Popular Patristics Series Volume 49 An otherwise unknown second-century Christian, Ignatius was taken from Antioch to Rome in an imperial triumph, to be executed in the arena. He saw this triumphal procession as Christ's, as he went to a conquering death. As Christ's death brought about reconciliation between Jew and Gentile, Ignatius hoped that his death, united with Christ's, would bring about reconciliation within and among the churches to which he wrote. Two centuries later, when the Arian controversy further divided the Antiochene church, an unknown writer took on the persona of Ignatius to appeal for peace. As today the church is more than ever divided, Fr Stewart presents a fresh English version of both Ignatius and his imitator, with the Greek of Ignatius, and concise introductions to the letters. The most recent research on Ignatius is accessibly presented, and the first English version of the imitation Ignatius is here made available to students, to clergy, and to the people of God.

For some thirty years before the First World War, the Church of England maintained a mission of help to the Assyrian Church of the East (popularly known as the Nestorian church) in its then homeland, a corner of eastern Turkey and north-western Persia. The Mission had a controversial history. At home, not everyone could appreciate the rationale of a mission which was to aid an obscure and heretical body and which strictly forbade any conversions from this body to the Anglican church. In the field, the missionaries had to do battle with xenophobic governments, with rival American and French missions, and with the Assyrians themselves, whose confidence proved difficult to gain. In some respects the Mission was unsuccessful, but it had notable accomplishments, especially in scholarship and in ecumenical diplomacy. Besides being the history of a Victorian missionary society, the present study deals in some detail with the history of the Assyrians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - both as the survival of an ancient church with hierarchy, liturgy, and theological formulas, and as an ethnic minority in the Middle East. Illustrations and maps enhance the value of the book as a source for the history of the time and place. This is the first study of the relations between the church of England and the Church of the East, and is based on largely unpublished documents in English and Syriac.

Women and Religiosity in Orthodox Christianity fills a significant gap in the sociology of religious practice: Studies focused on women's religiosity have overlooked Orthodox populations, while studies of Orthodox practice (operating within the dominant theological, historical, and sociological framework) have remained gender-blind. The essays in this collection shed new light on the women who make up a considerable majority of the Orthodox population by engaging women's lifeworlds, practices, and experiences in relation to their religion in multiple, varied localities, discussing both contemporary and pre-1989 developments. These contributions critically engage the pluralist and changing character of Orthodox institutional and social life by using feminist epistemologies and drawing on original ethnographic research to account for Orthodox women's previously ignored perspectives, knowledges, and experiences. Combining the depth of ethnographic analysis with geographical breadth and employing a variety of research methodologies, this book expands our understanding of Orthodox Christianity by examining Orthodox women of diverse backgrounds in different settings: parishes, monasteries, and the secular spaces of everyday life, and under shifting historical conditions and political regimes. In defiance of claims that Orthodox Christianity is immutable and fixed in time, these essays argue that continuity and transformation can be found harmoniously in social practices, demographic trends, and larger material contexts at the intersection between gender, Orthodoxy, and locality. Contributors: Kristin Aune, Milica Bakic-Hayden, Maria Bucur, Ketevan Gurchiani, James Kapalo, Helena Kupari, Ina Merdjanova, Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, Eleni Sotiriou, Tatiana Tiaynen-Qadir, Detelina Tocheva

Colonizing Christianity employs postcolonial critique to analyze the transformations of Greek and Latin religious identity in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. Through close readings of texts from the period of Latin occupation, this book argues that the experience of colonization splintered the Greek community over how best to respond to the Latin other while illuminating the mechanisms by which Western Christians authorized and exploited the Christian East. The experience of colonial subjugation opened permanent fissures within the Orthodox community, which struggled to develop a consistent response to aggressive demands for submission to the Roman Church.

Nature is as much an idea as a physical reality. By 'placing' nature within Byzantine culture and within the discourse of Orthodox Christian thought and practice, Landscape, Nature and the Sacred in Byzantium explores attitudes towards creation that are utterly and fascinatingly different from the modern. Drawing on Patristic writing and on Byzantine literature and art, the book develops a fresh conceptual framework for approaching Byzantine perceptions of space and the environment. It takes readers on an imaginary flight over the Earth and its varied topographies of gardens and wilderness, mountains and caves, rivers and seas, and invites them to shift from the linear time of history to the cyclical time and spaces of the sacred - the time and spaces of eternal returns and revelations.

