Bishop Porphyry Uspenskij (EPU)

• Constantine Alexandrovich Uspenskij (laic name)

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.

January 2017

• Englisch

Lora A. Gerd and Yann Potin, “Foreign Affairs through Private Papers: Bishop Porphyry Uspenskij and his Archives about Jerusalem (1842-1860)”, in XXXX

Theophanis George Stavrou, «Russian Interest in the Levant 1843-1848: Porfirii Uspenskii and Establishment of the First Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem», Middle East Journal, Vol. 17, No. 1/2 (Winter - Spring, 1963), pp. 91-103.

Authors : Lora A. Gerd (Historian, Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg) http://iib-ac.academia.edu/LoraGerd
Yann Potin (Historian, University of Paris XIII; Archivist, French National Archives) https://ceral.univ-paris13.fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Fiche-Potin-2015.pdf