1.
Russian language
–
Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
2.
Monastery
–
A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone. A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which may be a chapel, church or temple, a monastery complex typically comprises a number of buildings which include a church, dormitory, cloister, refectory, library, balneary and infirmary. These may include a hospice, a school and a range of agricultural and manufacturing such as a barn. In English usage, the monastery is generally used to denote the buildings of a community of monks. In modern usage, convent tends to be applied only to institutions of female monastics, historically, a convent denoted a house of friars, now more commonly called a friary. Various religions may apply these terms in specific ways. The earliest extant use of the term monastērion is by the 1st century AD Jewish philosopher Philo in On The Contemplative Life, in England the word monastery was also applied to the habitation of a bishop and the cathedral clergy who lived apart from the lay community. Most cathedrals were not monasteries, and were served by canons secular, however, some were run by monasteries orders, such as York Minster. Westminster Abbey was for a time a cathedral, and was a Benedictine monastery until the Reformation. They are also to be distinguished from collegiate churches, such as St Georges Chapel, in most of this article, the term monastery is used generically to refer to any of a number of types of religious community. In the Roman Catholic religion and to some extent in certain branches of Buddhism, there is a more specific definition of the term. Buddhist monasteries are generally called vihara, viharas may be occupied by males or females, and in keeping with common English usage, a vihara populated by females may often be called a nunnery or a convent. However, vihara can also refer to a temple, in Tibetan Buddhism, monasteries are often called gompa. In Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, a monastery is called a wat, in Burma, a monastery is called a kyaung. A Christian monastery may be an abbey, or a priory and it may be a community of men or of women. A charterhouse is any monastery belonging to the Carthusian order, in Eastern Christianity, a very small monastic community can be called a skete, and a very large or important monastery can be given the dignity of a lavra. The great communal life of a Christian monastery is called cenobitic, as opposed to the life of an anchorite. In Hinduism monasteries are called matha, mandir, koil, or most commonly an ashram, jains use the Buddhist term vihara
3.
Volokolamsk
–
It was first mentioned in the Voskresensk Chronicle under the year 1135. It was built by Novgorodian merchants on a 5-kilometer portage on a waterway from Novgorod to Moscow and Ryazan, in 1178, the town was burned by Vsevolod the Big Nest, who added it to Vladimir-Suzdal lands. His son Yaroslav II restored it to Novgorod in 1231, after the Mongol invasion of Rus, the town was divided into two parts, one assigned to Novgorod and another one to the Grand Dukes of Vladimir. The Principality of Tver failed to take it in 1273, Ivan Kalita presented his part of the town to the boyar Rodion Nestorovich, who presently wrested the other part from Novgorod. In 1345, Simeon the Proud gave Volokolamsk to his father-in-law, while in possession of Smolensk, the town withstood a siege by Algirdas during the Lithuanian–Muscovite War. Vladimir the Bold defeated Tokhtamysh near Volokolamsk in 1383, soon thereafter, it reverted to Novgorod. The town remained the southernmost enclave of the Novgorod Republic until 1398, ten years later, it was granted for two years to Švitrigaila, who had just defected to Moscow. Having lost its Hanseatic trade and connections with Novgorod, the town declined and was not mentioned by any sources for the half a century. It was in 1462, when Volokolamsk was given by Ivan III to his younger brother and its first prince erected the single-domed limestone Resurrection Cathedral, which still stands. Another prince was Andrey Volotsky, the monument from his reign is the three-domed cathedral of the Vyazmischi Cloister. In 1613, Volokolamsk braved a siege by Sigismund III Vasa, by that time, Volokolamsk had been associated primarily with the Joseph-Volokolamsk Monastery, situated 17 kilometers to the northeast. The Soviet authority in Volokolamsk was established in late October 1917, during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945, a number of violent clashes between the German and Soviet troops and partisans took place near Volokolamsk. The town was under German occupation from October 27 to December 20,1941, within the framework of administrative divisions, Volokolamsk serves as the administrative center of Volokolamsky District. As an administrative division, it is, together with seven rural localities, as a municipal division, the Town of Volokolamsk is incorporated within Volokolamsky Municipal District as Volokolamsk Urban Settlement. Постановление №123-ПГ от28 сентября2010 г, «Об учётных данных административно-территориальных и территориальных единиц Московской области», в ред. Постановления №252-ПГ от26 июня2015 г, «О внесении изменения в учётные данные административно-территориальных и территориальных единиц Московской области». Опубликован, Информационный вестник Правительства МО, №10,30 октября2010 г, Закон №1/2005-ОЗ от11 января2005 г. «О статусе и границах Волоколамского муниципального района и вновь образованных в его составе муниципальных образований», Закона №127/2010-ОЗ от29 октября2010 г
4.
