Mother Maria Skobtsova and Sister Joanna Reitlinger

Journal of the European Society of Women in Theological Research 26 (2018) 95-107. doi: 10.2143/ESWTR.26.0.3285167 ©2018 by Journal of the European Society of Women in Theological Research. All rights reserved.

Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer

Emigration as a Space for Creative Freedom: Mother Maria Skobtsova and Sister Joanna Reitlinger

Abstract After the 1917 Revolution, many Russians, among them well-known theologians and religious philosophers, suffered the pains of exile. Emigration was an extreme situation marked by many losses – of country, family, culture and tradition. However, it also brought new creative impulses, including innovation in church tradition. Using as examples two Orthodox nuns – Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891-1945) and Sister Joanna Reitlinger (1898-1988) – I will show how this situation of being in exile, physically and interiorly, meant a return to the sources of their own tradition and at the same time opened up space for creating new authentic tradition. Mother Maria Skobtsova represents a new type of monasticism in the city, where the church community was the whole world and sacrament was a sister and brother. Sister Joanna Reitlinger represents the revivalist tradition of icon-painting at Saint Sergius Theological Institute, where icon-painting did not mean strictly following the church rules but a lively spiritual experience of innovation. In conclusion I will analyse how these two examples of authentic Orthodox spiritual journeys can inspire an understanding of contemporary Orthodox identity, based on a dynamic understanding of church tradition and a patristic interpretation of the biblical assertion that human beings are made in God’s image and likeness.

Introduction After the 1917 Revolution, many Russians, among them some well-known theologians and religious philosophers, suffered the pains of exile. But although emigration was an extreme reality marked by numerous losses – of land, family, culture and tradition – it also stimulated new and creative movements, including innovation in the sphere of Church tradition: being a Russian émigré meant falling outside the parameters of public and private traditions and thus opened up an entirely new space for creativity within the Orthodox Church.1

1 This article is part of the work supported by Charles University Research Centre No. 204052: “Theological Anthropology in Ecumenical Perspective,” and the programme Progress Q01: “Theology as a Way of Interpreting History, Traditions and Contemporary Society”.

95 Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer Emigration as a Space for Creative Freedom: Mother Maria Skobtsova and Sister Joanna Reitlinger

Using the example of two Orthodox nuns – Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891- 1945),2 who represents a new kind of metropolitan monastic life, monasticism in the city, and Sister Joanna Reitlinger (1898-1988),3 who represents the creative turn in icon-writing in exile – this article shows how exile meant both a return to one’s original tradition and at the same time a space for the creation of a new and authentic tradition.4 Their physical journeys into exile will be presented briefly, followed by a tracking of their inner journey. In other words, I explore the twin outward/inward movement which eventually led to the transformation of Church tradition within the Orthodox Church in exile. The article concludes with an analysis of the ways in which these two authentic Orthodox spiritual journeys can inspire an understanding of contemporary Orthodox identity, based on a dynamic understanding of Church tradition and a patristic interpretation of the biblical assertion that human beings are made in God´s image and likeness.

Crossing Geographical Borders Post-1917 emigrants such as Mother Maria and Sister Joanna were like pilgrims, moving from one place to another. Before settling down in Paris as the capital of “Russia outside Russia,” all such pilgrims had undertaken long and arduous journeys.5

