Russia and the Holy Land ■ Orthodox Missions in Palestine ■ Complete Works of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society ■ Cultural and Economic Ties between Russia and the Palestine ■ Travel Accounts and Khozdeniia All titles available at: www.idc.nl National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg Russia and the Holy Land The Holy Land has a special place in the cultural, intellectual, and political history of Russia. This collection presents a Russian tradition of its perception, comprehension, and exploration, as well as the history of the presence of Russia and Russians in the Holy Land. For more than a thousand years, the Russian Orthodox Church has been involved with apostolic and missionary ministry. This publication comprises various Orthodox missionary materials, such as spiritual monographs, missionary periodicals, travel accounts, archaeological sources, maps, and illustrations. IDC Publishers makes this indispensable source available to scholars in various disciplines: Slavic studies, History and Theology. The Pilgrimages and Journeys tourists. Accounts of journeys to the Holy Land were left by famous The first pilgrimage to the Holy City of explorers of the Orient, writers, and Jerusalem dates to the very early period statesmen, such as D.V. Dashkov, of Russian Christianity. The initiator of A.N. Murav’ev, A.S. Norov, holy pilgrimage was hegumen Daniil, V.K. Kaminskii, A. Dmitrievskii, and who visited “the Holy Sepulchre” at the A.A. Vasil’ev. dawn of the 12th century. Many people – commoners and clergymen, the wealthy The pilgrims’ descriptions of the Holy and the poor, the educated and the Land and the travelers’ accounts are the uneducated – joined one of the most important historical source for the numerous journeys to the Holy Land. studies of the spiritual life of the Their numbers steadily increased, Russian people, and of the cultural ties reaching a peak at the end of the between Russia and the Near East, the nineteenth century. The sacred journeys historical geography of Palestine and to Palestine (khozhdeniia) were led by, Jerusalem, and church archaeology. among others, hegumen Daniil (1104- 1107), Archimandrite Agrephenii (1470s), Ignathii Smol’nianin (late Religious Component of State 1400s), Hierodeacon Zosima from the Ideology Troitse-Sergiev monastery (1419-1422), the celibate priest Varsonophii (1456, The Russian land, united under the 1461-1462), and V.G. Grigorovich- power of Moscow, had a religious- Barskii (1723-1747). As a consequence symbolic image of itself as a new of the frequent religious trips, the center incarnation of the Christian Kingdom, of Slavic culture was formed in the the extension of the Roman and the Laura of the Reverend Sabba the Byzantine empires, and Moscow as the Blessed (+532) near Jerusalem. Later, it Third Rome after the fall of Otchet o russkikh sooruzheniiakh, vozdvigaemykh Constantinople. Transforming Russia became the main departure point for v Ierusalime. Sanktpeterburg, 1862. Russians setting off on a pilgrimage into the center of the Orthodox world through the Holy Land. became Russian state policy after the Romanov dynasty came to the throne. Journey”) by Daniil is the first of the In the middle of the seventeenth Travel accounts writings in this genre. Many copies century, the aspiration to form a unified have survived and it has been translated ecclesiastic space for the whole The Russian pilgrims describe in their into several foreign languages. It stands Orthodox world led to the reforms of accounts the trip itself, their out among the descriptions of that time Patriarch Nikon, during which the impressions, the Holy Places, the for its accuracy, detail, and brilliant differences between the religious rites Christian monuments, the divine literary merit, and served as an example of the Greek and of the Russian Church service, the nature of Palestine, and the for subsequent writings. In due course, were eliminated. Nikon sent the monk economic activities of the people, as khozhdeniia acquired a more pragmatic and scribe Arsenii Sukhanov to Mount well as the biblical and apocryphal character, as a result of a new type of Athos and Palestine to obtain old Greek legends, and the political events they traveler who had both commercial and manuscripts, he corrected the divine witnessed. Readings of the khozhdeniia diplomatic aims (Triphon Korobeinikov, service books, and in 1656 he founded accounts were very popular among the Vasilii Pozniakov, Vasilii Gagara, the New Jerusalem monastery on the people, and played an important role in Arsenii Sukhanov, Iona Malen’kii, etc.). banks of the Istra river as the symbolic spreading knowledge about, for In the nineteenth/early twentieth and architectural duplicate of the Holy example, religion, geography, centuries, the research journeys were City. ethnography, and history. The