Moscow Oblast
–
Moscow Oblast, or Podmoskovye, is a federal subject of Russia. With a population of 7,095,120 living in an area of 44,300 square kilometers, the oblast has no official administrative center, its public authorities are located in Moscow and across other locations in the oblast. In the center stands the city of Moscow, which is a separate federal subject in its own right. The oblast is highly industrialized, with its main branches being metallurgy, oil refining, and mechanical engineering, food, energy. The oblast is flat, with some hills with the height of about 160 meters in the western. The western and northern parts of the oblast contain the Moscow Uplands and their average height peaks at about 300 meters near Dmitrov and the upper point of 310 meters lies near the village of Shapkino in Mozhaysky District. The northern part of the Moscow Uplands is steeper than the southern part, the uplands contain lakes of glacial origin, such as Lakes Nerskoye and Krugloye. To the north of the Moscow Uplands lies the alluvial Verhnevolzhsk Depression, It is marshy, to the south stretches a hilly area of the Moskvoretsko-Oksk plain. Its greatest height of 254 meters lies in the area of Tyoply Stan, the plain has clearly defined river valleys, especially in the south parts, and occasional karst relief, mostly in Serpukhovsky District. In the extreme south, after the Oka River, lies the Central Russian Upland and it contains numerous gullies and ravines and has average height above 200 m with the maximum of 236 m near Pushchino. Most of the part of Moscow Oblast is taken by the vast Meshchera Lowlands with much wetland in their eastern part. Their highest hill peaks at 214 meters but the heights are 120–150 meters. Most lakes of the lowlands, such as Lakes Chyornoye and Svyatoye, are of glacial origin, here lies the lowest natural elevation of the region, the water level of Oka River at 97 meters. Moscow Oblast is located in the part of the East European craton. Like all cratons, the latter is composed of the crystalline basement, the basement consists of Archaean and Proterozoic rocks and the cover is deposited in the Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. The lowest depth of the basement is to the south of Serebryanye Prudy, in the south area of the oblast. Tertiary deposits are almost absent within the oblast, significantly more abundant are deposits of the Carboniferous and Jurassic periods. In the Cretaceous period, a sea was covering Moscow Oblast, as evidenced by phosphate deposits, Cretaceous sediments are most common in the north of the oblast
5.
Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius
–
The Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius is the most important Russian monastery and the spiritual centre of the Russian Orthodox Church. The monastery is situated in the town of Sergiyev Posad, about 70 km to the north-east from Moscow by the leading to Yaroslavl. The monastery was founded in 1337 by one of the most venerated Russian saints, Sergius of Radonezh, early development of the monastic community is well documented in contemporary lives of Sergius and his disciples. In 1355, Sergius introduced a charter which required the construction of buildings, such as refectory, kitchen. This charter was a model for Sergius numerous followers who founded more than 400 cloisters all over Russia, including the celebrated Solovetsky, Kirillov, and Simonov monasteries. St. Sergius supported Dmitri Donskoi in his struggle against the Tatars, at the outbreak of the battle, Peresvet died in a single combat against a Tatar bogatyr. The monastery was devastated by fire, when a Tatar unit raided the area in 1408, St. Sergius was declared patron saint of the Russian state in 1422. The same year the first stone cathedral was built by a team of Serbian monks who had found refuge in the monastery after the Battle of Kosovo, the relics of St. Sergius still may be seen in this cathedral, dedicated to the Holy Trinity. The greatest icon painters of medieval Russia, Andrei Rublev and Daniil Chyorny, were summoned to decorate the cathedral with frescoes, traditionally, Muscovite royals were baptized in this cathedral and held thanksgiving services here. In 1476, Ivan III invited several Pskovian masters to build the church of the Holy Spirit and this graceful structure is one of the few remaining examples of a Russian church topped with a belltower. The interior contains the earliest specimens of the use of glazed tiles for decoration, in the early 16th century, Vasily III added the Nikon annex and the Serapion tent, where several of Sergius disciples were interred. It took 26 years to construct the six-pillared Assumption Cathedral, which was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible in 1559, the cathedral is much larger than its model and namesake in the Moscow Kremlin. The magnificent iconostasis of the 16th–18th centuries features Simon Ushakovs masterpiece, interior walls were painted with violet and blue frescoes by a team of Yaroslavl masters in 1684. The vault contains burials of Boris Godunov, his family and several 20th-century patriarchs, as the monastery grew into one of the wealthiest landowners in Russia, the woods where it had stood were cut over and a village sprang up near the monastery walls. It gradually developed into the town of Sergiyev Posad. The cloister itself was a centre of chronicle-writing and icon painting. A shell-hole in the gates is preserved as a reminder of Wladyslaw IVs abortive siege in 1618. By the end of the 17th century, when young Peter I twice found refuge within the monastery from his enemies and these include a small baroque palace of the patriarchs, noted for its luxurious interiors, and a royal palace, with its facades painted in checkerboard design
6.