2 For more on Mother Maria, see Sergei Hackel, One of Great Price: The Life of Mother Maria Skobtsova, Martyr of Ravensbrück (Darton, Longman and Todd: London 1965); Natalie Ermo- laev, Modernism, Motherhood and Mariology: The Poetry and Theology of Elizaveta Skobt- sova (Mother Maria) (PhD diss., Columbia University 2010); Xenija Krivošejna, Мать Мария (Скобцова): Святая наших дней [Mother Maria (Skobtsova): A Saint for Our Time] (Eksmo: Moscow 2015). 3 For more on Julia Reitlinger, see Julie Jančarková, “K voprosu o rozhdenii ‘tvorcheskoj ikono- pisi’ (na primere chechoslovackich rabot J. Rejtlinger)” [К вопросу о рождении ‘творческой иконописи’ (на примере чехословатских работ Ю. Рейтлингер / On the issue of the birth of ‘artistic iconography’ (using the example of the Czechoslovak works of J. Reitlinger)], in: Vestnik russkogo hristianskogo dvizhenija [Вестник РХД [русского христианского движения / Vestnik RHD (Bulletin of the Russian Christian Movement)] 191:2 (2006), 285– 294; Kateřina Bauerová, “The Mysticism of Pan-unity: Sophiology Revisited,” in: Ivana Noble, Kateřina Bauerová, Tim Noble and Parush Parushev, Wrestling with the Mind of the Fathers (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press: Yonkers, N.Y. 2015), 157–199. 4 See also Kateřina Bauerová, “Mystery of Divine-Human Cooperation in Freedom and Creativ- ity: An Example of Liturgical Life from the Russian Diaspora in France,” in: Joris Geldhof, Daniel Minch and Trevor Maine (eds.), Approaching the Threshold of Mystery: Liturgical Worlds and Theological Spaces (Verlag Friedrich Pustet: Regensburg 2015), 155–156. 5 On the experience of Russian emigrés, see Kateřina Bauerová, “The Experience and Theology of Russian Émigrés,” in: Ivana Noble, Kateřina Bauerová, Tim Noble and Parush Parushev,

96 Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer Emigration as a Space for Creative Freedom: Mother Maria Skobtsova and Sister Joanna Reitlinger

Jelizaveta (Liza) Pilenko (the future Mother Maria) was born in 1891 in the Latvian city of Riga but grew up in the south of Russia near the Black Sea town of Anapa. After moving to St Petersburg, as a young intellectual she became part of the radical literary circle gathered around the symbolist poet Alexander Blok (1880-1921). From an early age, therefore, she was admitted into the heart of Russian political and cultural life. Initially she identified with anarchism, but soon turned to left-wing radicalism. It was among the left-wing poets that she came to know her first husband, Dmitri Kuzmin-Karaviev. They lived a Bohemian life together centred on a world of culture. She would later reflect on this way of life as having destroyed the basis of the old traditions by opening up a gulf between the common people and the intelligentsia. In 1912, Liza published her first volume of poetry, Scythian Shards,6 and continued writing poems for the rest of her life. Increasingly attracted to the story of Jesus Christ, she decided to study theology at the Petrograd Academy based in the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.7 A year before the outbreak of World War I, around the time of the birth of her first daughter, Gaiana, Liza’s marriage broke down,8 and she returned to southern Russia, to Anapa, with the baby. For Liza, faith in God and the Christian basis of a spiritual life were melded with left-wing thought and the search for a radical change in the social order. She joined the Social Revolutionary Party, which soon became an unwanted rival to the Bolsheviks.9 In February 1918, at the beginning of the Civil War, Liza was elected deputy mayor of her home town. When the White Army came to town and took control of the region, Liza was arrested for her political beliefs,10 but escaped punishment thanks to the intervention of a local judge, Daniel Skobtsov,11 soon to become her second husband. After the wed- ding, because of the ever-worsening political situation, the Skobtsovs left the country, sailing across the Black Sea to Georgia, where their son Yuri was

The Ways of Orthodox Theology in the West (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press: Yonkers, N.Y. 2015), 241–275. 6 Mother Maria Skobstova, Скифские черепки [Scythian shards] (Cech Poetov: St Petersburg 1912). 7 Liza had been the first woman to be accepted to study there. See Jim Forest, “Introduction,” in: Mother Maria Skobtsova: Essential Writings (Orbis Books: Maryknoll, N.Y. 2003), 17. 8 Forest notes that Dmitri Kuzmin-Karaviev later converted to Christianity (the Roman Catholic Church) and that after his ordination he worked with the Jesuits in Western Europe. Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., 18. 11 A member of the newly formed anti-Bolshevik government in Kuban.

