CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Zhabov, Aleksandar Ivanov |
|---|---|
| Title | Examining the Role of Mount Athos in the Religious and Cultural History of Eastern Europe: The Case of the Bulgarian Orthodox Monastery of Zograf and Its Monks, c. 1600-c. 1650 |
| Summary | Тhe main argument of this thesis is that Holy Mountain Athos, the biggest Orthodox monastic institution during the early modern period, and Zograf as a part of it, had a prominent, but still insufficiently examined place in the history of the Orthodox societies of Eastern Europe between the 1600s and the 1650s. The early 17th century, on the one hand, was a period marked by the intensification of the intra-Christian religious conflicts on a pan-European level and in this respect, Orthodoxy was no exception. On the other, these processes stimulated considerable cultural transformations within the Orthodox Church. Only recently, however, has the importance of Mount Athos for the history of the confessional encounters in the region and for the cultural evolution of the 17th-century Orthodox societies been addressed by the specialists. By exploring the biographies of a number of monks from the monastery of Zograf and their activity in all the Orthodox lands of Eastern Europe (from the Balkan peninsula, the Romanian Principalities, and contemporary Ukraine, to Moscow), I attempt to evaluate the overall significance of Athonite monasticism for the history of the early modern Orthodox religious culture. My research question is: What was the importance of Athonite monasticism (exemplified by Zograf) for the confessional and cultural history of Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe during the first half of the 17th-century? In the first chapter of this thesis, based upon a number of unpublished colophons from the old printed books collection of the Bulgarian monastery library, I will argue that the monks from Zograf, alongside other Athonite cloisters, played an important role in the history of the religious conflict in the Ukrainian lands in the first decade of the 17th century, following the Union of Brest (1596). Through establishing missing links to the Romanian historiographic research on the history of the early modern Orthodox church, the second chapter aims to reveal the contribution of Zograf monks to the ecclesiastical reforms in the Danubian Principalities in the 1630-40s. |
| Supervisor | Krstić, Tijana |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/zhabov_aleksandar.pdf |
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