Patrick Lally Michelson

Der Asketismus außerhalb der Klostermauern ist das Thema der ausführlichen, sehr fachkundigen, gut dokumentierten und flüssig geschriebenen Untersuchung des US-amerikanischen Spezialisten für die russische Kirchen- und Geistesgeschichte der Neuzeit. Für Michelson ist der Asketismus das Hauptmerkmal und der Schlüsselbegriff der russischen Theologie und Spiritualität, und zwar nicht nur im Mönchtum (das wäre selbstverständlich), sondern auch außerhalb, in der ganzen kirchlich geprägten Gesellschaft. Mit dem Asketismus würden die gebildeten Kleriker und Laien die „orthodoxen Antworten auf die politischen, sozialen und kulturellen Fragen geben“ (S. IX). Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 68 (2020).

Der Untertitel des Buches „Die asketische Revolution im russisch-orthodoxen Denken“ ist keine Übertreibung, wenn man Michelsons überzeugender ideen- und diskursgeschichtlicher Studie vom 18. bis ins 20. Jahrhundert folgt, wie es zu einem noch heute wirkungsmächtigen Mythos kam: Die These, Askese sei ein essentieller Charakterzug der Orthodoxie im Allgemeinen und des russischen Volks (S. 5, 78) im Besonderen wurde im 19. Jahrhundert zu einem wesentlichen Element des Widerstands gegen revolutionären Atheismus (S. 206) und des russischen Patriotismus (S. 216). Entstanden sei sie nicht nur aufgrund einer Wiederbelebung des Klosterlebens Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts und Erörterungen orthodoxer Laien über Russlands Beziehungen zum Westen, sondern vor allem aufgrund beispielloser Anstrengungen der Geistlichen Akademien, dem unter der politischen und kulturellen Elite unter Zar Alexander I. (1801–1825) kursierenden protestantischen Mystizismus (S. 78) etwas entgegenzusetzen–„to make Orthodoxy authentic again“ (S. 59). Hierzu entwickelten sie umfangreiche Publikationsprojekte mit russischen Übersetzungen patristischer Texte aus den ersten christlichen Jahrhunderten, die bisher nur in kirchenslavischen oder Originalfassungen vorlagen. Darin spielt die Askese eine bedeutende Rolle und stieß unter russischen Intellektuellen auf großes Interesse. Gleichzeitig zeigt Michelson eindrücklich, dass die Betrachtung der Askese als gesellschafts- und kulturprägende Praxis nicht „typisch russisch“, sondern für die gesamteuropäische, interkulturelle „intellectual history“ typisch war (S. 221–222) – wie er u. a. an Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer (S. 37 f.) aber auch an William James, Émile Durkheim und Max Weber (S. 175) zeigt. Dabei war der Begriff der Askese niemals eindeutig: Michelson rekonstruiert die diversen, teils konträren Interpretationshorizonte der Askese als Grund für Russlands Rückständigkeit oder aber für seine besondere Berufung in der Weltgeschichte (S. 10, 15). Obwohl als einendes Element gedacht, trug er zudem zur weiteren Fragmentierung der Kirche zwischen Klerikern, kirchlichen Bildungsinstitutionen, Klöstern und Laienbewegungen wie auch zur kirchlichen Erneuerungsbewegung als Protest gegen das Synodalsystem bei. Zwar wurde Askese von vielen als „antimoderne, exklusiv russisch-orthodoxe Verhaltensweise“ dargestellt, doch war „der asketische Mythos ein grundlegend moderner Diskurs, der teilweise von einer Reihe nichtorthodoxer, nicht-russischer Quellen abgeleitet war“ (S. 24). Religion und Gesellschaft in Ost und West, no. 12 (2020).

In Beyond the Monastery Walls: The Ascetic Revolution in Russian Orthodox Thought, 1814–1914, Patrick Michelson reveals how, over the course of the nineteenth century, “asceticism”—often treated as a timeless dimension of Russian Orthodoxy—came to take a central place in Russian thought. To its proponents, asceticism was seen as crucial for safeguarding “Russianness and Orthodoxy during moments of deviation, colonization, and tribulation, so that the ‘return’ to Orthodox asceticism is the ‘recovery’ of Russian identity” (4). For its detractors, Russia’s supposedly ascetical national character was considered to be an obstacle to its progress. For all the impressive array of thinkers covered in this fascinating text, asceticism was seen to be somehow crucial to understanding Russia, its history, and its future…. Michelson has done an enormous service to scholarship in contextualizing movements in Orthodox thought that have long been treated as somehow ahistorical. He has demonstrated that a knowledge of Orthodoxy and how it was conceived, contested, practiced, and disseminated is essential to understanding crucial moments in Russian history, and Russia itself. The approach is certainly fruitful: worlds that have long been treated as separate come together in Michelson’s book, and one marvels that the threads that bound them could have been so long overlooked…. This book is a must-read for scholars of Orthodoxy and of intellectual history—not only of Russia, but of Europe in general—because of the methodology Michelson uses to assess questions and movements that, as he demonstrates, were certainly not unique to Russia. Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 2, no. 2 (2019)