97 Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer Emigration as a Space for Creative Freedom: Mother Maria Skobtsova and Sister Joanna Reitlinger born in 1920. They then continued westwards, first to Istanbul, where their daughter Nastya was born, and finally, passing through Belgrade, made their way to Paris, where they arrived in 1922.12 Julia Reitlinger (the future Sister Joanna) was born in 1889 to an upper- class family in St Petersburg. Unlike most of her circle, Julia’s mother was a believer and took the children regularly to church; Julia’s father worked in the civil service. Julia suffered from deafness from an early age but nonetheless showed artistic talent and studied art at the Society for the Advancement of Artists. Around her flowered the painters and poets of the Silver Age of Russian art. In 1917, the family fled St Petersburg for the Crimea, to an estate belonging to their friends, the Obolensky family, where Julia worked as a volunteer nurse. Following the death of her mother and a sister from typhus, and the defeat of the White Army, she and her father escaped to Poland, where her father worked for the Methodist Mission. Later she moved with her sister Katya to Prague, where she lived between 1922 and 1925.13 There she studied at the Academy of Fine Art and was a member of a group gathered around the well-known Byzantologist Nikodim Kondakov, who introduced her to the history of iconography.14 Finally, in 1925, she also settled in Paris.

Inner Migration Mother Maria and Sister Joanna both settled in Paris, the capital of “Russia outside Russia,” and sought new opportunities at the newly established church and theological centre in Rue de Crimée, dedicated to St Sergius of Radon- ezh.15 The situation was complicated, however: the Orthodox community was

12 This is the date given by Sergei Hackel in One of Great Price. Jim Forest suggests the year 1923; see Forest, “Introduction,” 19. 13 Sister Joanna also spent time in the Czechoslovakia from 1945 to 1947. After the death of Bulgakov, she decided to leave Paris and go back to the Soviet Union and had to wait in Czechoslovakia for her visa. 14 Kaari Kotkavaara, Progeny of the Icon: Émigré Russian Revivalism and the Vicissitudes of the Eastern Orthodox Sacred Images (Ǻbo University Press: Ǻbo 1999), 211–344. 15 The centre was established with the help of Metropolitan Eulogy (Georgievsky) (1868–1946), one of the bishops among the Russian diaspora in Western Europe, and also with the help of American and English funds, especially from the YMCA. See Marc Raeff, Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration 1919–1939 (Oxford University Press: New York 1990), 127–128.

98 Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer Emigration as a Space for Creative Freedom: Mother Maria Skobtsova and Sister Joanna Reitlinger extremely diverse,16 there was much poverty, and they were unfamiliar with the French language and the new culture. Mother Maria lived with her family in a single room and, despite becoming increasingly short-sighted, made dolls and painted silk scarves. In 1923, a friend introduced her to the Russian Student Christian Movement.17 She started taking part in the group’s activities, which included helping the poor and needy, and later became a travelling secretary. Her work brought her into contact with Russian refugees in towns and villages throughout France, where she met hundreds of people, many of them outcasts, suffering from poverty, alcohol addiction, resentment, and despair. She also visited shelters for Rus- sian refugees who had been diagnosed with mental illnesses.18 She truly felt a vocation to these “little ones”, as she called them. In 1924, the whole family came down with influenza: all recovered except Maria’s daughter, Nastya, who died of meningitis later that year.19 The suffering of Russians in exile and the death of her daughter made Maria aware of a new, special and all-embracing kind of motherhood, and she started to seek a more authentic and purified life, to be a mother for all who needed her maternal care. She devoted herself even more to social work and to theological writing with a social emphasis.20 Her marriage to Daniel was failing,21 however, and her true vocation in life was yet to be settled. She began to think about a new kind of community, half monastic, half fraternal, connecting spiritual life with the service of those in need. Father Sergei Bulgakov (1871-1944), who had

