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

罗斯是中世纪的东斯拉夫国家，在世纪晚期从拜占庭接受了基督教，并迅速成为东正教修道院的中心。我的论文将考察精神家庭在世纪莫斯科兴起之前罗斯修道制度发展中的作用。精神家庭是一对僧侣，尽管没有血缘关系，但他们的关系以生物家庭为模型。它们可以存在于寺院内，也可以跨越遥远的距离，从而形成连接各级僧侣的精神网络。例如，西蒙，一个13世纪的修道士，后来成为北方罗斯的主教，他用书信告诫他的精神儿子波利卡普，一个遥远的基辅的修道士，提供了关于教学模式和社会及地理流动性的见解。另一种类型的僧侣家庭是由13世纪的僧侣Efrem发展起来的，他通过为他的师父Avraamij撰写圣徒传，为自己和听众创造了一个精神上的父亲。这两个系列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，但对精神家庭的了解仍然很少。宗教史在苏联时期被忽视，早期的学术研究修道院彼此独立。相反，通过精神家庭的透镜来探讨修道的主题，则提供了一个关于宗教机构之间跨越时空的物理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（例如Romanchuk 2007）以及拜占庭和其他中世纪地区精神家庭（塔尔博特1990）的奖学金的支持。基于这些著作和我自己在中世纪历史方面的训练，我的论文将对家庭作为支撑罗斯修道院网络的结构提供一个新的理解。我研究的关键将是对宗教文献、礼拜仪式书籍和修道院行政文件的比较分析，无论是罗斯的、被翻译成斯拉夫语的拜占庭作品，还是在斯拉夫语翻译中未知的拜占庭文本，但在东正教修道院传统中很有影响力。我的方法论将基于对这些来源的分析，这些来源是宗教实践的核心，因为文学为僧侣提供了行为模式（Kruger 2004）。僧侣作家利用经文来建立关系，并将僧侣同伴变成圣人。因此，无论是作为日常互动，远距离关系还是文学手段，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修道院社区的影响，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奖学金提供重要的纠正。我将于2022年2月开始我的博士学位。到九月，我将完成论文章节的大纲，并撰写我的主题的史学。根据可用性，在2022年夏天，我将参加中世纪斯拉夫夏季学院或丹Slusanschi学校古典和东方语言，以获得斯拉夫古文字和旧教会斯拉夫语的技能。这将使我能够在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.