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4.1 - The Saint

from History 4 - Heroes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 December 2024

By
Sergey Ivanov
Edited by
Simon Franklin ,
Rebecca Reich  and
Emma Widdis
Simon Franklin
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Rebecca Reich
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Emma Widdis
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

Translated Byzantine lives of saints occupied considerable space in the hagiographic corpus of Rus and medieval Russia. But original (non-translated) vitae differ significantly from their Greek models in several respects: the very causes of their subjects’ sanctity (the Rus corpus emphasises saintly princes and founders of monasteries); their extremes of self-mortification (as in the case of Varlaam of Keret); and the extravagance of their feats (such as those of Andrew of Crete, or Petr and Fevroniia). Compared to Byzantine hagiography, the Lives of holy fools are overrepresented in the repertoire of medieval Rus, while female saints are underrepresented in it. In the modern era, Russian literature has drawn heavily on the medieval vitae. This tradition became pronounced in the mid-nineteenth century, but communist writers of the twentieth century also fashioned their heroes in the hagiographic mould.

Keywords

HagiographysaintvitaLifereclusetranslationByzantium
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge History of Russian Literature , pp. 683 - 698
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Further Reading

Alissandratos, Julia, ‘Hagiographical commonplaces and medieval prototypes in N. G. Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done?’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 26 (1982), 103–17.Google Scholar
Alissandratos, Julia, ‘New approaches to the problem of identifying the genre of the Life of Julijana Lazarevskaja’, Cyrillomethodianum 7 (1983), 235–44.Google Scholar
Alissandratos, Julia, ‘Leo Tolstoy’s “Father Sergius” and the Russian hagiographical tradition’, Cyrillomethodianum 8–9 (1984–5), 149–63.Google Scholar
Alissandratos, Julia, ‘A stylization of hagiographical composition in Nicolay Leskov’s “Singlethought” (Odnodum)’, Slavic and East European Journal 27 (1983), 416–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arndt, Charles, ‘Making saints out of soldiers: Nikolaj Leskov’s “Kadetskii monastyr'” and hagiographization of the recent past’, Russian Literature 90 (2017), 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Børtnes, Jostein, Visions of Glory: Studies in Early Russian Hagiography, trans. Jostein Børtnes and Paul L. Nielsen (Oslo: Solum Forlag, 1988).Google Scholar
Flath, Carol A., ‘The Passion of Dmitrii Karamazov’, Slavic Review 58 (1999), 584–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Adrienne M., ‘The Lives and deaths of a Soviet saint in the post-Soviet period: The case of Zoia Kosmodem'ianskaia’, Canadian Slavonic Papers 53 (2011), 273–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahla, Elina, Life as Exploit: Representations of Twentieth-Century Saintly Women in Russia (Helsinki: Kikimora Publications, 2007).Google Scholar
Kobets, Svitlana, ‘The subtext of Christian asceticism in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’, Slavic and East European Journal 42 (1998), 661–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linner, Sven, Starets Zosima in “The Brothers Karamazov”: A Study in the Mimesis of Virtue (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1975).Google Scholar
Walsh, Harry H., and Alessi, Paul, ‘The “Apophthegmata patrum” and Tolstoy’s “Father Sergius”’, Comparative Literature Studies 19 (1982), 1–10.Google Scholar
Ziolkowski, Margaret, Hagiography and Modern Russian Literature. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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