16 The largest and most active group, formed by Metropolitan Eulogy, placed itself under the jurisdiction of Constantinople; the second group remained under the Moscow Patriarchate. There were also a limited number of groups under the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Rus- sia. See Kateřina Bauerová and Tim Noble, “The Ways from Diaspora to Local Churches,” in: Noble, Bauerová, Noble, and Parushev, The Ways of Orthodox Theology, 207–216. 17 The Russian Christian Movement was supported by the YMCA and sought to move beyond denominational boundaries to focus on education, ecumenical activity, and social work. See Bauerová and Noble, “The Ways from Diaspora to Local Churches,” 202–207. 18 Hackel, One of Great Price, 54. Maria noticed that most patients spoke almost no French, and even worse, that some of them stopped speaking at all. She realised they were mute and had thus lost their identity. 19 Her second daughter, Gaiana, died from typhus in 1936 in post-Revolution Russia. Finally, her son Yuri died, like her, in a concentration camp. See Kateřina Bauerová, “Motherhood as a Space for the Other: A Dialogue between Mother Maria Skobtsova and Hélène Cixous,” in: Feminist Theology 26:2 (2018), 1–14. 20 In 1927, she published the two-volume Harvest of the Spirit, in which she retold the lives of the saints, especially the so-called yurodivje (Holy Fools). 21 For more see Hackel, One of Great Price, 18–19.

99 Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer Emigration as a Space for Creative Freedom: Mother Maria Skobtsova and Sister Joanna Reitlinger arrived in Paris from Prague, became her confessor and was a great support. At the time, he was dean of the newly founded St Sergius Theological Institute, the first Orthodox theological school in the West,22 and his approach to prepara- tion for ordination was very different from that of the Church in pre-revolutionary Russia. Mother Maria was supported not only by Bulgakov, but also by Metropolitan Eulogy Georgievsky (1868-1946), a bishop among the Russian diaspora in Western Europe.23 Having spent many years in exile himself, Geor- gievsky understood very well the demands of the new situation. Orthodox canon law appeared to allow divorcees to take monastic vows,24 and Metropolitan Eulogy granted Maria an ecclesiastical divorce, with her husband’s agreement. A few days after the divorce, in 1932, she was made a nun in the chapel of the St Sergius Theological Institute and given the name Maria, after Mary of Egypt. Mother Maria devoted her life to what she called “monasticism in the world,” and Metropolitan Eulogy continued to commit himself to her activities. She began to look for a house for offering hospitality, and eventually found a three- story building on the Rue de Lourmel, where many impoverished Russian refugees had settled, and later many Jews. Sister Joanna Reitlinger’s inner transformation during her journey into exile had been, like that of Mother Maria, especially influenced by her relationship with her friend and spiritual father Sergei Bulgakov,25 a friendship which would last throughout their long journeys of exile, until Bulgakov’s death. Bulgakov once described their friendship as “creation in two,”26 and he supported Joanna’s natural gifts because “out of his freedom and his respect for the individual, he never imposed his authority on his disciples.”27 They had met in the Yalta region of Crimea, in Simferopol, where Bulgakov lived from 1919 to 1922. With Bulgakov’s encouragement, Julia’s gifts blossomed.

22 Emigration posed new theological questions, and there was a pressing need to educate new priests. The seminary was therefore officially established in Paris in 1924. Bulgakov taught dogmatic theology there. 23 Georgievsky was under the Moscow patriarchate from 1921 to 1931 and 1945 to 1946, and under Constantinopole from 1931 to 1945. 24 The 117th Novel of Justinian, released on 18 December 542, included a provision for divorce if either partner in a marriage sought to embark on the monastic life. 25 For their mutual correspondace, see Julia Reitlinger and Sergei Bulgakov, Диалог художника и богослова. Дневники. Записные книжки. Письма [A conversation between an artist and a theologian: Diaries, notes and letters] (Nikeja: Moscow 2011). 26 Ibid., 137. 27 Ibid., 142.