Сразу следует сказать, что это исследование в своем роде уникально — прежде всего ввиду оригинальной постановки проблемы, которая позволила целому ряду несочетаемых, как кажется на первый взгляд, нарративов и персоналий ХIХ — начала ХХ в. оказаться под одной обложкой в строгом согласии с изначально очерченной исследовательской стратегией. «Дискурс аскетизма» (не сама практика аскезы в своих внешних проявлениях, но именно дискурс об аскетизме как пересечение текста и его социокультурной обусловленности) оказывается центральной риторической фигурой для русского ученого монашества, профессоров духовных академий, богословов-мирян, «народного благочестия», радикальных общественных мыслителей, писателей-классиков, представителей того, что обычно называется русской религиозной философией… Все, что было сказано выше, касается преимуществ работы, ее новизны и актуальности ввиду того, что, как уже было сказано, «дискурс аскетизма» во всем своем многообразии до сих пор является влиятельным «тропом» российской общественной и церковной дискуссии и в этом плане не может не подвергаться критическому рассмотрению… Указанные пункты критики, касающиеся в сущности лишь историко-социальных частностей, не могут повлиять на общее впечатление, которое производит монография Патрика Михельсона. Проделана большая работа, предложен новый взгляд на материал, намечен новый путь сквозь устоявшиеся историографические дифференциации, последовав которому во многом можно переоткрыть историю России имперской эпохи. Вестник ПСТГУ II, no. 88 (2019)

In this study, Patrick Lally Michelson straddles the two disciplines of intellectual history and religious studies. He leads the reader through the era of Russian nationalist development, the Great Reforms, and the rise of radical revolutionary movements via adept analysis of theological, philosophical, and literary articulations of Orthodox asceticism both as a source of authenticity for the Russian Orthodox Church and as a (positive or negative) determinant of the fate of the Russian nation. In so doing, this work provokes a reassessment of how historians have traditionally privileged one pro-ascetic strand of Orthodox thought over all others… Admirably, Michelson integrates European intellectual treatment of asceticism over this period—from Kant and Hegel to Dilthey and Nietzsche—demonstrating that Russia was not unique in its use of the concept… Criticism aside, Michelson has skillfully traced the arc of Russian discourse on asceticism over the final century of the Russian Empire, highlighting the centrality of these arguments to contemporary perceptions of Russia’s national character and fate. Intellectual and religious historians of Russia need to take note. American Historical Review (June 2019)

This impressive, carefully argued book is more than a survey of Russian Orthodox thought in the nineteenth century; it is also an interpretation of Russian intellectual history in the period. Liberal perspectives on the century following the Napoleonic wars emphasize challenges to autocracy, signs of pluralism, and the growth of ideas about freedom. Left-wing approaches touch on similar themes, but from the perspective of the emergence of the popular voice, urban and rural. This book comes at the period from a different angle altogether, through linking a spiritual-ethical debate (about asceticism) to ongoing discussions about Russian identity. A fascinating and unexpected picture emerges, even if many of the most familiar names in Russian thought remain in evidence… Michelson is alert to the fact that asceticism was not an exclusively Russian preoccupation. Indeed, the ethical debates of nineteenth-century Russian Orthodoxy can be seen as a variant of the broader discussion taking place within Christianity over how to accommodate modernity. It is because of the potential for broader comparisons that this book will be of interest not only to specialists on Russia, but more generally to historians of religion in the modern world. Journal of Modern History (March 2019)

