Academic literature on the topic 'Orthodox Community of Saint Andrew'

This article contradicts some historians, researchers or professors claim that there is no evidence to prove the presence of the Saint Apostle Andrew in Dobrogea. Researchers of history know that some sources are written, direct, and others unwritten. Undoubtedly, the origin of Romanian Orthodox Church is apostolic, due to the missionary activity of Saint Andrew the Apostle on the territory of Dobrogea district.

The essay argues that Old Belief did not emerge as a popular movement giving voice to the aspirations of ordinary Muscovites but rather as an elite culture that drew its inspiration from erudite churchmen closely affiliated with the Kremlin. The popularization of Old Belief occurred only during the last two decades of the seventeenth century, and was not completed even until the third decade of the eighteenth century. Most important in this process – which one might call the confessionalization of Old Belief – were the systematic dissemination of manuscripts, the canonization of Old Believer saints (such as the martyred Avvakum), and the development of an efficient school system. The author draws attention to the little-studied fact that Old Believers – both the founding fathers of the 1650s and eighteenth-century community leaders such as Andrei Denisov – drew inspiration from Ukrainian Orthodox models: they assimilated ideas from polemical texts against the Union of Brest (such as the idea of the Antichrist) and adopted the teaching methods of the Ukrainian seminary school which Denisov and other Old Believer intellectuals observed while studying at the Kievan Theological Academy.

Abstract Slava or Krsna lava is the Serbian Orthodox celebration of a family’s patron saint on a given day of the year. During the decades of Socialist Yugoslavia (1943–1992), it was confined to the private sphere only. Since the 1960s, there is a sizeable group of Yugoslav or Serbian immigrants in Sweden, and the Serbian Orthodox Church in Sweden claims 40,000 members. The article is based on eleven semi-structured interviews with immigrants who have started celebrating the Slava in Sweden. We identified four frames of interpretation used in order to provide the ritual with meaning: Orthodoxy, family, ethnicity, and local community. A closer discussion of three cases illustrates different ways of finding a balance between Slava’s possible meanings. The ways of celebrating display individual variation and varying influence of the culture and values of the host society.

Octoechos is not merely a musical manual in everyday use during the service in Orthodox Church, but also a comprehensive anthology of church poetry. It contains poetical works of great Byzantine poets, such as John of Damascus, Joseph the Hymnographer, Andrew of Crete. The use of Octoechos during the service is strictly regulated by Typicon. After accepting the Orthodox rite, the Slavs were acquainted with Octoechos which has undoubtedly made a great impression on the attentive audiences present at the service. Octoechos has also influenced the work of medieval Serbian hymnographers all of whom were, as it is well known, pious men. The influence of the poetics typical of hymns of the Octoechos has already been present in the Akoluthia to St. Simeon written by St. Sava. In the hymnographical work of Theodosius this influence is even more present, especially in his Canons on the eight modes (echoi) that follow the pattern of the supplicatory canons of the Octoechos. Ephraim, who was the Serbian patriarch in two turns (1375-1379, 1389-1392), wrote his church hymns and prayers following those of the Octoechos. Ephraim composed his stichera dedicated to Christ and Theotokos following the regular change of tones of the Octoechos. The spirit of Octoechos has also marked the work of the last Serbian anonymous hymnographers who wrote Akoluthia to the Translation of the holy relics of Saint Apostle Luke to Serbia and the Paraklisis to St. Luke (mid 15th century).