Russia
–
Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
7.
Lavra
–
A lavra or laura is a type of monastery consisting of a cluster of cells or caves for hermits, with a church and sometimes a refectory at the center. It is erected within the Orthodox and other Eastern Christian traditions, the term in Greek initially meant a narrow lane or an alley in a city. The Greek term lavra was employed from the century on specifically for the semi-eremitical monastic settlements of the Judean desert. The first lauras of Palestine were founded by St. Chariton, the Laura of Pharan, Saint Euthymius the Great founded one of the early Lavras in fifth-century Palestine. The Lavra of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified, known as Mar Saba, is one of the most ancient, weekdays were spent in the cells, accompanied only by a rush mat, a small amount of food and palm blades with which to make ropes and baskets. On Saturdays they would bring their handiwork to the coenobium and receive communion together, cells were left open, and those in need could take whatever they wished from the cell if it were found empty. The lavra had a priest, the contact with the outside world. Unless proven otherwise by future scholarship, this seems to be theirs alone. It was a community of 600 hermits who lived scattered over the area, reliant on the town of Nitria for bread, the Great Lavra founded by Athanasius the Athonite in 963 is the oldest monastery on Mount Athos. The largest and the most important Russian Orthodox monasteries have been called lavras and have been subordinated directly to the Patriarch of Moscow, in 1721, they became subordinated to the Holy Synod. Sabbas Polish Orthodox Church, Supraśl Lavra Romanian Orthodox Church, Neamț Lavra Russian Orthodox Church, sergius Lavra Alexander Nevsky Lavra St. The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, the Archaeology of Ancient Judea and Palestine. Sergius Lavra Photo of Holy Mountain Lavra in Ukraine Herbermann, Charles, ed. Laura
8.
Joseph Volotsky
–
The Russian Orthodox Church considers him a saint, his memory is celebrated on 9 September and 18 October. Joseph Volotsky came from a family of a landowner whose property consisted of the Yazvishche village in the Principaity of Volokolamsk. He learned to read and write at the monastery and then took the tonsure at the Borovsk Monastery in 1459. Upon the death of its abbot, St. Paphnutius of Borovsk, Joseph Volotsky took his place, the monks, however, rebuffed his idea, and he had to leave the monastery for good. Josephs charter prescribed a monks chief virtue as absolute obedience to his abbot, all aspects of a monks life at the monastery were regulated and controlled. Initially, Joseph Volotsky was connected with the princes of Volokolamsk and defended the right of local ecclesiastical. Joseph Volotsky addressed a number of epistles to the nestiazhateli, in which he tried to prove the legality of monastic landownership, eventually, Joseph Volotsky gained the upper hand and the monasteries preserved their landholdings. Joseph Volotsky restated the formula of an early Byzantine ecclesiastical writer Agapetus that the tsar was a man in essence, but his power is that of God and that he was God’s deputy on Earth. According to Joseph, however, since the duty of the tsar is to care for the well-being of the Christian Church, he is legitimate only as long as he adheres to Church rules. Joseph Volotsky is also known to have been an opponent of the heretical sect which was spreading in Russia at that time. During the Church Sobor of 1504, he demanded that all heretics be executed by the state, as with the controversy over monastic ownership of estates, Joseph Volotsky was opposed in this matter by Saint Nil Sorsky. Josephs teachings were officially adopted by the Russian Orthodox Church following his canonization in 1579. Russian biography Saint Josephs epistle on veneration of holy icons
9.