In this beautifully written and important book Patrick Michelson contends that for many Russian Orthodox hierarchs today, “asceticism is generally considered to be the practice of national and confessional identity, a method of life that both generates and embodies a specifically Russian Orthodox mind-set” (4). For these thinkers, to be Russian is to be Orthodox and to be Orthodox is to be ascetic. Russian Orthodox asceticism is often contrasted favorably to the corrupt ideologies associated with the West—individualism, sexual license, secularism, or capitalism. How did a set of Christian practices become part of a national myth? Michelson argues that the equating of “Russianness” with “asceticism” originated in the theological academies of the 19th century, during a long period of patristic and monastic revival… By analyzing these myths and the discourse that generated them, Michelson has illuminated an important aspect of the debates over the “Russian idea” and the continuing efforts of politicians, statesmen, and church leaders to justify the multicultural union that was the Russian Empire, and is the Russian Federation. By tracing the development of these nationalist myths and setting them in their 19th-century philosophical contexts he convincingly demonstrates the power of religion to shape politics. Anyone interested in the relationships between religion, nationalism, and empire will find this book enlightening. Reading Religion (February 2019)

Historians of Russian Orthodoxy… have reconfirmed for us the central role of monastic institutions in modern Russian history. Seeking to add intellectual context to this monastic renewal in late Imperial Russia, Patrick Michelson in Beyond the Monastery Walls addresses the much broader “discourse of asceticism” that not only inspired the nineteenth-century monastic revival but came “to occupy a central place in Russian Orthodox thought” (20). His book is both a history of how this ascetic turn, or “ascetic revolution,” developed and an exploration into the diverse intellectual and cultural worlds of those who framed the asceticism discourse… Readers will appreciate the breadth of Michelson’s reading and the finely tuned interpretive force of his intellectual history… Such probing of the politics of asceticism ultimately reinforces the importance of Patrick Michelson’s ambitious contribution to modern Russian Orthodox thought. Slavic Review (Winter 2018)

Верующего или разбирающегося в вопросах религии читателя книга приятно удивит грамотностью автора в использовании богословских терминов и пониманием им одной коллизии — трудности исполнения религиозных предписаний в миру, что не могло не сказываться на прочтении мирянами монашеских мыслей. Более того, автор старается употреблять термины в понимании именно той эпохи, а не пытаться втиснуть имперскую эпоху в прокрустово ложе современных схем, концепций и терминов. При этом опора на русские источники и литературу делают данный труд прекрасной, умной и грамотно написанной книгой для изучения религиозно-философской мысли и социальной истории России. Regnum (19 October 2018)

The aim of this fascinating book is to understand the way asceticism discourse came to occupy a central place in Russian Orthodox thought, and to recover all the divergent meanings it acquired throughout a century of modern Russian history… This well-written, comprehensive history of asceticism discourse in modern Russia highlights three important findings: hermeneutical shifts in interpretative authority; the conflation of national and confessional mythmaking; and asceticism as a contested key concept in Russian intellectual history… Michelson’s in-depth research is a great contribution to the field of religious and intellectual history, but scholars of nationalism and literary studies will also find the book relevant and revelatory. Ab Imperio (2018)

Reading this extraordinary book is like having missing pieces of a puzzle click together at last. Actors normally examined separately—radical socialists, theological academies, hermits, great writers, bureaucrats, lay intellectuals—emerge as part of the same religious culture that placed asceticism at the center of discourse and practice in imperial Russia's defining century. Nadieszda Kizenko, University of Albany, SUNY

Michelson’s groundbreaking study of discourses on asceticism makes a valuable contribution to the religious and intellectual history of both imperial Russian and Europe in the century prior to World War I. William Wagner, Williams College

Impressive in its analytical breadth and astute in its interpretive depth, this is an engaging, lucid, an original contribution to the history of modern Russian thought and modern Orthodoxy. Vera Shevzov, Smith College

Nach dem ‘religious turn’ in Studium der russischen Ideengeschichte, der nach dem Zusammenbruch der Sowjet-union zahlreiche Studien über religiöses Denken in Russland hervorgebracht hat, markiert das vorliegende Buch einen ‘orthodox turn.’ Damit verweisen die Herausgeber auf einen blinden Fleck in der bisherigen Forschung, nämlich die mangelnde Berücksichtigung der tiefen Verwurzelung russischer Akteure in einer von der orthodoxen Kirche geprägten Kultur. Mit dem Band wollen sie an festgefahrenen Ansichten über die Russische Orthodoxe Kirche rütteln, die teilweise auch von russichen religiösen Denkern selbst geprägt wurden, die sich im westlichen Exil als Alternative zur Ideologie einer imperialen Staatskirche darstellten (S. 13). Elf Beiträge von renommierten angelsächsischen Experten zeigen jedoch exemplarisch, dass es unmöglich ist, von der russischen Orthodoie im Singular zu sprechen: ‘Russian Orthodoxy has been discovered for what it was: a multivalent, heterodox religion that, likes counterparts across the European Continent, helped to inform identity, modes of behavior, social, and later, political activism, even imagination and habitus’ (S. 4). Die Russische Kirche war (und ist) kein monolithischer Block, sondern umfasste unter schiedliche Gruppen, markante Persönlichkeit under konkurrierende Traditionen. Insofern eröffnet der Band mit einem starken Fokus auf den historischen Kontext einerseits Einblicke in die Viefalt der orthodoxen Kultur und überbrückt andererseits die bisherige Kluft zwischen Studien zue orthodoxen Theologie und zur russischen Philosophie. Religion und Gesellschaft in Ost und West, no. 11 (2016)

