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.
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Rumeli Inspectorship, formed in 1902, was charged with inspecting the provinces of Manastır, Salonika, Kosovo, Janina, Adrianople and Scutari as well as the sanjaks, towns, districts and villages of these provinces.
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Since its creation in 1789, the Department of State has carried out a series of reorganizations and has created new offices and bureaus to deal with new diplomatic challenges. https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory
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The Diocese of Jerusalem was founded in 1841 under the joint auspices of Queen Victoria and King Frederick William IV of Prussia. The bishops were to be nominated alternately by the English and Prussian sovereigns, to be consecrated by Anglican bishops and to have spiritual jurisdiction over Anglican and Lutheran Christians in Palestine. In 1881, however, a failure to obtain episcopal orders for the Lutherans prepared the way for the withdrawal of Prussia, and the bishopric fell into abeyance for almost six years. It was finally reconstituted on a purely Anglican basis and on 25 March 1887 the Venerable Archdeacon Blyth was consecrated Bishop in Jerusalem with jurisdiction over Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, Cyprus, the region around the Red Sea, and, later, the Sudan and Iran. The Jerusalem Bishopric Fund, later the Jerusalem and East Mission Fund was set up by Bishop Blyth for the maintenance and development of the work of the diocese. In 1920 Egypt and the Sudan were separated from Jerusalem to form a new diocese with Llewellyn Gwynne as bishop. In 1939 the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Assyrian Mission came fully under the control of J&EM. The diocese of Jerusalem became the seat of a province in July 1957 and at the same time a new diocese of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria was created. At the time of writing the province is composed of the following dioceses: Jerusalem; Cyprus and the Gulf; Egypt; Iran.
Born in 1857, priest of the diocese of Sées, entered the Dominican order as a member of the convent of Saint-Etienne, but professed in 1886 as a member of the province of France, Father Séjourné died in Jerusalem in 1922, after having been prior of Saint-Etienne from 1901 to 1904.
Having arrived at the École Biblique in 1893, Father Savignac specialized in epigraphy; he quickly became an absolute reference in Semitic epigraphy. Forming a studious tandem with Fr. Marie-Antonin Jaussen, he travelled with the latter on numerous occasions throughout Arabia, during epigraphic, archaeological and ethnological explorations from which he produced several monographs.