Monastic community and spiritual families in Rus' (11th-15th century)

罗斯，中世纪的东斯拉夫国家，在10世纪晚期从拜占庭接受了基督教，并迅速成为东正教修道中心。我的论文将研究精神家庭在15世纪莫斯科崛起之前罗斯修道主义发展中的作用。精神家庭指的是一对僧侣，尽管没有血缘关系，但他们的关系是按照血缘关系建立起来的。他们可以存在于寺院内，也可以存在于遥远的地方，从而形成了连接各个等级僧侣的精神网络。例如，13世纪在北罗斯当过主教的僧侣西蒙（Simon），就用书信来告诫他的儿子波利卡普（Polikarp），后者是遥远的基辅的一名僧侣，为他提供了有关教学模式以及社会和地理流动性的见解。另一种僧侣家庭是由13世纪的僧侣埃弗雷姆发展起来的，他为自己和他的听众创造了一个精神上的父亲，通过写他的主人阿夫拉米吉的圣徒传记。这两个收藏品都将是我研究的核心组成部分。尽管有充分的证据表明它们在罗斯修道院文化中的重要性，但人们对精神家庭的了解仍然很少。在苏联时期，宗教史被忽视了，早期的学术研究是相互独立的。相比之下，通过精神家庭的镜头来探讨修道主义的主题，提供了一个跨越时空的宗教机构之间的物质联系和文化交流的基层视角。这种方法将得到罗斯修道院文化其他方面（如Romanchuk 2007）以及拜占庭和其他中世纪地区的精神家庭（Talbot 1990）的奖学金的支持。建立在这些作品和我自己的训练在中世纪的历史，我的论文将提供一个新的理解家庭的结构，支持罗斯的寺院网络。我研究的关键将是对宗教文献、礼仪书籍和修道院行政文件的比较分析，无论是翻译成斯拉夫语的罗斯、拜占庭作品，还是在斯拉夫语翻译中不知道但在东正教修道院传统中有影响力的拜占庭文本。我的方法将基于对这些作为宗教实践核心对象的来源的分析，因为文学为僧侣提供了行为模型（Kruger 2004）。修道院作家用文字来建立关系，把僧侣同伴变成圣人。因此，无论是日常交往、异地关系还是文学手段，精神家庭都构成了罗斯宗教文化的基石。这种方法将使我能够评估精神家庭对整个寺院社区的影响，而不仅仅是文本中所代表的个人，这将为传统上专注于机构的学术研究提供重要的纠正。我将于2022年2月开始攻读博士学位。到九月，我将概述我的论文章节和写我的主题的史学。根据情况，在2022年夏天，我将参加中世纪斯拉夫夏季学院或Dan Slusanschi古典和东方语言学校，以获得斯拉夫古文字和古教会斯拉夫语的技能。这将允许我在2023年初用未发表的手稿进行研究。

Rus', the medieval East Slavonic state, adopted Christianity from Byzantium in the late tenth century and quickly became a centre of Orthodox monasticism. My thesis will examine the role of spiritual families in the development of Rus' monasticism prior to the rise of Moscow in the 15th century. Spiritual families were pairs of monks who modelled their relationships on the biological family, despite not being related by blood. They could exist within monasteries as well as across vast distances, thus forming spiritual networks connecting monks of all ranks. For example, Simon, a 13th-century monk turned bishop in northern Rus', used letters to admonish his spiritual son Polikarp, a monk in distant Kiev, providing insights on modes of instruction and social and geographical mobility. Another kind of monastic family was developed by the 13th-century monk Efrem, who created a spiritual father for himself and his audience by writing the hagiography of his master Avraamij. Both of these collections will be core components of my research.Despite ample evidence for their importance in Rus' monastic culture, spiritual families remain poorly understood. Religious history was neglected in the Soviet period, and earlier scholarship studied monasteries independently from each other. Approaching the subject of monasticism through the lens of the spiritual family, by contrast, provides a grassroots perspective on physical connections and culturalexchanges between religious institutions across space and time. This approach will be supported by scholarship on other aspects of Rus' monastic culture (e.g. Romanchuk 2007) and on spiritual families in Byzantium and other medieval regions (Talbot 1990). Building on these works and my own training in medieval history, my thesis will offer a new understanding of the family as the structure that underpinned the Rus' monastic network.Key to my research will be comparative analysis of religious literature, liturgical books, and monastic administrative documents, whether Rus', Byzantine works translated into Slavonic, or Byzantine texts which are not known in Slavonic translation, but were influential in the Orthodox monastic tradition. My methodology will rest on analysis of these sources as objects at the heart of religious practices, because literature provided monks with models of behaviours (Kruger 2004). Monastic writers used texts to craft relationships and turn fellow monks into holy men. Thus, whether as daily interactions, long-distance relationships or literary devices, spiritual families constituted the building blocks of Rus' religious culture.This approach will allow me to assess the impact of spiritual families on the entire monastic community, rather than just the individuals represented in the texts, which will provide an important corrective to scholarship traditionally focused on institutions.I will start my PhD in February 2022. By September, I will have outlined my thesis chapters and written the historiography of my topic. Depending on availability, in summer 2022 I will attend the Medieval Slavic Summer Institute or the Dan Slusanschi School for Classical and Oriental Languages in order to gain skills in Slavonic palaeography and Old Church Slavonic. This will allow me to undertake researchwith unpublished manuscripts in early 2023.