This collection of essays is a testament to the high level of diversity, vibrancy, and innovation currently present in the study of Russian religious thought and Russian Orthodoxy. It is axiomatic that religion, in its various manifestations, played an extremely important role in shaping modern Russian politics, society, and culture. The significance of this volume is that it emphasizes the contextual and contingent quality of that role. As Orthodox believers negotiated their way in an increasingly modern world, they often reconfigured or refashioned their personal and institutional religious beliefs and experiences to comprehend more fully the new realities before them. And even though individual Russian thinkers and writers relied on different and contradictory aspects of their common religious heritage as they confronted that changing world, they were always, in their own minds, thinking Orthodox. American Historical Review

As Patrick Lally Michelson and Judith Deutsch Kornblatt stress in their introduction, the “religious turn” that occurred in western and Russian historiography after the collapse of the Soviet Union has challenged many long-standing stereotypes related to the history of the Orthodox Church in the imperial era. The “dominant faith” of the Russian empire is no longer considered a monolithic and socially passive body totally submissive to the secular bureaucracy. These reconsiderations, however, have not yet touched on the history of Orthodox theology, especially its “official” branch, represented by the writings of the church hierarchs and professors at the theological academies. This area is still being treated as something static and isolated from both contemporary intellectual trends and the vibrant lived Orthodoxy. One of the goals of this book is to rethink these stereotypes… [This] book should be considered a serious contribution to the analysis of Russian religious history and will hopefully stimulate further reconsiderations of the role of lay and ecclesiastical religious thought in Russia’s intellectual and cultural development. Slavic Review

In their insightful introduction, Michelson and Kornblatt seek to clarify what we mean by religious thought in the Orthodox Russian context. Emphasizing the polyphonic and sometimes contentious character of their subject, the editors argue for an integrative approach to studying the production, distribution, and consumption of Orthodox thought, one that takes us beyond the limiting binaries of clerical/lay, spiritual/secular, and Russian/Western. Challenging the presumption that Russian religious thought was confined to a handful of elites addressing limited audiences and operating in rarified spaces, Michelson and Kornblatt suggest rather that Orthodox religious thinkers should be seen in much the same way as the scholarship has come to view their Catholic and Protestant counterparts, namely, as “public intellectuals deeply invested in the political, social, and cultural dilemmas of their day” (p. 7). Thus, Russian religious thinkers both informed and were informed by contemporary currents in thought and culture at home and abroad… [This volume offers a] panoramic view of how Russian Orthodox thought informed religious practice, shaped church politics, and permeated virtually every aspect of Russian cultural production. Russian Review

This volume does a lovely job of demonstrating the interdisciplinary nature of religious thought in the Russian context as well as the variety of individuals who were engaging in it in the modern period. The authors are in conversation with each other’s work, which adds to the success of the collection. The editors recognize the porous nature of the boundaries between the clergy and the laity, and also between works of theology, philosophy, literary criticism, and so on… Overall, they have produced a significant contribution to this “multivalent, multidisciplinary, and often contradictory enterprise” – the study of Russian Orthodox thought (19). It will certainly stimulate conversation and inspire further research across the disciplines. Canadian Slavonic Papers

It is very heartening indeed to read the papers collected in this volume and realize just how vibrant the study of Orthodox Christian thought and culture in Russia has become… [T]his new collection constitutes an immensely valuable exercise in ‘taking stock’, while at the same time covering new ground which has long deserved and needed sustained scholarly attention, both within and beyond Russia's borders. The editors have also taken great pains to achieve a joint focus on sound methodology for the study of religious philosophical thought, inviting their contributors to place reflection on it at, or close to, the centre of their essays. This emphasis is set, firmly and articulately, in the editors' Introduction. Slavonica