The Acts of Early Church Councils Acts examines the acts of ancient church councils as the objects of textual practices, in their editorial shaping, and in their material conditions. It traces the processes of their production, starting from the recording of spoken interventions during a meeting, to the preparation of minutes of individual sessions, to their collection into larger units, their storage and the earliest attempts at their dissemination. Thomas Graumann demonstrates that the preparation of 'paperwork' is central for the bishops' self-presentation and the projection of prevailing conciliar ideologies. The councils' aspirations to legitimacy and authority before real and imagined audiences of the wider church and the empire, and for posterity, fundamentally reside in the relevant textual and bureaucratic processes. Council leaders and administrators also scrutinized and inspected documents and records of previous occasions. From the evidence of such examinations the volume further reconstructs the textual and physical characteristics of ancient conciliar documents and explores the criteria of their assessment. Reading strategies prompted by the features observed from material textual objects handled in council, and the opportunities and limits afforded by the techniques of 'writing-up' conciliar business are analysed. Papyrological evidence and contemporary legal regulations are used to contextualise these efforts. The book thus offers a unique assessment of the production processes, character and the material conditions of council acts that must be the foundation for any historical and theological research into the councils of the ancient church.

The Byzantine emperor Leo VI (886-912), was not a general or even a soldier, like his predecessors, but a scholar, and it was the religious education he gained under the tutelage of the patriarch Photios that was to distinguish him as an unusual ruler. This book analyses Leo's literary output, focusing on his deployment of ideological principles and religious obligations to distinguish the characteristics of the Christian oikoumene from the Islamic caliphate, primarily in his military manual known as the Taktika. It also examines in depth his 113 legislative Novels, with particular attention to their theological prolegomena, showing how the emperor's religious sensibilities find expression in his reshaping of the legal code to bring it into closer accord with Byzantine canon law. Meredith L. D. Riedel argues that the impact of his religious faith transformed Byzantine cultural identity and influenced his successors, establishing the Macedonian dynasty as a 'golden age' in Byzantium.

The Oxford Movement within the Anglican communion sought changes to the Church of England in its articulation of theology and performance of liturgy that would more clearly demonstrate what the movement's members believed was the place of their Church within the wider universal and ancient Church. In this regard they mostly looked to the Roman Catholic Church, but one of their most prominent members thought their goals would be better served by seeking recognition from the Orthodox Church. This book charts the eccentric career of that member, William Palmer, a fellow of Magdalen College and deacon of the Anglican Church. Seemingly destined for a conventional life as a classics don at Oxford, in 1840 and 1842 he travelled to Russia to seek communion from the Russian Orthodox Church. He sought their affirmation that the Anglican Church was part of the ancient Catholic and Apostolic Church world-wide. Despite their personal regard for him, the Russians remained unconvinced by his arguments, not least because of the actions of the Anglican hierarchy in forming alliances with other Protestant bodies. Palmer in turn wrestled with what he saw as the logical inconsistencies in the claim of the Orthodox to be the one true church, such as the differing views he encountered on the manner of reception of converts into the Church by either baptism and chrismation or the latter alone. Increasingly disillusioned with the Church of England, and finding himself without support from the Scottish Episcopal Church, Palmer closest Russian friends such as Mouravieff and Khomiakoff urged him to cast aside his reservations and to convert Orthodoxy. Ultimately he baulked at making what he saw as the cultural leap from West to East, and after some years in ecclesiastical limbo, he followed the example of his Oxford friends such as John Henry Newman, and was received into the Roman Catholic Church in Rome in 1855. He lived in Rome as a Catholic layman until his death in 1879. This is a fascinating account of a failed "journey to Orthodoxy" that should provide food for thought to all who may follow this path in the future and offer grounds for reflection to Orthodox believers on how to remove unnecessary stumbling blocks that can arise on the path to their Church.

A pivotal period in Russian history, the Time of Troubles in the early seventeenth century has taken on new resonance in the country's post-Soviet search for new national narratives. The historical role of the Orthodox Church has emerged as a key theme in contemporary remembrances of this time-but what precisely was that role? The first comprehensive study of the Church during the Troubles, Orthodox Russia in Crisis reconstructs this tumultuous time, offering new interpretations of familiar episodes while delving deep into the archives to uncover a much fuller picture of the era. Analyzing these sources, Isaiah Gruber argues that the business activity of monasteries played a significant role in the origins and course of the Troubles and that frequent changes in power forced Church ideologues to innovate politically, for example inventing new justifications for power to be granted to the people and to royal women. These new ideas, Gruber contends, ultimately helped bring about a new age in Russian spiritual life and a crystallization of the national mentality.

The art of interpreting Holy Scriptures flourished throughout the culturally heterogeneous pre-modern Orient among Jews, Christians and Muslims. Different ways of interpretation developed within each religion not without considering the others. How were the interactions and how productive were they for the further development of these traditions? Have there been blurred spaces of scholarly activity that transcended sectarian borders? What was the role played by mutual influences in profiling the own tradition against the others? These and other related questions are critically treated in the present volume.

