Overview

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 Nevsky Church in Paris, consecrated in 1861. Bailey posits that, as the embodiment of the belief that Russia had a great historical purpose inextricably 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.

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9781501749513

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This book deftly charts efforts by Russian Orthodox publicists in the two decades preceding the First Vatican Council (1869-70) to explain and defend their confession to Roman Catholic clerics and intellectuals in France. * The Russian Review * Bailey has created an interesting and important book about Franco-Russian religious relationships in the mid-nineteenth century that will contribute to our ongoing quest to better understand the political, cultural, and theological aspects of the public image of Eastern Orthodoxy past and present. * Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies *

This book deftly charts efforts by Russian Orthodox publicists in the two decades preceding the First Vatican Council (1869-70) to explain and defend their confession to Roman Catholic clerics and intellectuals in France. * The Russian Review *

Author Information

Heather L. Bailey is Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois Springfield. She is author of Orthodoxy, Modernity, and Authenticity.

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