The paper investigates the relationship between the state, society and Serbian Orthodox Church in 19th and 20th century, considered from the standpoint of national identity, as a basic principle of contemporary cultural policies. The aim of the paper is to identify similarities and differences in three intersecting points in time in the relationship between state and church, as well as look at possibilities and obstacles for their cooperation in the context of democratic transition and consolidation of society in Serbia, following the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The theoretical exploration starts from the position that Orthodox Christianity, as it is ?dependent on the state and concept of national church?, is a source of nationalism and obstacle to democracy, based on which a number of intellectuals and civil organizations in Serbia are against acceptance of Orthodox Christianity as an identifier of national identity of post-totalitarian society in Serbia. Qualitative empirical research that investigated the starting theoretical assumptions is based on the case study of Pcinja county in the South East of Serbia, which is a religious, cultural and political centre of this part of Serbia, with monastery Saint Prohor Pcinjski located in its centre. The results of research demonstrated that repressive political factors supressed Orthodox Christianity from the public life, thus there is no empirical evidence of ?Orthodox nationalism?, and instead we can observe that throughout 20th century the church was a victim of ideologies of Yugoslavia, Communist atheism and ethnical nationalisms of the newly established countries in the region. In Serbia, this type of relationship towards Orthodox Christianity moved from former party state that dominated the society into a section of civil society, whose political activities tend to overtake the role of former Communist party. This part of civil society, as it is burdened with totalitarian heritage itself, bases its political attitudes on the empirically unfounded theoretical speculations, which is why, despite its efforts, it represents a challenge to the democratization of inherited post-totalitari an cultural system and an obstacle for Serbian Orthodox Christian community to realize its democratic right to free expression of values and ideas in which it believes.

Once called “the priest-ridden province,” the transformations brought about by the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s left the churches in Quebec deserted, while the idea of a secular Quebec became part of the public discourse about Quebec identity. Lacking the financial support of an active community, many Catholic churches were demolished or repurposed. They were thus transformed into residential or institutional spaces, entering what might be conceptualized as a secular order. Some churches managed to delay this major transformation by sharing their space with another religious community. This is the case of a Catholic church located in Montreal that we call Saint-Pierre’s Church. Today, the old building of Saint-Pierre’s Church accommodates two Christian communities: one is French-speaking Catholic and the other is Romanian Orthodox. At first glance, no tensions seem to trouble their coexistence. However, people’s perspectives of religious artifacts depict a slightly different image. Starting from participant observation and interviews carried out in 2016 and 2017 with members of both communities, we use the material religion framework to examine the power of materiality to invoke people’s emotions and to tell a story. The material religion framework allowed us to explore how the understanding of the shared place is linked to the dynamics and the contingencies of each community, and how the transformation of religious space happens in a rapidly changing context to which traditional majoritarian religion is attempting to adjust.

Saint Mark the Evangelist (Cyrene around 10 AD – Alexandria April 25th 68 AD) was a member of the Jewish tribe o Levi. He is nephew of Saint Barnabas, close associate of Saint Paul and Peter to whom he was secretary. In the New Testament he is mentioned eight times and Mary mother of John called Mark is mentioned for the ninth time. The first Christian community in Jerusalem gathered in his mother Mary’s home. According to some sources Jesus ate his last supper in Mark’s mother Mary’s house. He is worshipped by: The Roman Catholic Church, The Orthodox Church, The Coptic Church, the eastern Catholic churches, the Lutheran Church. He is multiple patron. Worship of Saint Mark the evangelist in Croats’ Christian traditional culture is reflected in legends; cathedrals and churches consecrated to that evangelist; toponyms; chrematonyms; processions and blessings of fields, crops, vineyards; folk celebrations (fairs); helping the poor; cult shrines; folk divinations and sayings; bonfires; oral lyrical poems; prayers. The paper cites the results of field research conducted from the year 1997 until the year 2016. About fifty legends, prayers, customs, rituals, processions, divinations have been originally recorded among Croatian Catholics in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia. The paper (re)constructs the life of Saint Mark the Evangelist on the basis of the New Testament, tales and legends. Further, the aim of the paper is to save from the oblivion the old legends, customs, rituals, processions, oral lyrical poems, prayers, divinations and to point out their social and aesthetic function using the multidisciplinary interpretation. Inductive-deductive method and methods of description, comparison, analysis and synthesis are used alongside the filed research work.

Twice a year, the Greek Orthodox Monastery of St. George on the island of Büyükada, off the coast of Istanbul, attracts tens of thousands of Muslim pilgrims who come to make heterogenous and inventive votive offerings. Since these visitors are not Christians, their behavior is a form of exopraxis, which is the subject of the issue of Common Knowledge in which this contribution appears. Due to its scope and dynamism, this shared pilgrimage is perhaps the most important in the contemporary religious landscape of the Middle East, but it is part of a broader ecology that includes many mausoleums of Muslim saints and other Muslim holy places visited by Christians. The rationale and logic of such exopraxes is wild hope (in the Lévi-Straussian sense of wild). Pilgrims from one religious community travel to the sacred place of another not so much for communication or contact with its patron saint—the Muslim pilgrims to Büyükada pray for help to Allah, not to St. George or Jesus—as they travel to be in a place of hope at a time of personal need. This article analyzes how the proliferation of these votive exopraxes indicates both the tenuousness of the distinction between monotheist religions and their need of each other.