This is a hugely informative collection, rich in detail, meticulously referenced, and accessible to the scholar of Russian religious thought as well as to the interested layperson. The essays can be read in isolation, but it is when they are read together that they make their strongest impact. An interesting pattern emerges, and I wonder whether the editors fostered it deliberately. Through the focus on the relationship between Orthodoxy and Enlightenment values, the collection serves as a reminder of the fact that Orthodox thought is part of the wider pattern of European thought. Ab Imperio

Ce recueil offre un ensemble d’idées très stimulantes, particulièrement dans le contexte actuel, où la conception de la modernité comme mise à l’écart du religieux montre ses limites, en Russie comme partout ailleurs…. Le mérite de ce volume, à la fois très varié et rigoureux dans l’exposé de sa problématique, est aussi de poser préalablement les principaux points de repère pour un public large, puis, en fin de volume, de mettre en situation les études sur l’orthodoxie russe. Revue des Études Slaves

Perhaps no Russian social class has been more colorfully and crudely pigeonholed than the ‘ecclesiastics’—from the nihilistic seminary student through the village priest, exotic sectarian, and high-ranking but obscurantist religious bureaucrat. This path-breaking volume corrects the picture with fascinating unexpected histories… A treasure-house of solid research and intellectual rigor, in which we see the believing Russian mind working together with the Russian heart. Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

Whereas scholarship has focused on Church history, the clergy, and popular Orthodoxy, it has largely neglected Russian religious thought. This volume examines leading figures, from Platon (Levshin) to Pavel Florenskii, as well as critical issues, such as Imiaslavie and miracles; its impressive erudition, original research, and critical rethinking of key texts and figures make this a major contribution to our understanding Russian Orthodoxy. Gregory Freeze, Brandeis University

This chapter identifies and examines various currents of thought in the Russian Church’s four clerical academies (dukhovnye akademii), ranging from their founding in the first half of the nineteenth century to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Located in the dioceses of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, and Kazan’, the academies were established to revitalize right belief on the suspicion that authentic Orthodoxy, however imagined, had been undermined by Scholasticism, Pietism, sectarianism, and other confessional threats. Consequently, these schools played a key role in the development of neopatristic Orthodoxy, academic Orthodoxy, and, more broadly, Orthodox thinking about state, society, religion, law, culture, history, Russia, and the West. Faculty members, administrators, and students regularly engaged the works of religious and atheistic thinkers from across ancient, medieval, and modern Europe, which helped to make the clerical academies centres not just of theology, canon, and doctrine, but also of philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and literary criticism. The focus on recovering genuine Orthodoxy, however, generated a new set of problems for the Russian Church. Drawing upon sources, theories, and methods learned at school, Orthodox intellectuals began to interpret their faith through an array of antagonistic lenses, fracturing the schools into competing ideological camps. As the Church responded to the disruptive forces of war, revolution, and modernity (ca. 1905–1917), educated clergy and laity soon discovered that Orthodoxy was more cacophony than harmony. In its efforts to bring the faithful (back) to right belief, the Church, through its clerical academies, had sown its own divisions. Author’s Abstract

Patrick Lally Michelson, whose important research has done much to encourage the study of pre-revolutionary Orthodoxy, provides an excellent contribution on ‘Russian Orthodox thought in the Church’s clerical academies’. These academies, which were established in the early nineteenth century, drove the patristic revival that inspired Russian religious philosophy, and the intellectual dynamism of their faculties and journals helped to shape not only Russian Orthodox thought, but perceptions of what it meant to be Russian and religious in educated society. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History (2022)

Michelson’s chapter provides a crucial conceptual basis for the rest of the section, as it reveals that many of the ideas that the more famous figures discussed were often in response to, reaction against, or collaboration with actors whom we might label as representatives of “official Orthodoxy.” The Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies (2022).

In an expansive introduction, [Randall] Poole asserts that the volume's unifying theme is “the multiple contested meanings of Russian religious freedom, including freedom of conscience” (10). However, only Patrick Lally Michelson explicitly develops this thesis. Taken as a whole, the essays identify three enduring tensions within Russian (and Orthodox) thought: individual rights versus corporate identity; the Russian Orthodox Church's relation to the Russian state; and, within Orthodoxy, competing definitions of religious freedom…. [One] point of tension relates to different Orthodox understandings of freedom. Michelson notes that by the late nineteenth century, mainstream Russian Orthodox theologians, such as Archimandrite Ioann Sokolov, had adopted but reframed the language of “freedom of conscience.” Sokolov agreed with secular defenders of freedom of conscience that belief, if it is to be genuine, must not be coerced. An individual has to freely assent to God. However, for Sokolov, true freedom lies not in believing whatever one wishes but rather in living in accordance with divine truth. Since God has entrusted this truth to the church, Sokolov called not for establishing an individual right to freedom of conscience but rather for reforming church-state relations, so that the church can freely pursue its mission to set Russians free from sin and licentiousness. Journal of Law and Religion 36, no. 1 (2021)

