A Spiritual Revolution: The Impact of Reformation and Enlightenment in Orthodox Russia

FAIN: FT-260249-18

Andrey Vyacheslavovich Ivanov
University of Wisconsin, Platteville (Platteville, WI 53818-3001)

Research and preparation of a book on religious reforms in the Russian Orthodox church (1700-1825).

The Reformation and Enlightenment undoubtedly stand out among the most formative events in the emergence of modern civilization. While much is known about the significance of these events in the history of Western societies, there is very little literature about their influences in Eastern Europe, and especially Russia. Among the existing body of knowledge, my monograph will be the first book to place Russia and its Orthodox Church in the context of the European Reformation and the subsequent European Enlightenment. The book will examine how Russia’s liberalizing church hierarchy and monarchs adopted Protestant and later, Enlightenment ideas to engineer radical religious and political reforms that played a fundamental role in the origins of Russia’s empire during the eighteenth century.

Associated Products

A Spiritual Revolution: The Impact of Reformation and Enlightenment in Orthodox Russia (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: A Spiritual Revolution: The Impact of Reformation and Enlightenment in Orthodox Russia
Author: Andrey Ivanov
Abstract: His current book project analyzes the influence of Reformation and Enlightenment ideas on the Russian Orthodox Church during the era of great reforms of the long eighteenth century (1700-1825). Drawing on previously overlooked sources in Halle, Wolfenbüttel, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rome, and elsewhere, his study will place Russia, its empire, and the Orthodox Church into the wider intellectual continuum of the European Reformations, early modern confessionalization, and the early religious and secular Enlightenments that were so fundamental to the rise of modernity on the European continent and beyond. Dr. Ivanov has published his research in the Sixteenth Century Journal, Journal of Early Modern History, and Vivliofika, as well as in other publications. He is a recipient of several doctoral and postdoctoral awards, including grants and fellowships from the Institute for Research in the Humanities at UW-Madison, the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, the Edward J. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Josephine de Karman Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation at Yale, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is currently the Vice-President of the Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies Association.
Date Range: 2018
Primary URL: https://ndias.nd.edu/events/2018/09/11/106289-andrey-ivanov-a-spiritual-revolution-the-impact-of-reformation-and-enlightenment-in-orthodox-russia/

A Spiritual Revolution: The Impact of Reformation and Enlightenment in Orthodox Russia, 1700–1825 (Book)
Title: A Spiritual Revolution: The Impact of Reformation and Enlightenment in Orthodox Russia, 1700–1825
Author: Andrey Vyacheslavovich Ivanov
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=299327906
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry (299327906)
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 299327906

A Spiritual Revolution: The Impact of Reformation and Enlightenment in Orthodox Russia (Book)
Title: A Spiritual Revolution: The Impact of Reformation and Enlightenment in Orthodox Russia
Author: Ivanov, Andrey V.
Abstract: The ideas of the Protestant Reformation, followed by the European Enlightenment, had a profound and long-lasting impact on Russia’s church and society. Though the Orthodox Church was often assumed to have been hostile toward outside influence, Andrey V. Ivanov’s study argues that the institution in fact embraced many Western ideas, thereby undergoing what some observers called a religious revolution. Embedded with lively portrayals of historical actors and vivid descriptions of political details, A Spiritual Revolution is the first large-scale effort to fully identify exactly how Western thought influenced the Russian Church. These new ideas played a foundational role in the emergence of the country as a modernizing empire and the rise of the Church hierarchy as a forward-looking agency of institutional and societal change. Ivanov addresses this important but often neglected subject and places Orthodoxy within the much wider European and global continuum of religious change.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5836.htm
Access Model: print, e-book; open access application to be decided by publisher
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780299327903
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Prizes

Early Slavic Studies Book Prize
Date: 12/3/2021
Organization: Early Slavic Studies Association
Abstract: Ivanov’s book demonstrates the far-reaching impact the Protestant Reformation and European Enlightenment had on Russian church and society in the eighteenth century. It is the first monograph to fully explore how Western ideas influenced the Russian Church in this period. The monograph thus makes a major contribution to the intellectual history of the Russian Orthodox Church. Supported by extensive archival work in Germany, Italy, Russia, Ukraine, and the Vatican, Ivanov makes a compelling case for the impact of the Reformation and the Enlightenment—in their diversified geographical expressions—on Orthodox Russia, challenging enduring assumptions about Russia’s isolation and cultural stagnation. Ivanov presents the reader with engaging portraits of the clerical elites—mainly Orthodox bishops from the newly incorporated Ruthenian lands—who promoted a “spiritual revolution” that altered Russia’s traditional ecclesiastical and political landscape.

Marc Raeff Prize
Date: 12/1/2021
Organization: Eighteenth Century Russian Studies Association
Abstract: In this beautifully written monograph, Ivanov disrupts prevailing narratives about the isolation and stasis of the Russian Orthodox Church in the eighteenth century, demonstrating its intense and conscious engagement with Reformation and Enlightenment ideas. The study is positioned as continuing the unfinished line of inquiry opened by Georges Florensky, who, as Ivanov notes, “described the eighteenth century as the age of Russia’s symbiotically theological conversation with European Protestantism.” Supported by extensive research, including archival work in Italy, Germany, Austria, the Vatican, Ukraine, and Russia, Ivanov vividly presents the personalities and debates within eighteenth-century Russian Orthodoxy. Readers will gain appreciation for the dynamism and daring of many clergymen during the reign of Catherine II, the complexity and nuance of theological discussions, and the subsequent end to their Western-oriented reforms with the ascent of Nicholas I.

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