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She painted Orthodox icons, but mainly painted small watercolours, which Bulgakov called “little candle flames” that lit up the darkness.28 He gave her his support despite the fact that her artistic style and visions were not strictly based on Orthodox iconographical rules. From Crimea, Julia moved with the Bulgakov family to Prague, thanks in part to help from the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomas G. Masaryk, who founded an organisation called “Russian Aid Action”. In the 1920s and 1930s, Czechoslovakia became known as the “Russian Oxford”,29 as much of the help for the Russian popu- lation was directed towards the field of education. It was in Prague that Julia joined the workshop established by Nikodim Kondakov, under whom she studied the history of icons and developed her vocation to iconography. Far from her homeland, she greatly admired the Old Russian icons and found in them the roots of her own tradition. From Prague, she continued with the Bulgakov family to Paris. In 1929, her vocation as an icon-painter was confirmed by a visit to an exhibition of Old Russian icons in Munich. At the same time, however, she felt the need to paint contemporary icons, to use a new and more creative style. In 1935, in the chapel of St Sergius, she became a nun and received her monastic name, Joanna, after John the Baptist.30 Even as a nun, she continued her artistic career and joined the Paris Association of Icons,31 which gathered itself around the St Sergius Theological Seminary. Her desire to paint contemporary icons was greatly influenced by the French symbolist painter Denis Morice (1870-1943), who became a significant influence on her iconographic style, especially in terms of composition and colour. Her artistic life was characterised by loyalty towards and admiration for the old masters, but at the same time by a desire to create something new and more contemporary. Like Mother Maria, she moved between her love of tradition and the freedom which led her to make innovations.

Crossing the Borders of Tradition and Innovation For Mother Maria, the historical context of emigration brought new opportunities and mysterious blessings. In a lecture in 1936, she drew comparisons and

28 Ibid., 33. 29 Masaryk was of the opinion that the Bolsheviks would not stay long in power and that it would be possible to fill the cultural-political vacuum with an intelligentsia who would have found temporary residence in Czechoslovakia. See Bauerová, “The Experience and Theology of Russian Émigrés”, 245–247. 30 Reitlinger and Bulgakov, Диалог художника и богослова. Дневники, 48. 31 Kotkavaara, Progeny of the Icon, 211–344.

101 Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer Emigration as a Space for Creative Freedom: Mother Maria Skobtsova and Sister Joanna Reitlinger contrasts between the situation of the Orthodox Church in Soviet Russia and among the diaspora.32 In Russia, the Church was persecuted, and many had fled to live in catacombs to escape being controlled by the state. But the situation for Russian émigrés brought new freedoms for the Orthodox Church, as it was now completely outside the legal structures and the tradition and history of the country.33 This was a difficult and painful place, but the Church was now beyond the influence of the power and machinery of the state and was as such able to experience a renewed sense of “lightness”.34 Nonetheless, Mother Maria felt that many Russian émigrés, torn away from their native soil, were able to bear neither the freedom nor the responsibility of exile. The church, however, had been given the great gift of freedom, to return to its roots, to the Gospel itself. This freedom brought the responsibility to speak not in the name of the great names of the past, of “Khomiakov, Soloviev or Dostoevsky,” but in the name of its own conscience.35 An inner migration was also necessary – a journey away from the wellbeing of an aes- thetic and worldly life to one that caught the winds of an absolute inner freedom: the winds of the Holy Spirit.36 Mother Maria very much perceived the diaspora as a free space for the Holy Spirit.37 There were two ways to live: the first was to remain dry and legalis- tic, the second was to walk on water, which for Maria meant taking care of those in need. But what kind of monasticism was Mother Maria to represent? In Russia, the monasteries had been swept away by the new regime; in Paris, they were yet to exist. To establish a monastery based on a typical ascetic life of prayer behind high walls seemed anachronistic to Maria.38 These were different times; this was a different context, and the people around her had different needs, had suffered from so many pains and wounds. There were two