The focus of the book is squarely on the imperial period. Its centre of gravity lies in the years between 1860 and 1917, not least because, as Patrick Lally Michelson points out in a characteristically sophisticated analysis of ‘Freedom of Conscience in the Clerical Imagination of Russian Thought, 1801–1865ʹ, ‘the combined phrase svoboda sovesti had little if any salience in Russian Orthodox thought prior to the mid-nineteenth century’ (86)… The quality of these essays is unusually even; the standard uniformly high. The book is therefore an important contribution that will be welcomed by specialists and non-specialists alike. Precisely because it is bound to be widely read, it is worth entering a caveat for the uninitiated. In the final paragraph of his introductory survey, Professor Poole acknowledges in passing that ‘of course, not everyone drew liberal conclusions from their religious experience’ (43). Indeed they did not, and it would be possible to fill a volume much more capacious than this one with studies of those whose ideas seem less attractive to the current Anglo-American scholarly consensus. That would naturally be a different enterprise, and it is no criticism of the present closely focused book to observe that it says relatively little about alternative points of view. Some are, in fact, tackled head-on from an original angle, as in the case of Michelson’s challenging discussion of Ioann (Sokolov), who has generally been interpreted as a critic of freedom of conscience (95–102). State, Society and Religion 48, nos. 2-3 (2020)

This collection is a welcome addition to the burgeoning number of works on religious history, philosophy, and experiences in modern Russia… Patrick Lally Michelson examines the early nineteenth-century seeds for the idea of freedom of conscience, which came from minority religious groups. Together with Russia's defeat in the Crimean War and a relaxation in censorship, expressions of freedom of conscience stimulated a Russian Orthodox ecclesiastical response to showcase its relevance in a modernizing age. Michelson presents Archimandrite Ioann (Sokolov) as the Church's first proponent of a limited freedom of conscience. Ioann decried the Constantinian Church and by implication the Synodal Church as being politically coerced, advocating instead the revealed truth of the Christian faith, “which alone determined whether or not conscience could be free” (97)… Providing excellent examples of religious, intellectual, and social history, this volume's chapters present a dynamic religious landscape in modern Russia. They answer the question raised in the Kritika forum by demonstrating that unbelief and indifference to religion were not essential for ideas of toleration and freedom of conscience to develop. Slavic Review 79, no. 2 (2020)

Michelson deftly traces the ecclesiastical genealogy of [freedom of conscience] as it was understood by Orthodox churchmen, culminating in the first use of the term by an ecclesiastical scholar, Archimandrite Ioann (Sokolov) in 1864–65. For Ioann, ‘freedom of conscience’ meant choosing with free will devotion to Christ as the source of salvation, and he condemned any coercion in faith… This brief summary does not do justice to the consistently impressive research and analysis—as well as the diversity of voices, positions, and experiences—that these eight chapters bring to the discussion of ‘freedom of conscience’ in Russia. This book should be welcomed by scholars in the fields of religious history, intellectual history and the history of the Russian Empire. Slavonic and East European Review (April 2020)

The volume Religious Freedom in Modern Russia, edited by Randall A. Poole and Paul W. Werth, explores approaches to toleration, religious freedom, and freedom of conscience in Russian religious and political history from the sixteenth to the twenty first century…. G. M. Hamburg (Chapter 2) covers religious toleration in Russian thought from 1520 to 1825; Patrick Lally Michelson (Chapter 3) studies freedom of conscience in the Russian Orthodox clerical imagination from 1801 until 1865. The two chapters give the reader a richer understanding of the history of religious toleration in Russian thought and political and religious practice. Journal of Contemporary Religion 35, no. 1 (2020)