Из истории традиции почитания и создания народного мемориального музея святителя Луки (Войно-Ясенецкого) в Тамбове. В статье осмысливается история создания народного мемориального музея святителя Луки (Войно-Ясенецкого) в Тамбове как логичное следствие традиции почитания святого, зародившейся ещё в момент его пребывания на тамбовской кафедре. Основной тезис исследования аргументируется фактами, выявленными в ходе изучения архивных и нарративных свидетельств. Используется также музеологическая методика, которая позволяет составить представление о тамбовском периоде жизни святителя на основе выявления и атрибуции меморий. Способом сохранения и популяризации духовного наследия святителя являются проекты, программы, гранты, конференции, экспозиции и выставки, приуроченные к знаменательным датам, связанным с периодом служения архиепископа-хирурга на тамбовской кафедре. Тамбовский период жизни архиепископа Луки (ВойноЯсенецкого) положил начало процессу возрождения церковной жизни, а также стал периодом расцвета профессиональных и духовных талантов святителя, общественного признания российским и международным сообществом. Конфликтный характер взаимоотношений тамбовского чиновничества и архиепископа расценивается как результат принципиального несходства в понимании роли Церкви в жизни народа, а также недостатком проработанности правовой основы деятельности православного духовенства в период кратковременного потепления отношений между государством и Церковью в 1943-1946 годах. Как сакральный мемориал православной истории тамбовского края нами осмысливается Покровский кафедральный собор г. Тамбова, в котором самим архиепископом были собраны святыни из многих закрывшихся храмов, где нашли приют верные последователи Патриарха Тихона, где была создана духовная среда, обеспечившая сохранность традиционной православной духовности. Создание народного музея являет следствие воли Божией о пастыре, отдавшего себя служению страдающему народу. Народнические устремления усматриваются: в выборе профессии, бескорыстии служения в госпиталях и земских больницах, сопричастности народной беде в годы многолетних ссылок и пр. На основе нарративных и архивных свидетельств уточнена и скорректирована информация, собранная первым биографом святителя - М. Поповским, посетившим Тамбов весной 1971 года. В целом, мемориализация как способ сохранения и популяризации духовного наследия является перспективной темой научного исследования. From the history of the tradition of veneration and creation of the Folk Memorial Museum of St. Luka (Vojno-Jasenetsky) in Tambov. In the article the history of creation of the Folk Memorial Museum of St. Luka (Vojno-Jasenetsky) in Tambov is analyzed as a logical consequence of the tradition of veneration of the saint, which originated at the time of his tenure in the Tambov Cathedral. The main thesis of the study is argued with the facts revealed during the study of archival and narrative evidence. A museological methodology is also used, which allows one to get an idea of the Tambov period of the saint's life on the basis of the identification and attribution of memorials. Projects, programmes, grants, conferences, expositions and exhibitions timed to commemorative dates related to the period of the archbishop's service to the Tambov Cathedral are a way to preserve and popularise the spiritual heritage of the saint. The period of life of Archbishop Luke (Voyno-Yasenetsky) in Tambov marked the beginning of the process of revival of church life, and also became a period of flourishing of professional and spiritual talents of the saint, public recognition by the Russian and international community. The conflicting nature of the relationship between the Tambov bishop and the archbishop is seen as a result of a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the Church in the life of the people, as well as a lack of a legal basis for the activities of the Orthodox clergy during the brief warming of relations between the state and the Church in 1943-1946. The sacral memorial to the Orthodox history of the Tambov region is the Intercession Cathedral in Tambov, where the holy relics were gathered by the Archbishop from many closed churches; where the devoted followers of Patriarch Tikhon found shelter; where the spiritual environment which preserved the traditional Orthodox spirituality was created. The creation of the People's Museum is the result of God's will for the pastor, who gave himself up to serve the suffering people. His people's aspirations can be seen in his choice of profession, his selfless service in hospitals and zemstvo hospitals, his involvement in the suffering of the people during the years of exile, and so on. The information collected by the first biographer of the saint, M. Popovsky, who visited Tambov in spring 1971, was specified and corrected based on narrative and archival evidence. On the whole, memorialisation as a way of preserving and popularising spiritual heritage is a promising topic of scientific research.