famous rather frequent: the Holy Land had Zhitie i Khozhdenie (“Life and become a destination for secular During the reign of Catherine II ability to honorably serve Russia’s supervision, churches were built in (1762-1796), the “Greek” theme interests in the Middle East. Among the Jaffa, on the Mount of Olives, in Ein- became the main priority of Russian successors of Bishop Porfirii were such Karem, and in Gethsemane. He was foreign policy. Such policy had always outstanding personalities as Bishop also actively involved in the had a certain ideological content: the Kyril (Naumov), a famous theologian excavations that uncovered the countries of Oriental Christianity were and Rector of the Ecclesiastic Academy Threshold of Judgement Gate. By the perceived by the Russian Empire as an in Kiev, Archimandrites Leonid eve of the First World War, there was a extension of its own world, and (Kavelin) and Anthonin (Kapustin), considerable amount of Russian therefore they needed its protection and who contributed to the Byzantine and property in Palestine: eleven churches, patronage. This matter became who Paleoslavonic studies, seventeen hotels, seven monasteries, a especially tense in the nineteenth Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern), hotel in Jerusalem, four out-patients’ century, when the conflict over the patrologist and pastorologist and clinics, etc. The Russian church in patronage of the Holy places was one of Metropolitan Nikodemos (Rotov). All Jerusalem was the largest piece of the main factors which led to the of them left an abundance of materials property in the town. Since 1856 the outbreak of the Crimean war. on, and about the study of, the history transportation of pilgrims to the Holy and the antiquities of the Holy Land. Land, and their settlement there, had In 1858, a separate Russian Consulate The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in been effected by the Russian Society of was established in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem functioned until the 1917 Steam Navigation and Trade (Russkoe Palestine Committee (1859-1864), Revolution, when its activities were obshchestvo parohodstva i torgovli, which was headed by Grand Duke suspended. ROPIT). Constantine Nikolaevich, was established to receive donations and to This collection deals with the activities help pilgrims. In 1864, the Committee Russian Achievement of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in was replaced by the Palestine Jerusalem, and with the history of its Commission, which was attached to the The results of the missionary activities relations with other government and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and whose were appreciable: lots of land was private institutions and organizations. It remit was to improve the life of bought, and many temples, monasteries, includes official and reference editions, pilgrims. hotels for pilgrims, and educational and the research and religious works of the medical institutions were built. At the heads of the missions, and biographical This collection provides the opportunity same time, the Mission promoted the material. to study in great detail both the spread of education among the local intellectual sources of the emerging Arab inhabitants, and established a state ideology and the centuries-old network of Russian schools. To list but The Imperial Orthodox Palestine history of the religious-ethnic self- a few of Father Antonin’s Society identification of the Russians of very achievements: purchases of land in different social strata – the common Hebron (including the Oak of Mambre), The Orthodox Palestine Society (later, people, the clergy, state officials, and the summit of the Mount of Olives, the Imperial Orthodox Palestine scholars – as well their attitudes toward property in Jaffa, gardens in Jericho, Society; Imperatorskoe Pravoslavnoe the problem of the Orthodoxy in the and a plot of land in Tiberias on the Palestinskoe Obshchestvo, IPPO) was Orient. shores of the Sea of Galilee, Under his established in 1882. It was chaired by The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission In 1847, six centuries after the “discovery” of the Holy Land, the Holy Synod decided to send the first Russian Ecclesiastical Mission to Jerusalem. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the official Mission in Palestine became part of the state policy of Russia. Its purpose was to offer Russian pilgrims spiritual supervision, provide assistance, and sponsor charitable and educational work among the Orthodox Arab population of Palestine and Syria, and to carry out the divine service in Church Slavonic. The Mission was guided by Archimandrite (later Bishop) Porfirii (Uspenskii), the outstanding scholar, archaeologist, and traveler. Bishop Porfirii was the first in a long line of most distinguished monks-presbyters,