Der Beitrag von PATRICK LALLY MICHELSON knüpft ebenfalls an dieses Verständnis der Toleranz an, und unterscheidet zwischen mehreren Kontexten, in denen die Gewissensfreiheit sehr unterschiedlich verstanden wurde. Für orthodoxe Priester sei es bis in die 1860er Jahren unmöglich gewesen, die Worte „Freiheit“ (svoboda) und „Gewissen“ (sovest’) zusammenzubringen. In den kirchlichen Vorstellungen wurde Gewissensfreiheit mit der Zügellosigkeit und Sündhaftigkeit eines Zustands ohne Gott konnotiert. Die in der russischen Verwaltung benutzte Definition der Gewissensfreiheit habe die Bewahrung der Ordnung im Imperium vor Augen gehabt. Die radikale intelligenzija dagegen habe mit Gewissensfreiheit die Befreiung des Volkes von der psychologischen und institutionellen Tyrannei der Religion gefordert. In der Geschichtsphilosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts sei Gewissensfreiheit schließlich mit einem notwendigen Aufbau gesellschaftspolitischer Grundrechte verbunden worden. Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, no. 1 (2020)

Patrick Michelson discusses an Orthodox ecclesiastical conception of freedom of conscience largely based on the ground-breaking 1864–65 work of Bishop Ioann (Sokolov), thus demonstrating the considerable diversity in late imperial understandings of religious freedom…. Although all the pieces are of the highest standard, this reviewer was particularly engaged by those written by the younger scholars represented in this collection, Michelson and [Daniel] Scarborough, whose endeavors in intellectual and social history, respectively, demonstrate the innovation, research skills, and conceptual thoroughness that the study of religious freedom in the Russian past will require as it continues to develop. Given both the individual and collective strengths manifest in this work, it can be widely recommended to all scholars interested in religion and freedom in European and Russian history. Equally, the lucidity of the prose, the careful explanation of key philosophical and conceptual terms, and the strong contextualization will make all of the essays concerned fine contributions to student reading lists. The Russian Review 79, no. 1 (2020)

This edited volume fits in with a sustained surge in scholarship on lived religious experience in modern Russia. As such, the authors in this volume focus the bulk of their attention on non‑state actors, even as they acknowledge the fact that the imperial Russian state loomed large over religious communities and had a profound impact on them…. Patrick Lally Michelson addresses the intellectual trajectory of Orthodox clerical thought on freedom of conscience in the first half of the century. His chapter carefully scrutinizes the writings of Archimandrite Ioann, whose understanding of freedom of conscience was essentially freedom from sin and the resultant ability of an Orthodox believer to commune with God with a clear conscience. Michelson concludes that Archimandrite Ioann offered a novel critique of both liberal definitions of the term and Russian state intervention in church governance. Cahiers du monde russe 60, no. 4 (2019)

In his introductory essay, [Randall] Poole argues that we should understand the nineteenth-century movement of religious renewal (within Orthodoxy) as a process that from the start placed individual religious experience at its center and developed from there into philosophical neo-idealism and political liberalism, and thence to the demand for church and state reform to allow for the full exercise of freedom of conscience. In this way, he indicates a trajectory for the volume, but it is not certain that the essays that follow bear him out. The Russian Orthodox Church had various faces… Michelson’s fine essay historicizes and contextualizes the term “freedom of conscience” and likewise reads as a partial corrective to Poole. Michelson argues that, from the mid-1860s on, Orthodox apologists theorized the term within the context of an ecclesiology that “precluded the notion that personal conviction could lead one to God” (81), and in opposition both to state control of the church and German philosophical discourse. A free conscience was a conscience purified from sin in free submission to the higher wisdom of the church. Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 2, no. 2 (2019)

Patrick Lally Michelson addresses the intellectual trajectory of Orthodox clerical thought on freedom of conscience in the first half of the century. His chapter carefully scrutinizes the writings of Archimandrite Ioann, whose understanding of freedom of conscience was essentially freedom from sin and the resultant ability of an Orthodox believer to commune with God with a clear conscience. Michelson concludes that Archimandrite Ioann offered a novel critique of both liberal definitions of the term and Russian state intervention in church governance… As a whole, this volume offers a welcome addition to the growing scholarship on religious freedom in Russia. While much of this scholarly activity has understandably focused on the post‑Soviet period, the authors in this volume offer a longer history, one embedded both in Orthodoxy and other faiths, and with a rich intellectual tradition in the Russian Empire. Cahiers du monde russe (October 2019).

