Patrick Lally Michelson. Beyond the Monastery Walls

Beyond the Monastery Walls: The Ascetic Revolution in Russian Orthodox Thought, 1814–1914 highlights voices of Russian church and lay intellectuals from the early nineteenth century to World War I on the role of asceticism in Russian Orthodoxy and Russian national consciousness. 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. Over the course of the nineteenth century, Michelson argues, Russian religious and lay thinkers came to depict asceticism as “the essence of both Orthodox Christianity and the Russian people” (5). Asceticism became “a cultural hermeneutic” (9); it constituted “the key to understanding a people’s national-confessional essence and its historical trajectory from past to future” (10). Overall, asceticism was viewed either positively, as the source of Russia’s would-be unique strength against modern Western influences, or negatively, as the reason for Russia’s perceived “backwardness” and “weakness.” Despite the variety of interpretations advocated by both well-known and lesser-known thinkers over the nineteenth century, this primary dichotomy persisted. 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.

Art · Asceticism · Christianity · Literature · Theology · European Political History Analysis · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices