Art and Spirituality of the Russian Orthodox Tradition ACOT, VU University Amsterdam

This lecture consists of an overview of Orthodox monasticism. The following
subjects are treated:
- Judaism: Essenes
- Celibacy in the Gospels and the Early Church
- The Egyptian Desert, Palestine and Syria
- Mount Athos
- Monasticism in the Slavic world
- St Seraphim of Sarov
- The elders of Optina
- Contemporary Monasticism

One of the features of Russian Orthodox Christianity has been the
prominence of monasteries. Soon after the conversion of Russia there was
founded the monastery of the Caves in Kiev; later on, there was established
by St Sergei of Radonezh the famous monastery of the Trinity (now called the
Sergei-Trinity Lavra) outside Moscow. Monasticism had been a feature of
Christianity since the fourth century. At the heart of monasticism is
commitment to the life of prayer, and in the earliest texts onwards we find
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discussions about how to maintain a life of continual prayer. In fourteenthcentury
Byzantium there arose a controversy about the so-called hesychast
monks (‘hesychast’ being derived from the Greek hesychia, quietness) about
claims that, through continual prayer, there could be attained the vision of the
uncreated light of the Godhead itself. Hesychast monks were important in
the bringing of Christianity to the region around Moscow in the fourteenth
century (the circle of St Sergei). The notion of contemplating the uncreated
light of the Godhead is manifest in iconography, especially of the
Transfiguration of the Lord, about this time. The hesychast monks came to be
associated with a practice of inward prayer (‘prayer of the heart’) achieved by
practice of the Jesus Prayer (‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on
me, a sinner’): a prayer that became very popular in nineteenth-century
Russia, as the famous book, The Way of the Pilgrim, bears witness.

This lecture presents a survey of the history of Russian polyphonic choral
music, from the earliest experiments at two-and three-part writing in the 17th
century to the work of contemporary composers such as Dimitriev and Genin,
and including the repertories influence variously by Polish-Ukrainian music
and German and Italian styles, the change in approach heralded by
Tchaikovsky's Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, and the work of the "Moscow
School" and the achievements of Rachmaninov.

It is claimed by the Russian Primary Chronicle that it was the experience of the
Divine Liturgy in the church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople that
persuaded the ambassadors of Prince Vladimir to recommend the adoption of
Orthodoxy: ‘we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth… We only
know that there God dwells among men’. The experience of the Divine
Liturgy remains central to Orthodox experience, not least Russian Orthodox
experience. First of all, the liturgy takes place in a sacred space; the church
building is divided by an iconostasis which separates the sanctuary (called
the altar) from the nave, the clergy from the people. ‘Separates’—but also
links and unites: the deacon, in particular, passes between the nave and the
altar, and in singing the litanies, carries the prayers of the people into the
presence of God. Secondly, the differentiated space makes possible a
movement of symbolism—from nave to altar, from earth to heaven. The 5
movement of the liturgy—processions, incensing—draws together heaven
and earth. There is a sense of rhythm about the liturgy, which one very soon
picks up. The music—sung by human voices, without instruments; that is, by
‘instruments’ made by God in his image—the colour of the icons and the
vestments, the splendour of the sacred vessels: in all of this, the material
world is affirmed and offered to God. Thirdly, the splendour manifest in this
way is the splendour of the Kingdom of God, of the Heavens, which is
proclaimed by the priest at the beginning of the Liturgy—‘Blessed is the
Kingdom of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit’—and which recurs
throughout the liturgy, until before Holy Communion, we beg to be
‘remembered in the Kingdom’ along with the repentant thief.

After a general introduction to the course and information about the practical
arrangements, the following subjects will be treated:
- The early church and the Eastern Orthodox Church
- The Roman Empire and Byzantium
- The Old (Church) Slavic language and Russian
- Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets
- The texts initially translated from Greek into Old Slavic
- Some samples of Slavic writing: inscriptions on icons

One of the features of Russian Orthodoxy that most strikes Westerners when
they encounter Orthodoxy is the prominence of icons, or sacred images. The
Russians inherited from Byzantine Orthodoxy a sense of the importance of
images in worship, both public and private, that had been enhanced by the 3
iconoclast controversy of the eighth to ninth centuries, and the final defeat of
iconoclasm. This controversy, far more important in Byzantium than in the
West, made icons a required aspect of Orthodox practice. It also involved the
acceptance of an understanding of the place of religious images as ways of
disclosing invisible realities, but also a way in which the material found an
important place in religious practice, and indeed came to be held to be
entailed by God’s assumption of humanity in the Incarnation. Because of the
‘linguistic filter’, all of this became hugely important within the world of Slav
Orthodoxy. Orthodox devotion revolved around icons, and, as in Byzantium,
they played a role in the defence of the Orthodox nations against attack.
Legends traced icons back to the time of Christ; the Vladimir icon of the
Mother of God being claimed as the work of St Luke the Evangelist (a claim
Byzantine had made for the Hodigitria icon of the Mother of God). Particular
icons—especially of the Mother of God—were associated with different places
and had their own cult. Icons also provided a way of linking the public
worship of the Church with the private devotions of Orthodox Christians:
homes came to have a small domestic shrine, the ‘beautiful corner’, krasny
ugol.