Mount Athos And Russia 1016 2016

This book is about the Russian contribution to monasticism on Mount Athos and the Athonite contribution to Russian spirituality. It marks the millennium of the Russian presence on Mount Athos. The authors are theologians, churchmen, and historians, all experts on the Holy Mountain, who draw on source materials, some rare and hard to access.

During the Nineteenth-Century a major revival in religious pilgrimage took place across Europe. This phenomenon was largely started by the rediscovery of several holy burial places such as Assisi, Milano, Venice, Rome and Santiago de Compostela, and subsequently developed into the formation of new holy sites that could be visited and interacted with in a wholly Modern way. This uniquely wide-ranging collection sets out the historic context of the formation of contemporary European pilgrimage in order to better understand its role in religious expression today. Looking at both Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Europe, an international panel of contributors analyse the revival of some major Christian shrines, cults and pilgrimages that happened after the rediscovery of ancient holy burial sites or the constitution of new shrines in locations claiming apparitions of the Virgin Mary. They also shed new light on the origin and development of new sanctuaries and pilgrimages in France and the Holy Land during the Nineteenth Century, which led to fresh ways of understanding the pilgrimage experience and had a profound effect on religion across Europe. This collection offers a renewed overview of the development of Modern European pilgrimage that used intensively the new techniques of organisation and travel implemented in the Nineteenth-Century. As such, it will appeal to scholars of Religious Studies, Pilgrimage and Religious History as well as Anthropology, Art, Cultural Studies, and Sociology.

The Handbook takes as its subject the complex phenomenon of Christian monasticism. It addresses, for the first time in one volume, the multiple strands of Christian monastic practice. Forty-four essays consider historical and thematic aspects of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and Anglican traditions, as well as contemporary 'new monasticism'. The essays in the book span a period of nearly two thousand years—from late ancient times, through the medieval and early modern eras, on to the present day. Taken together, they offer, not a narrative survey, but rather a map of the vast terrain. The intention of the Handbook is to provide a balance of some essential historical coverage with a representative sample of current thinking on monasticism. It presents the work of both academic and monastic authors, and the essays are best understood as a series of loosely-linked episodes, forming a long chain of enquiry, and allowing for various points of view. The authors are a diverse and international group, who bring a wide range of critical perspectives to bear on pertinent themes and issues. They indicate developing trends in their areas of specialisation. The individual contributions, and the volume as a whole, set out an agenda for the future direction of monastic studies. In today's world, where there is increasing interest in all world monasticisms, where scholars are adopting more capacious, global approaches to their investigations, and where monks and nuns are casting a fresh eye on their ancient traditions, this publication is especially timely.

Taken together, these two volumes collect seventy-five essays written by Professor Andrew Louth over a forty-year period. Louth's contribution to scholarship and theology has always been significant, and these essays have been collected from journals and edited collections, many of which are difficult to access, and are here made available over two thought-provoking and wide-ranging volumes. Volume II collects essays on a variety of theological topics, arranged chronologically, showing the development of Louth's thought since 1978. Throughout this collection the nature of 'theology', as it is understood within Orthodox tradition, is a constant concern. These essays offer distinctive reflections on categories — such as 'development of doctrine' — that have become foundational in modern western thought but which must be viewed rather differently from an Orthodox perspective. The legacy of modern Russian Orthodox thought — especially the key figures of the twentieth century Russian diaspora — is under constant consideration, and forms a constant dialogue partner.

Modern theological engagements on deification have undergone two major paradigm shifts. First, the study of deification shifted from the periphery of theological discourse to its center. For Adolf von Harnack, deification was a pagan import that fatally corrupted and distorted the Gospel message of salvation. In response, the positive retrieval of the concept of deification belongs to the early years of the twentieth century. By the 1910s in Russian religious thought and by the 1930s in much Roman Catholic theology, deification had become a magnet concept attracting attention from many different viewpoints. The second important shift relates to how deification is characterized. Recent studies question the exclusively 'Eastern' character of deification and draw attention to the engagements of this theme in Latin patristic and later Western Christian sources. Reassessing the evidence for these two major shifts, The Oxford Handbook of Deification comprehensively explores the points of convergence and difference on the constitutive elements of deification in different traditions, and offers a foundation for ecumenical and interreligious dialogues. The Handbook's first part analyzes the cultural and scriptural roots of deification; the second part explores the most significant historical contributions to the understanding of deification in the early, medieval, and modern periods; the third part develops systematic connections. Readers will discover a surprizing breadth, depth, and diversity of theologies of deification in Christian traditions. Throughout the Handbook, leading scholars in the field of Deification Studies propose vital new insights from a variety of perspectives for this central mystery at the heart of the Christian faith.

Norman Russell's innovative study offers fresh insights into the developing concepts of theosis across Eastern and Western traditions.

The Aegean Sea laps the shores of the Holy Mountain of Athos, a self-governing monastic republic on a peninsula in Northern Greece. Twenty ruling monasteries comprise the republic; one of those is the monastery of St Panteleimon, where services are conducted in Slavonic. It has become known as the Russian monastery on Mt. Athos.St Panteleimon, fully restored in recent years, can accommodate up to 5,000 men, reflecting the scale of the settlement at its apogee in the nineteenth century, prior to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 it has experienced a strong revival and is now one of the most numerous of the twenty. The vast buildings and its sketes and dependencies seen today are really only a reflection of the history of the past two centuries.In this first comprehensive account of the monastery in the English language, that stretches back more than one thousand years, Nicholas Fennell has drawn from previously inaccessible archival materials in gathering the wealth of information he shares in these pages. The history of the community is seen to interact with the wider worlds of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires and the modern nation state of Greece, together with that of a Russian homeland whose political character is constantly evolving. It covers the distinct phases in this history: From the tenth to the twelfth centuries when Russian Athonites inhabited the ancient Russian Lavra of the Mother of God, known as Xylourgou; through the six hundred years from the mid-twelfth to the mid-eighteenth century, when the monastery of St Panteleimon was commonly referred to as Nagorny or Old Mountain Rusik; and into the most recent 250 years with their fluctuating fortunes and the questioning of its ethnic identity. Themes explored include the Pan-Orthodox ideal, the role of money and political pressure, sanctity and heroism in adversity, ethnic relations, and the importance of historical memory and precedent.

Explores the role played by Athos in the spread of Orthodoxy and Orthodox monasticism throughout Eastern Europe and beyond.