Diocese of Novgorod
–
The Novgorod and Staraya Russa Diocese is one of the oldest offices in the Russian Orthodox Church. The office of bishop of Novgorod was created around the time of the Christianization of Rus, the first bishop, Ioakim Korsunianin, built the first Cathedral of Holy Wisdom with thirteen tops around the time of his arrival in Novgorod. That cathedral burned in 1045, and the current, stone, cathedral and it was consecrated by Bishop Luka Zhidiata on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, September 14,1052. The office remained a bishopric until it 1165 when Metropolitan Kirill raised Ilya to the archiepiscopal dignity, formally, though the status of the Novgorodian church remained unchanged and was still part of the Province of Kiev. Around 1400, the archbishops began referring to themselves as Archbishop of Novgorod the Great, in 1156, Bishop Arkadii was elected by the veche because the metropolitan throne in Kiev was vacant at that time. Over the next centuries, a process of local election either by the veche, by the local clergy. It was last used in the election of Archbishop Sergei in 1483, while some Russian chronicles refer to all Novgorodian prelates as archbishops, the office was not formally raised to the archiepiscopal status until 1165. There is evidence, however, that suggests that Nifont held the archiepiscopal title personally even before that, an antimins from the St. Nicholas Cathedral on the Market bears an inscription referring to Nifont as archbishop. It then continued to grow in power into the fifteenth century. After the Muscovite conquest in 1478, the office fell somewhat into decline and his successor, Serapion was removed from office after only three years and the see sat vacant for seventeen years. Like the rest of Russia, the archiepiscopal office suffered hardship during the reign of Ivan the Terrible and the subsequent Time of Troubles. Novgorod seems to have suffered more than most, as the Oprichnina massacred a number of the citizenry in the city in 1570 and looted the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom and other places in the city. At around the time of the massacre, Tsar Ivan the Terrible removed Archbishop Pimen from office, Pimen died in 1572 under uncertain circumstances in the Monastery of St. Nicholas in Tula. His successor, Archbishop Leonid, was beheaded in Moscow on Cathedral Square in the Kremlin on the orders of the Tsar in October 1575, leonids successor, Aleksandr, was elevated to the metropolitan rank in 1589, becoming the Metropolitan of Novgorod the Great and Velikie Luki. The office remained a metropolitanate until 1720 when it was reduced to an archiepiscopate. It was elevated to the level again in 1762. It was separated from St. Petersburg in 1892, the new city of St. Archbishop Dmitry, served as Catherine the Greats spiritual advisor for the first few years of her reign and crowned her Empress in 1762. The Novgorodian Eparchy was combined again with Leningrad after the re-legalization of the church in 1943 and it was briefly separated in the 1950s and combined with Leningrad, again, in the 1960s
10.
Heresy
–
Heresy /hār ə sē/ is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs. A heretic is a proponent of such claims or beliefs, the term is usually used to refer to violations of important religious teachings, but is used also of views strongly opposed to any generally accepted ideas. It is used in particular in reference to Christianity, Judaism, the word heresy is usually used within a Christian, Jewish, or Islamic context, and implies slightly different meanings in each. The founder or leader of a movement is called a heresiarch. Heresiology is the study of heresy, according to Titus 3,10 a divisive person should be warned two times before separating from him. The Greek for the phrase divisive person became a term in the early Church for a type of heretic who promoted dissension. In contrast correct teaching is called not only because it builds up the faith. The Church Fathers identified Jews and Judaism with heresy and they saw deviations from orthodox Christianity as heresies that were essentially Jewish in spirit. The use of the word heresy was given currency by Irenaeus in his 2nd century tract Contra Haereses to describe. He described the beliefs and doctrines as orthodox and the Gnostics teachings as heretical. He also pointed out the concept of succession to support his arguments. By Roman law the Emperor was Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of the College of Pontiffs of all recognized religions in ancient Rome. To put an end to the doctrinal debate initiated by Arius, Constantine called the first of what would afterwards be called the ecumenical councils and then enforced orthodoxy by Imperial authority. The first known usage of the term in a context was in AD380 by the Edict of Thessalonica of Theodosius I. Prior to the issuance of this edict, the Church had no state-sponsored support for any particular legal mechanism to counter what it perceived as heresy, by this edict the states authority and that of the Church became somewhat overlapping. One of the outcomes of this blurring of Church and state was the sharing of state powers of legal enforcement with church authorities and this reinforcement of the Churchs authority gave church leaders the power to, in effect, pronounce the death sentence upon those whom the church considered heretical. The edict of Theodosius II provided severe punishments for those who had or spread writings of Nestorius and those who possessed writings of Arius were sentenced to death. For some years after the Reformation, Protestant churches were known to execute those they considered heretics
