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Authority record

Алексеи Афанасевич Дмитриевскы (AAD)

  • ERC337895-AAD
  • Person
  • 1856-1929

Secretary of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, Rector and Vice Rector of Astrakhan’s first university, Correspondent Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

He was the most important representative of Russian critical study of the liturgy. After training and teaching in the Kazan' Spiritual Academy, he was professor of liturgics and Christian archaeology at the Spiritual Academy of Kiev (1884–1907). His life's work was devoted to the sifting and editing of Greek and Slavic manuscripts of liturgical texts, leading to the three-volume “Description of the Liturgical Manuscripts Preserved in the Libraries of the Orthodox East”

Епископ Порфирий Успенский

  • ERC337895-EPU
  • Person
  • 1804-1885

The beginning of the Russian presence in Jerusalem is connected with the name of the prominent
ecclesiastic, the first chief of the Russian mission in Palestine, Archimandrite (later Bishop) Porphyry Uspenskij. Porphyry (his secular name was Constantine Alexandrovich Uspenskij, 1804-83) was born in the family of a church lector in the provincial town of Kostroma. After finishing the local church school (1813-18), he studied in the Kostroma Theological Seminary (1818-24), and the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy (1825-29). After graduating from the Academy, he brought his monastic vows and was ordained deacon, and later priest. He started his career as a teacher in the Richelieu lyceum in Odessa. In 1838 he was appointed rector to the Kherson Theological Seminary and in 1840 priest to the Russian mission in Vienna. On November 14, 1842 the Russian Holy Synod delegated Porphyry to Jerusalem to gather information about the life of the Orthodox Christians in Palestine and Syria. His first stay in Jerusalem lasted from December 20, 1843 to August 7, 1844. On July 31, 1847 he was appointed chief of the first Russian ecclesiastical mission to Jerusalem, where he arrived in mid February 1848 and he stayed till the Crimean war (May 3, 1854). After the war Porphyry was not appointed head of the mission any more, and in 1860 he visited Jerusalem a third, and last time. During the years of Porphyry’s stay in Jerusalem he was not only busy with church and political activities, but also with intensive research work on the archeology and history of Palestine, Syria and Egypt, for which he gathered a huge collection of manuscripts and books. No other Russian representative in the Christian East of that time had a better knowledge of the life conditions of the non-Muslim population of Jerusalem.

Императорское православное палестинское общество

  • ERC337895-IPPO
  • Corporate body
  • From 1882

The Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (Russian: Императорское православное палестинское общество), founded in 1882, is a scholarly organization for the study of the Middle East. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the society was renamed the Russian Palestine Society (Russian: Российское Палестинское Общество) and attached to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Its original name was restored by the society on 22 May 1992.

Министерство иностранных (MI)

  • ERC337895-MI
  • Corporate body
  • 1819-1917

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs included three departments. The Asian Department was the only one created on a geographical basis. It focused on the Oriental Russian policy, on the Russian subjects business in the East, and on the training of translators and dragomans for Russian missions in the area. The Asian Department (renamed after the First Department in 1897) consisted in two sections: the Far East and the Middle East. In the Middle Eastern section, an office called the Political Table was in charge of enciphering and deciphering telegrams, and also the Slavic, Greek, and Turkish Tables (later, the Persian, and other tables were formed. At each table worked two or three persons.
The ministry supervised the activity of Russian presence in the world, among them the Russian Embassy in Constantinople and the Russian Consulate in Jerusalem (founded in 1858).
Until the Crimean War, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem was taking care of the Russian pilgrims in accordance with Russian authorities. In exchange, the Russian Embassy in Constantinople provided diplomatic and political support for the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem. In fact, since 1820, the only Russian diplomatic mission in Palestine had been the vice-consulate in Jaffa. From 1838, Jerusalem was under the jurisdiction of the Russian Consulate General in Beirut, which was responsible for the entire Palestine. In 1847, Saint Petersburg sent to the Holy City the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission (REM) to control Russian pilgrims, and to become a direct channel of ecclesiastic communication between the Russian Synod and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem. The REM suspended its activities during the Crimean war; and, in 1857, it revived under the guidance of Bishop Cyril Naumov (1857-1863) who replaced Archimandrite Porphyry Ouspensky (1847-1854).
The objective of the REM under Bishop Cyril, according to a project of the minister of foreign affairs Alexander Mikhailovich Gorchakov (1856-1882), was to serve Russia’s ecclesiastic and diplomatic interests in Palestine, which, in practice, meant that the mission had a political role to play. Since there was still no consulate in Jerusalem, Bishop Cyril was receiving instructions and tasks from three different sources: a) the Minister of Foreign Affairs, b) the Director of the Asian Department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and c) the Russian Ambassador in Constantinople. The head of the REM was sending his reports to these three different structures, whereas the Consul General in Beirut was instructed to provide him regular support and assistance. The mission, as an ecclesiastic institution, was subordinate to the Synod of the Russian Church, but, from 1857 till 1862, it was under the control of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

During the nineteenth century, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held three different archives: the St Petersburg Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the State Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Saint Petersburg, and also the Moscow Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MGAMID). In the oldest Moscow Archive (it was founded on the base of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs in 1724) the main documents on the Russian history till the early-nineteenth century were kept; later, the collections passed to the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA). In the Saint Petersburg State archive (also called the State Archive of the Russian Empire, founded from documents of non-diplomatic character on the base of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1834), they kept materials on the tsar family, notorious criminal trials, industry, culture, and history of peoples of Russia. In 1864, the State Archive of the Russian Empire was united with the Saint Petersburg Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; later, its collections passed to the RGADA.
But the main documents on the current activity of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including those on the activity of the Consulate in Jerusalem, were kept in the Saint Petersburg Main Archive, materials of which passed to the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire. Its collections were shaped according the principle of the provenance of documents, and their topics.

Обер-прокурор

  • ERC337895-OP
  • Corporate body
  • 1722-1918

The Procurator (Russian: прокурор, prokuror) was an office initially established in 1722 by Peter the Great, the first Emperor of the Russian Empire, as part of reforms to bring the Russian Orthodox Church more directly under his control.
The Russian word also has the meaning of prosecutor.
The Chief Procurator (also Ober-Procurator; обер-прокурор, ober-prokuror) was the official title of the head of the Most Holy Synod, effectively the lay head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and a member of the Tsar's cabinet. Konstantin Pobedonostsev, a former tutor both of Alexander III and of Nicholas II, was one of the most powerful men to hold the post, from 1880 to 1905.
The General Procurator (Procurator General) and the Chief Procurator were major supervisory positions in the Russian Governing Senate, which functioned from 1711 to 1917, with their meaning changing over time. Eventually Chief Procurator became the title of the head of a department of the Senate.

Священный синод Русской православной церкви

  • ERC337895-SRRPT
  • Corporate body
  • 1721-1918

The Synod is an ecclesiastical governing body created by Tsar Peter I in 1721 to head the Russian Orthodox Church, replacing the patriarchate of Moscow. Peter created the Synod, made up of representatives of the hierarchy obedient to his will, to subject the church to the state, and appointed a secular official, the chief procurator, to supervise its activities. The Synod persecuted all dissenters and censored publications, and Peter disposed of church property and revenues for state purposes at his own discretion. In 1917 a church council reestablished the patriarchate, but the new Soviet government soon nationalized all church-held lands.