Pavel Florensky--certainly the greatest Russian theologian of the last century--is now recognized as one of Russia's greatest polymaths. Known as the Russian Leonardo da Vinci, he became a Russian Orthodox priest in 1911, while remaining deeply involved with the cultural, artistic, and scientific developments of his time. Arrested briefly by the Soviets in 1928, he returned to his scholarly activities until 1933, when he was sentenced to ten years of corrective labor in Siberia. There he continued his scientific work and ministered to his fellow prisoners until his death four years later. This volume is the first English translation of his rich and fascinating defense of Russian Orthodox theology.

Originally published in 1914, the book is a series of twelve letters to a "brother" or "friend," who may be understood symbolically as Christ. Central to Florensky's work is an exploration of the various meanings of Christian love, which is viewed as a combination of "philia" (friendship) and "agape" (universal love). Florensky is perhaps the first modern writer to explore the so-called "same-sex unions," which, for him, are not sexual in nature. He describes the ancient Christian rites of the "adelphopoiesis" (brother-making), joining male friends in chaste bonds of love. In addition, Florensky is one of the first thinkers in the twentieth century to develop the idea of the Divine Sophia, who has become one of the central concerns of feminist theologians.

The icon of the Mother of God "Quick to Hear" is widely venerated throughout the Orthodox world; a copy of the icon--brought from Mount Athos to Russia in 1877--survived both a fire and the destruction of churches under communism to come to rest at the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg. This book offers a short history of the icon's place in the Russian Orthodox Church and recounts some of the miracles associated with its veneration. Included here are stories of the help and consolation given to faithful from all walks of life, including farmers, merchants, homemakers, soldiers, dukes, duchesses, and the much loved St. Elizabeth the New Martyr.

This volume explores the relationship between new media and religion, focusing on the WWW's impact on the Russian Orthodox Church. Eastern Christianity has travelled a long way through the centuries, amassing the intellectual riches of many generations of theologians and shaping the cultures as well as histories of many countries, Russia included, before the arrival of the digital era. New media pose questions that, when answered, fundamentally change various aspects of religious practice and thinking as well as challenge numerous traditional dogmata of Orthodox theology. For example, an Orthodox believer may now enter a virtual chapel, light a candle by drag-and-drop operations, send an online prayer request, or worship virtual icons and relics. In recent years, however, Church leaders and public figures have become increasingly sceptical about new media. The internet, some of them argue, breaches Russia's "spiritual sovereignty" and implants values and ideas alien to the Russian culture. This collection addresses such questions as: How is the Orthodox ecclesiology influenced by its new digital environment? What is the role of clerics in the Russian WWW? How is the specifically Orthodox notion of sobornost' (catholicity) being transformed here? Can Orthodox activity in the internet be counted as authentic religious practice? How does the virtual religious life intersect with religious experience in the "real" church?

With a combination of essay-length and short entries written by a team of leading religious experts, the two-volume En cyclopedia of Eastern Orthodoxy offers the most comprehensive guide to the cultural and intellectual world of Eastern Orthodox Christianity available in English today. * An outstanding reference work providing the first English language multi-volume account of the key historical, liturgical, doctrinal features of Eastern Orthodoxy, including the Non-Chalcedonian churches * Explores of the major traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy in detail, including the Armenian, Byzantine, Coptic, Ethiopic, Slavic, Romanian, Syriac churches * Uniquely comprehensive, it is edited by one of the leading scholars in the field and provides authoritative but accessible articles by a range of top international academics and Orthodox figures * Spans the period from Late Antiquity to the present, encompassing subjects including history, theology, liturgy, monasticism, sacramentology, canon law, philosophy, folk culture, architecture, archaeology, martyrology, hagiography, all alongside a large and generously detailed prosopography * Structured alphabetically and topically cross-indexed, with entries ranging from 100 to 6,000 words

An Akathist (Greek for "Standing Up") is a type of extended devotional hymn used both in church and at home. This first volume contains six Akathist hymns to the Lord Jesus Christ (to our Sweetest Lord Jesus Christ, the Divine Passion of Christ, the Precious Cross, the Tomb and the Resurrection of the Lord, the Resurrection of Christ, and for Holy Communion; four Akathist hymns to the Mother of God (to the Most Holy Theotokos, the Dormition of the Theotokos, the Joy of All Who Sorrow, and the Kursk Root Ion of the Sign); and twelve to various saints (St. Alexis the Man of God; the Holy Great Martyr George, St. Herman of Alaska, St. John the Baptist, St. John of Kronstadt, St. John the Theologian, the Holy Archangel Michael, St. Nicholas, the Holy Great Martyr Panteleimon, St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. Simon the Zealot, and for the Repose of the Departed. Also contains music for typical akathist refrains.