32 The lecture was given in Paris (March 1936) at a monastic meeting chaired by Metropolitan Eulogy. See Maria Skobstova, “Nastojashcheje i budushcheye cerkvi” [The present and future Church], in: Воспоминания, статьи, очерки II [Memoirs, articles, essays] (YMCA Press: Paris 1992), 239–249. 33 Mother Maria, “Under the Sign of Our Time”, in: Skobstova, Essential Writings, 107–115, here 108. 34 See Kateřina Bauerová, “Emigration as Taking Roots and Giving Wings: Sergei Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdayev, Mother Maria Skobstova,” in: Communio Viatorum 2 (2012), 184–202. 35 Mother Maria, “Under the Sign of Our Time,” 113. 36 Ibid., 114. 37 See Bauerová, “Emigration as Taking Roots,” 184–202. 38 Mother Maria, “Toward a New Monasticism I,” in: Skobtsova, Essential Writings, 90–95.

102 Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer Emigration as a Space for Creative Freedom: Mother Maria Skobtsova and Sister Joanna Reitlinger possibilities: either deny those new needs without understanding them, or take account of this new life – innovate, create a new tradition. Here was the dif- ference between the traditionalists and the innovators.39 Seeking to preserve the old, the traditionalists cannot create anything new; the innovators, on the other hand, who have no interest in preserving the past, organically create new life and new tradition as it is simply impossible to ignore the life of the new context. Mother Maria considered herself an innovator and called for a new monasticism which would fight for its core beliefs and principles with less emphasis on external form: “We cannot obey certain petrified rites and slowly forget the reason for them.”40 Mother Maria represents, therefore, a new kind of monasticism: monasticism in the city, where the church community is the whole world and the sacraments are a sister and a brother.41 In Paris, the monastery came to mean city streets rather than high walls. She called for a Gospel-based monasticism where the vow of non-possession renounced even the comfort of a traditional monastery and rooted itself in loving service of the suffering neighbour. To offer oneself is the path of Jesus Christ. In ascending to heaven, Christ did not take the Church with him but left it here in the world, within the confines of history. Christ has given the whole of the world and its history to the Church. There is no dualism of the world and the Church. Monasticism does not mean flight from the evil world: The Church is here to transform the world which is present to us. Joanna Reitlinger speaks of tradition and innovation in the context of iconography.42 She was well versed in the artistic methods of her own time, and as a nun she understood the language of the iconographic tradition into which she was born. She did not seek to escape from her tradition but believed in the power of human creativity and in the inspiration conditioned by her theological belief in the “sophianity” of the world,43 based on its symbolic character in

39 Ibid., 93. 40 Ibid. 41 Michael Plekon, “The Sacraments of the Brother/Sister: The Lives and Thought of Mother Maria Skobtsova and Paul Evdokimov,” in: St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 49:3 (2005), 313–334. 42 For more on Sister Joanna’s approach to tradition, see Kateřina Bauerová, “Tradition as Sym- bolically Mediated: Response to Aristotle Papanikolaou’s Paper,” in: St Vladimir’s Theologi- cal Quarterly 59:1 (2015), 105–111. 43 The term “sophianity” comes from the cosmology of Father Sergei Bulgakov, and presents the idea that Sophia (Holy Wisdom) is present in the world and reveals its ideal entelechia. See Bauerová, “The Mysticism of Pan-unity,” 157–199.

