The Public Image of Eastern Orthodoxy : : France and Russia, 1848–1870 / / Heather L. Bailey.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2020
• VerfasserIn: Bailey, Heather L.,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2020]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: NIU Series in Orthodox Christian Studies
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (312 p.)

Focusing on the period between the revolutions of 1848-1849 and the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), The Public Image of Eastern Orthodoxy explores the circumstances under which westerners, concerned about the fate of the papacy, the Ottoman Empire, Poland, and Russian imperial power, began to conflate the Russian Orthodox Church with the state and to portray the church as the political tool of despotic tsars.As Heather L. Bailey demonstrates, in response to this reductionist view, Russian Orthodox publicists launched a public relations campaign in the West, especially in France, in the 1850s and 1860s. The linchpin of their campaign was the building of the impressive Saint Alexander Nevskey Church in Paris, consecrated in 1861. Bailey posits that, as the embodiment of the belief that Russia had a great historical purpose imextricably tied to Orthodoxy, the Paris church both reflected and contributed to the rise of religious nationalism in Russia that followed the Crimean War. At the same time, the confrontation with westerners' negative ideas about the Eastern Church fueled a reformist spirit in Russia while contributing to a better understanding of Eastern Orthodoxy in the West.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Notes on Terminology and Transliteration -- Introduction -- 1. Roman Catholicism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Russophobia in France, 1830–1856 -- 2. The Archpriest as Publicist and Polemicist -- 3. The “Byzantine Firework” of Paris -- 4. A Spectacular Success: The Paris Church, the Russian Orthodox Press, and the Public Image of Orthodoxy -- 5. The Church Chained to the Throne of the “Czar” -- 6. Guettée, Vasiliev, L’Union chrétienne, and the Public Image of Orthodoxy -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index