…

“Old Believers” (Russ. Raskolniki, “Schismatics”) is the name given to those Christians in the Russian Orthodox Church who in the mid-17th century opposed t…

[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 rul…

[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 ent…

[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 …

[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 …

[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…

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[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…

[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 mission. In the 9th centu…

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[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 one of the many tribes. The 19th-century discovery of the Baltic language family, consisting of Latvian, Lithuanian, and Old Prussian, and the common political fate in the 20th …

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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 …

[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, who sent him after his ordination to the priesthood (1594), to Poland as his protosynkellos to work against the incipient Union of Brest (1595). In 1594 he became rector of the academy in Ostrog, in 1596 of the one in Vilna. Only after his elevation as patriarch of Alexandria (1601) did this opponent of union gradually develop into a supporter of the Reformation, through contact with Dutchmen such as the diplomat Cornelis Haga, and the theologian Johannes Wtenbogaert; he was also convinced of his own church's need for reform. In 1616, he began a correspondence with Archbishop George Abbot of Canterbury. In an effort to limit the success of Roman Catholic orders in education and missions among the Greeks, he tried to gain assista…

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[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] 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 w…

[German Version] I. Church History – II. The Bran…

[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 profess…

[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…

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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] …

[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 …

[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 fro…

[German Version] The Eastern Church, following 1 Cor 4:10ff., describes as such the ascetic practice of publicly ¶ exposing oneself to mistreatment and isolation throug…

[German Version] (Nikita Minich; May 24, 1605, Veldemanovo near Nizhny Novgorod – Aug 17, 1681, Yaroslavl), patriarch of…

[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 Esto…

[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 Nov 11, 1568, d…

[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.…

[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-L…

[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 and to appoint 1…

[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 pu…

[German Version] (Albert of Riga; 1165/1170, …

[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 cor…

[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 …

[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 a vow confirmed on Mount Athos in 1871 prevented him from falling into amoralism and brought him to the Optina hermitage in 1887, where he became a monk under the name Kliment on Aug 23,…

[German Version] I. City and Bishopric Tartu (Estonian; Ger. Dorpat, Russ.…

[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 dy…

[German Version] (Aug 30, …

[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 disciples in 1763; there, as abbot of the monasteries of Dragomirna and Neamţ, he became an influential force in the renewal of Hesychasm. It is by no means the rule, however, that a starets also serves as abbot of his monastery. In every instance, however, the starets as a charismatic is linked with the institutionalized administration of the monastery in mutual submission. In the …

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[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 b…

[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…

[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 standard works, all of which were translated into Russian after the fall of the Soviet Union. Peter Hauptmann Bibliography Works include: Leben und Lehre der Starzen, 1936, 21952, 31988 Russisches Mönchtum. Entstehung, Entwicklung und Wesen 988–1917, 1953 Geschichte der russischen Kirche 1700–1917, vol. I, 1964; vol. II, 1991, ed. G.L. Freeze On Smolich: R. Stupperich, Igor Smolitsch zum Gedächtnis, KO 14, 1971, 17f.

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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, by Lithuania (Baltic countries), Belarus (White Russia), and Ukraine to the east, and by the Czech Republic …

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[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…

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[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 partisan…

[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 m…

[German Version] During the Middle Ages, the West Slavic tribes behind the original eastern boundary o…

[German Version] (1st half of the 4th cent.), “enlightener” of Georgia. Tyrannius Rufinus tells in h…

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[German Version] capital of the Republic of Lithuania (Baltic countries), with a population of 554,060 (20…

[German Version] I. History of Religion – II. The Early Church – III. Middle Ages, Reformation, Count…

[German Version] …

[German Version] (c. 1036–1040, Szczepanów – Apr 11, 1079, Cracow), martyr bishop and patron saint of Poland. Initially a parish priest in Czembocz, as bi…

[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…

[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…

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[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 …

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[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 ha…

[German Version] (c. 1501, Mantua – Nov 12, 1574, Sopnica, near Sandomierz), Hebraist, physician, and theologian, whose co…

[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 …

[German Version] (May 30, 1220, Jaroslav – Nov 14, 1263, Gorodok) was Prince of …

[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, h…

[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. …

[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…

[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…

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1. General In Late Antiquity, the term “catechism” (Latin  catechismus from Greek  katéchesis, “oral instruction”) came into use for the instruction of adult catechumens; when infant baptism was introducted in the 2nd/3rd century, it was applied to the instruction of the faithful (Catechetics). In the early modern era, the term came to be applied to systematically organized works designed for elementary religious instruction. Other terms used included  ench( e) iridion (Greek, “small handbook”),  institutio (Latin, “instruction”), a…

1. AllgemeinK. (lat. catechismus von griech. katḗchēsis, »mündlicher Unterricht«) bezeichnete seit der Späta…