103 Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer Emigration as a Space for Creative Freedom: Mother Maria Skobtsova and Sister Joanna Reitlinger which visible reality expresses what is invisible. She saw (figurative) art as speaking visibly about this invisibility.44. As such, it belonged to the sphere of human co-creativity with God, whereby artists reveal the original beauty of the world. If we love God and love icons, we also love the world and art.45 Artists thus participate in the iconisation of the world as they reveal this beauty. This is why for Sister Joanna, following icon-painting tradition did not con- sist merely in copying and following the iconographic rules of those who had gone before, but in using inspiration, which comes, in her view, from the Holy Spirit.46 She was aware that tradition is not possible without respect for our ancestors, but this respect meant seeing their visions rather than copying the features of a world that is very different from ours. For Sister Joanna, tradition is not simply a personal activity, but represents “the profound communal (соборное) creativity of all humankind,”47 which is rooted in love. Based on this belief, that creativity and inspiration belong to the sphere of human cooperation with God, she developed, in exile, a new and creative form of icon- painting which included elements from the Symbolists. On the one hand she was criticised for her free style and for not following iconographic rules, but on the other this approach brought a fresh, creative and innovative turn in icon-painting which enriched many liturgical places as well as spiritual and ecclesial life.48

Conclusion The historical examples of the lives of Mother Maria and Sister Joanna demonstrate that forced exile brought about not only losses but also new opportunities. Their realisation of an authentic and innovative spiritual journey within the Orthodox Church was made possible by two main factors. The first of these was their dynamic understanding of Church tradition as a living stream rooted in the past, rather than a dying body clinging desperately to past forms

44 Like Bulgakov, Sister Joanna too excludes naturalism and realism as they do not depict the ideal image but attempt to copy the real one. See Reitlinger and Bulgakov, Диалог художника и богослова, 146–147. 45 Ibid., 153. 46 Ibid., 144. 47 Ibid., 153. 48 In 1946 Sister Joanna decorated the chapel of St Basil the Great in London, which belongs to the fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius. In 1947 she decorated the main Orthodox church of St Cyril and St Methodius in Prague. Between 1947 and 1948 she painted the iconostasis in the chapel of the Holy Spirit in Medzilaborce, Slovakia.

104 Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer Emigration as a Space for Creative Freedom: Mother Maria Skobtsova and Sister Joanna Reitlinger that have lost all meaning; tradition must be understood anew in the given historical and cultural context and according to the authentic vision of every person in that particular time and space. In considering exile as a space for new possibilities, rather than relying on the dictates of the theological and ecclesiastical authorities of their homeland, Mother Maria and Sister Joanna sought their own authentic voice within the Orthodox Church in exile – yet still with some connection to the past. Such an understanding of Church tradition was central to the development of their new Orthodox identity in exile. Within their new context, one in which the Orthodox Church was experiencing juridical and geographical fragmenta- tion, Mother Maria and Sister Joanna looked for a new Orthodox identity, which for each of them meant gradually letting go of the connection between their identities as Russian nationals and as members of the Orthodox Church. Loosening those ties set them free to transform their personal identity and integrate it with their Orthodox identity. As a mother, Mother Maria became a spiritual mother for all those in need; as an artist, Sister Joanna wedded her own artistic vision to the traditional style of icon-painting. This new authentic voice and Orthodox identity, created by a combination of geographical exile and an inner migration of the self, led in turn to the birth of new and innovative approaches within the Orthodox Church in exile. Unable to follow the monastic tradition behind the high walls of a monastery so typical of Russia, Mother Maria went back to the Bible, especially the two great commandments to love God and neighbour, and founded a new type of monasticism – monasticism in the city – in which the community, the church, was now the streets of Paris and extended to the whole world; the sacraments were no longer ministered in a church building but in the hearts of a sister and a brother. For Mother Maria, this was true monastic asceticism, and it meant not rejecting the world but embracing it. Sister Joanna deeply appreciated the ancient style and tradition of Byzantine iconography but was not content to remain within it. Rather, she re-imagined the old images, incorporating elements of the Sym- bolists, and in so doing gave birth to the revivalist tradition of icon-painting of the St Sergius Theological Institute, in which rather than following traditional iconographic rules, iconography sought the life-giving spiritual experience of innovation. The second factor that enabled these two women to realise their innovative spiritual journeys was their taking into exile the theological methods of the nineteenth-century Russian religious renewal with its emphasis on a return to biblical and patristic sources and an integral understanding of knowledge.