Появление и распространение идеи “свободы совести” среди православных священнослужителей в XIX веке рассматриваются во введении к сборнику Р. Пула (Randall A. Pool) и второй главе П. Михельсона (Patrick Lally Michelson). Авторы реконструируют источники формирования в российском православном богословии идеалов индивидуальной свободы личности и “свободы совести”, противопоставляемых не только государственной религиозной политике, но и взглядам светских философов на данную проблему. Они связывают развитие этих идей с “возрождением православия” (расцветом либерального богословия в недрах духовных академий, пастырской деятельности миссионерских братств) в условиях бюрократической синодальной системы управления православной церковью. Ab Imperio (2019)

In the book’s third chapter Patrick Lally Michelson demonstrates that not just the broad category of religious freedom but “freedom of conscience” itself had contested meanings in Russia. According to him, “Freedom of conscience could be expressed in a variety of discrete, even antagonistic idioms that were almost exclusively intelligible to the ideological, sociocultural, and interpretive frameworks in which they originated and operated.” There was a state administrative discourse on freedom of conscience, a radical intelligentsia discourse, a liberal discourse, and an Orthodox ecclesiastical discourse. His chapter expertly reconstructs the emergence of a specifically ecclesiastical discourse about freedom of conscience, concentrating on Archimandrite Ioann (Sokolov). Michelson makes it abundantly clear that Sokolov’s ecclesiastical conception of freedom of conscience had very little in common with the liberal conception. Rather, Ioann largely understood it to be freedom from error and sin, as externally determined and proscribed by the Church. Michelson writes that his broader purpose “is to decenter all normative claims made by historical actors in Russia that they alone possessed the correct interpretation of freedom of conscience.” From the Introduction

The article offers a contextual interpretation of the main historiographical developments in English-language scholarship about Vladimir Solovyov. A predominant interpretation of his ideas has been made through the prism of contemporary liberalism, which focuses on the philosopher’s thoughts about freedom of conscience. The goal of the article is to challenge the image of Solovyov as a liberal. The research is based on an analysis of journalistic writings in which Solovyov presented his understanding of religious freedom. The conclusion is that Solovyov’s main project was not the creation of some liberal society, but an eschatological polity in which the Kingdom of God would be realized on earth under the auspices of Christian Church and Russian empire. It is established that the creation of a political system in which personal autonomy and individual religious convictions constituted the highest goal was not the end result of Solovyov’s project. Solovyov’s doctrine was that of an imperial Christian thinker, who proposed apolitical, spiritual answers to social and political problems. Author’s abstract

Russian public opinion in the first half of the 19th century was buffeted by a complex of cultural, psychological, and historiosophical dilemmas that destabilized many conventions about Russia’s place in universal history. This article examines one response to these dilemmas: the Slavophile reconfiguration of Eastern Christianity as a modern religion of theocentric freedom and moral progress. Drawing upon methods of contextual analysis, the article challenges the usual scholarly treatment of Slavophile religious thought as a vehicle to address extrahistorical concerns by placing the writings of A. S. Khomiakov and I. V. Kireevskii in the discursive and ideological framework in which they originated and operated. As such, the article considers the atheistic revolution in consciousness advocated by Russian Hegelians, the Schellingian proposition that human freedom and moral advancement were dependent upon the living God, P. Ia. Chaadaev’s contention that a people’s religious orientation determined its historical potential, and the Slavophile appropriation of Russia’s dominant confession to resolve the problem of having attained historical consciousness in an age of historical stasis. Author’s abstract

On 6 Dec. 2019, Indiana University’s Center for Theoretical Inquiry in the Humanities hosted a symposium about Mikhail Bakhtin conceived and organized by me. The symposium included presentations by Richard Bauman (IU), Ruth Coates (University of Bristol), Martha Kelly (University of Missouri), Ilya Kliger (New York University), and Alina Wyman (New College of Florida). This event was the capstone to a semester-long reading group proposed and convened by me to explore the early writings of Mikhail Bakhtin (ca. 1919–1924).

The symposium was dedicated to Vadim Liapunov, who not only translated Bakhtin’s early writings into English, but also regularly attended and contributed to the reading group.

Many of the scholars who study Russian Orthodoxy as lived religion have unknowingly become entangled in the very categories they seek to move beyond—that is, church, theology, and doctrine. This talk at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Russia, East Europe and Central Asia explores these entanglements and their implications for the ways in which we understand this complex, contingent, and multivalent thing called Russian Orthodoxy.

I teach a variety of courses related to the history of modern Russian Orthodoxy, the history of modern Christian thought, and the history of religious studies. Regardless of the subject matter, my courses are mainly designed to teach students how to question inherited assumptions about politics, culture, society, and especially religion and Christianity. My intent is not to generate skepticism or doubt among students, but to cultivate their capacity for self-reflection, critical thinking, and what might best be called productive distanciation—that is, creating distance between what we know and who we are.