The article Becoming what we pray: Three images, three voices by professor Michael Plekon presents three persons who were very important for Orthodox culture, spirituality and thought — saint Seraphim of Sarov, Mother Maria Skobtsova and Paul Evdokimov. Showing the most substantial facts from their life and activity the author exhibits the real transformation, metamorphosis of their personalities, hearts and consciousnesses under the action of practice of the Jesus' Prayer or the prayer of the heart. The main aim of the article is — one can suppose — to underline the role of the Jesus' Prayer in changing people who systematically practicing it in their life, and in giving them the power to go over the stereotypes, myths and customs, even religious. The heart of the matter is emphasizing — in positive meaning — the real close union between the prayer andthe life and the relationship with neighbour. Professor Plekon stresses that “the personaland interior aspects of this prayer are never separated from liturgical prayer and ourlives”. Christians believe in salvation and resurrection of Jesus Christ and they practice the Jesus Prayer, but this prayer formula is not only devoid of life meaning formula but it is the method of changing the whole human mentality, in each everyday circumstances concerning family, marriage, work, life in monastic community, doing shopping, reading books, watching TV programs, raising children, writing the scientific articles, being in different social and cultural situations, generally — it changes all, the vision of life and the universe.

This chapter discusses Marcus Simaika's relationship with the Coptic patriarchs of his time as a member, then vice president, of the Coptic Community Council (Majlis al-Milli) for thirty-nine consecutive years. In his attempts to start a Coptic museum, which needed patriarchal approval, Simaika fought many battles and used much diplomacy and compromise in his dealings with the Coptic hierarchy. The full title of the patriarch, the leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church, is “Pope and Lord Archbishop of the Great City of Alexandria and Patriarch of all Africa on the Holy Orthodox and Apostolic Throne of Saint Mark the Evangelist, Holy Apostle and Martyr, that is in Egypt, Pentapolis, Libya, Nubia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and all Africa.” These patriarchs include Cyril IV, Cyril V, and Yohannes XIX.

This chapter discusses Marcus Simaika's role in the reformist movement within the Coptic Orthodox Church. To understand the position of the Copts in Egypt during Simaika's lifetime, it is important to revisit the year 1854, when Said Pasha, son of Muhammad Ali Pasha, became wali (viceroy) of Egypt. In that same year, Cyril IV ascended to the patriarchal throne as the 110th successor to Saint Mark. Two years later, the Hatt-i Humayon, the most important Turkish reform edict of the nineteenth century, was decreed by Sultan Abd al-Mejid I. This edict established community councils for Christian and other non-Muslim communities. Simaika became a member of the community council, or majlis milli, in 1889 and became involved in the campaign for church reform. The chapter examines Cyril V's banishment and triumphant return and the subsequent defeat of the reformist movement within the Coptic Church.

The Mazzinian movement has often been associated with radical anticlericalism, epitomized by the leader presiding over the republic that replaced papal rule in Rome in 1849. Yet, unlike many of his followers, Mazzini himself was less than an ‘anticlerical’ and in fact favoured a close relationship between politics and religion, provided the latter became the organic expression and spiritual mirror image of a democratic, non-hierarchical society. In contrast to much of the historiographical consensus, which stresses the influence of Saint-Simon, this chapter argues that Mazzini's vision incorporated features from a wider variety of cultural traditions, including Jansenism and Protestantism. In particular, during his long exile in England, the great eclectic became increasingly aware of the affinities between his project and Protestant Nonconformity. While the latter made a number of converts within the Italian émigré community in Britain, it was the less-orthodox views of the ‘Rational Dissenters’ that were most interesting to Mazzini as he tried to define his republican ideal of the relationship between church and state.