From the moment that Tsars as well as hierarchs realized that
having their subjects go to confession could make them better
citizens as well as better Christians, the sacrament of penance in
the Russian empire became a political tool, a devotional exercise,
a means of education, and a literary genre. It defined who was
Orthodox, and who was 'other.' First encouraging Russian subjects
to participate in confession to improve them and to integrate them
into a reforming Church and State, authorities then turned to
confession to integrate converts of other nationalities. But the
sacrament was not only something that state and religious
authorities sought to impose on an unwilling populace. Confession
could provide an opportunity for carefully crafted complaint. What
state and church authorities initially imagined as a way of
controlling an unruly population could be used by the same
population as a way of telling their own story, or simply getting
time off to attend to their inner lives. Good for the Souls brings
Russia into the rich scholarly and popular literature on
confession, penance, discipline, and gender in the modern world,
and in doing so opens a key window onto church, state, and society.
It draws on state laws, Synodal decrees, archives, manuscript
repositories, clerical guides, sermons, saints' lives, works of
literature, and visual depictions of the sacrament in those books
and on church iconostases. Russia, Ukraine, and Orthodox
Christianity emerge both as part of the European, transatlantic
religious continuum-and, in crucial ways, distinct from it.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
