Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantino-Russian Relations in the Fourteenth Century

by John Meyendorff

The history of Russia is often considered as it that immense country had always been an isolated continent. However, at the time of its rise as a nation, it was politically a province of the Mongol Empire, whose capital was in Central Asia; and ecclesiastically, it was a dependency of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, of Byzantium. This book describes the role of Byzantine (predominately ecclesiastical) diplomacy in the emergence of Moscow as the capital of Russia in the fourteenth century, and the cultural, religious, and political ties which connected the Northern periphery of the Byzantine Orthodox "Commonwealth" with its center in Constantinople. The princes of Moscow, dynastically and culturally the successors of the early medieval princes of Kiev, struggled with several competitors, particularly the Grand-Princes of Lithuania, in their attempts at "gathering the Russian lands" around themselves. Byzantium, in making Moscow the religious capital of the country, assured its eventual triumph, whereas Lithuania, and the Russian principalities which it controlled, was integrated into the powerful Roman Catholic kingdom of Poland. These events shaped the later history of Eastern Europe, and particularly the turbulent and tragic relations between Russia and Poland, Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. However, the last legacy of Byzantium to Russia was more spiritual than political. After 1370, the religious and monastic revival in Byzantium and the weakening of Mongol power provided a new orientation to the policies of the Orthodox Church in towards supra-national unity, spiritual and artistic achievements, and political reconciliation between principalities. That legacy remained alive in monastic circles of Moscovy, but was hardly reflected in political realities after 1500.

Genres: History, Russia, Theology, Church History

326 pages, Paperback

First published December 18, 1980

About the author

Fr John Meyendorff (1926-1992) was a Professor of Church History and Patristics at St Vladimir s Orthodox Theological Seminary, and a professor of History at Fordham University, NY. He was a Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities (1976-77), and a Guggenheim Fellow. He held honorary doctorates from the University of Notre Dame and General Theological Seminary, was a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, and a Senior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks. In 1990 The Diploma of Honorary Member of the Leningrad Theological Academy was bestowed upon him.

Reviews

[Lily · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

one of the most niche books i’ve ever read and i would’ve benefited a lot going into this with better knowledge of pre-tsar russia and also byzantine and golden horde history buuut google and context clues got me through.

i would give this a 3/5 just because it’s a hard thing to judge but i award it an extra half star because this guy has got to be pretty great at his craft to keep me engaged enough to read most of this in chunks of 4-5 incredibly dense pages at a time before bed and still keep me engaged and not too confused all the way though on one of the driest and most convoluted topics (church history).

not sure if I’d recommend, not because it’s not worth reading but like probably only for those who have a hyperfixation with russia, the byzantine empire, orthodox christianity, or some related topic.

glad i read it though! learned a lot and really gave me a better grasp of eastern europe in that time period and taught me something i knew very little about (russia’s spiritual relationship to byzantium)

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a re-read for me of a book in my collection. Meyendorff's Byzantium and the Rise of Russia is rightly considered a classic in the history of orthodoxy and of Russia. Meyendorff's aim is to consider the role that the fading Byzantine Empire had in the rise of Moscow as the dominant power in Russia during the 14th and 15th century and in the preservation of the unity of the Metropolitate of the Rus (theoretically based in Kiev, but, really, highly itinerant). These two campaigns mutually influenced each other and served as a means to define Moscow's vision of the newly liberated (from Tatar control) Russian state.

Meyendorff's main argument is to argue that the Byzantine and Italian influence tended to favour Moscow's initial collaboration with the Tatars and, eventually, their succession from them. In addition, the Patriarch of Constantinople continued to pursue a policy of maintaining one metropolitanate, largely under Moscovite influence, of the Rus in the face of Lithuanian/Polish attempts to create a separate Metropolitanate for the Orthodox in their territory. Central of Meyendorff's argument is the assumption that the Byzantines were trying to maintain a 'Byzantine Commonwealth' made up of the major Slavic Orthodox states in the Balkans and beyond. This 'Commonwealth' pursued a very similar religious policy, even if its political coherence is, at least, questionable. This notion, popularized by Obolensky, has come into disrupte in recent years as imprecise, so it can be a distracting element of this book.

My own background to late mediaeval and early modern Russia is slim- limited to an undergraduate Russian history course more than twenty-five years ago. It was interesting to revisit old ground, but I'm not sure if I'm qualified as a judge of that aspect of the book. For Byzantine studies, this book is a classic, but it is beginning to get a bit long in the tooth. Useful still, but should be used with some caution.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many people think of the Byzantines as late decadents, lesser sons of great lords. And even at their greatest, so the argument goes, their glory was marred by caesaropapism. Meyendorff helps correc that misunderstnding.

To understand the fading role of the late Byzantime empire, we must see it as aiming for an Orthodox Commonwealth. It was a supranational community of Orthodox Christians headed by Constantinople (262) or, as time would demonstrate, Russia.

This is an important point because as the Byzantine empire faded politically, they found an important spiritual daughter in Mother Russia.

Meyendorff goes on to show that the State, even if it chose patriarchs from time to time, did not control the Church. For example, while the state was held at the mercy of the Mongol Horde, the church leadership kept the country from faltering (incidentally, this is exactly the same thing that the late Patriarch Alexis II did at the transition from Sovietism to the Federation).

Meyendorff gives a good discussion of the Hesychysts. The middle section was rather dense. The final chapters dealing with Lithuania were interesting and tantalizing.

This book is careful scholarship. I learned a lot from it. I do have one fault: Meyendorff loves the passive voice.