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In such an understanding, mystical experience is not divorced from rationality but is the basis of the holistic view of the human person that stems from the biblical teaching that human beings are made in God’s image and likeness.49 This teaching was developed by the first generation of theologians and Russian religious philosophers in exile, such as Sergei Bulgakov, who was not only a professor of dogmatic theology at the St Sergius Theological Seminary in Paris but also a spiritual father of many, among whom were Mother Maria and Sister Joanna.50 God’s image is the primordial anthropological identity and is given to human beings so they might live a life of creativity. According to their free will, people can either reveal that image or obscure it. This paradisiacal potential was given to every person so they might manifest their full humanity, but it can be realised only in a relationship with God, other people, and the whole of creation, and not if it becomes closed off within itself. Real- ising the image means not the denial of individuality but rather its fulfilment in the harmony of human relationships. The creative potential of God’s image exists within every person. People are not meant to copy like machines, therefore, and this fact extends to their life within the body of the Church. Such a theological notion of a human being was not only a rational theological pre- supposition but an integral part of the two women’s spiritual journey, which is why Bulgakov, for example, supported their natural gifts. An integral understanding of the human person, of spiritual daughters, played a significant role in the realisation of their authentic spiritual journeys. Bringing with them into exile the desire to grasp their faith anew by building on traditional and ancient sources and developing them into new forms, Mother Maria and Sister Joanna typify the first generation of Russian émigrés in the West. They demonstrate the possibility of a plurality of voices within the Orthodox Church, whereby Orthodox identity is not always or only a national identity but looks for a more open identity that accepts otherness and is supportive of personal spiritual experience. More generally, in today’s world of ever-increasing migration, they exemplify the ability to take innovative steps in the faith while staying rooted in the richness of one’s tradition. As we have seen, their migration was not only geographical but personal and took place within them. To live in exile, to live as a foreigner, means to live as a

49 The concept of integral knowledge was formulated by the Slavophiles, especially Ivan Kireyevsky. See Parush Parushev, “The Slavophiles and Integral Knowledge,” in: Noble, Bauerová, Noble and Parushev, Wrestling with the Mind of the Fathers, 121–155. 50 Bauerová, “The Mysticism of Pan-unity,” 184–193.

106 Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer Emigration as a Space for Creative Freedom: Mother Maria Skobtsova and Sister Joanna Reitlinger

“subject in process.” The state of being a “pilgrimage subject” who must undergo the migration of the self is a metaphor for the overcoming of boundaries, not by relying on the security of rules and established authorities, but by looking to one’s own sense of responsibility and creative potential. This possibility stems from the anthropological understanding of human beings as made in the image of God, from the paradisiacal image of each person not as a passive individual but as part of a people who actively co-create with God on their own authentic journeys. These are journeys made not in isolation, but in harmony with God, with other people and with the whole of creation.

Mgr. Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer, Th.D is a researcher and lecturer in the Ecu- menical Institute of the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague. Her main research has been related to the aspect of symbolic mediation in Western sacramental and feminist theology, dealing especially with the corporality of Christian faith including the bodily existence of people and criticism of meta- physical dualism. Her doctoral thesis, The Concept of Symbol in Louis-Marie Chau- vet, was published in Brno in 2010. She teaches Western and Eastern hermeneutics, systematic theology, the history of doctrine and Christian spirituality in relationship with other religious traditions. Between 2011 and 2015 she was a member of the Symbolic Mediation of Wholeness in Western Orthodoxy research project, under which she published articles and collective monographs dealing with Russian religious philosophy, sophiology, and anthropology within Orthodox theology. Collec- tive monographs include Ivana Noble at al., The Ways of Orthodox Theology in the West (2015) and Ivana Noble at al., Wrestling with the Mind of the Fathers (2015).

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