All right, so this is actually our second lesson in the development of Russian orthodoxy, and we'll continue that tonight. I plan on wrapping that up tonight. We'll just have to see how our time goes. But before we do that, let's very briefly review what we looked at the last time we were together, which was a couple of Wednesdays ago. I was supposed to be here last Wednesday. I think all of you know we had some complications with our flights, and so we were not able to be here last week. We talked about the Crusades and some of the lasting effects of those Crusades. We said that, number one, they boosted the prestige of the papacy because the popes rallied the Christians for various holy wars and they became sort of symbolic for bringing unity to the church. Secondly, we talked about indulgences and we said that indulgences originally were tied to acts of devotion. And they became commercialized, even to the point of you being able to sell indulgences to people on behalf of the dead. A third development that arose because of the Crusades was that the church also began crusading other targeted groups. It was not just the Crusades to rescue the Holy Land, it was to harass dissenters and to bring persecution to other people, other people groups. We talked about some of those. We said, fourthly, that politically the Crusades weakened the feudal lords who had spent all their money in selling their land so they could go on these expeditions. And so while it weakened those feudal lords, it also empowered the monarchs. You remember the monarchs became weaker, the lords got stronger, now it's reversed. The lords are now weaker, and now the monarchs are much stronger. Fifthly, we said that the Crusades deepened the rift that existed between the Eastern Orthodox and the Western Catholic Christians. especially after the sacking of Constantinople that we talked about last time we were together. And you can read much, much about that. And then lastly, we said that the brutal treatments by the Christians against the Muslims just continue to worsen the relationship between Christian and Muslims for centuries, because that's exactly what they think of. They think of the Crusades when they think of Christians. After that, last week, we began to turn our attention to Russian Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe. We said that in Eastern Europe, the Christianization of Kievan Rus began with Princess Olga, whose name is on the board, in 957, and then it was further realized under her grandson, Vladimir the Great, who reigned from 980 to 1015. became a believer, but it did not expand to her citizenry as you would expect it to, but it did not. However, under her grandson, Vladimir the Great, it did. It expanded very, very much so, very greatly. He chose Eastern Orthodoxy in 988. and made the nation a Christian nation under the theology of Eastern Orthodox. You remember we said that he invited envoys from Judaism, Islam, Western Christianity, Eastern Christianity, and what struck him was the beauty of the architecture of the Hagia Sophia, the church there in Constantinople. So sadly, that became his embracing of Christianity, not the saving faith as we understand it. He then modeled his kingdom after Byzantium. He built churches. He translated scriptures into Slavonic. And those unique onion-domed architectural features we said were probably reflecting spiritual symbolism, maybe some kind of climate adaptation, the snow would fall off them easier, or possibly just for their own local identity. They look different from the Eastern Orthodox churches. Who knows? Vladimir also promoted Christian morality. He promoted social welfare, and he also helped spread the faith. And after his death, there was martyrdom, conflict, and eventually there was a cultural flourishing that followed under an individual by the name of Yaroslav the Wise. I didn't put his name up, but it kind of furthered under him. All right, so that's kind of where we are from last week, from the last time we were together. And so tonight we want to continue that study. We talked about the Rus there in what would become Russia. We'll continue to call it Russia. But elsewhere in the Slavic world, you had the Serbs. And we'll talk about the Serbs. And they became strong defenders of Eastern Orthodoxy as well. I'm just going to erase this. And we will begin discussing the Serbs. The most revered figure of the Serbian church is an individual by the name of Sava. He was actually the son of a Serbian king whose name was Stephen Nemanja. I'll explain Stephen's name in a minute. It has an interesting meaning. Sava was born as a man named Rostko. He renounced the royal life and at the age of 18 he became a monk and went to Mount Athos. Mount Athos is in Greece. And he took the new name of Saint Sava. So that's what they call, they have sainted him. And so he is Saint Sava. His father eventually joined him in monastic life, joined him there in Greece, became and was a monk along with him, and together they established a Serbian, the first Serbian monastery was called Hilander, H-I-L-A-N-D-E-R, there in Athos, on Mount Athos there in Greece. And it had the support of the Byzantine emperor. So even though it was not, they were not Byzantines necessarily, they were Serbs, They founded a Serbian monastery there in the area of Greece. After Sava's father died, he continued to live as a hermit. He wrote poems, he wrote hymns, he wrote spiritual works. And the story is that a miracle took place at his father's death when his father was entombed in a shrine there, above ground in a shrine. and his body never saw corruption and began to emit a fragrance, a lovely fragrance of myrrh. And so he was, he eventually became known as Stephen Nemanja and Nemanja simply means myrrh streaming. And so he had this fragrance of a body that never decayed. That's the miracle that they proclaim. Civil war eventually broke out up in the area where the Serbs were occupying. And it was civil war between Sava's two brothers, Stephen II and his other brother, Vulcan. So Sava returned to try to bring peace. And what he did was he brought his father's body that had died and allegedly never saw corruption and just had this, emitted this wonderful aroma. And how they pulled that off, you'll have to dig deeper than I did. It wasn't something I was that interested in digging up, literally. So he brought the body back, and it was supposed to have brought peace to the land, right? And it did. It kind of restored that and brought civil rest from the civil war that had taken place between the brothers. And they restored peace because of that. So then Sava continued devoting himself to reviving Serbian orthodoxy, and he founded churches, he founded monasteries, and he also founded schools of iconography. We all know that the Eastern Orthodox are big on icons, not necessarily the statues as you would see in the West in Catholicism, But nonetheless, they did revere these icons that were mainly two-dimensional paintings, and so he's founded a school for this. In the year 1219, he became the first archbishop of the Serbian church, and that really kind of secured the Serbian church's independence from the Byzantine Empire, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and it also broke political ties with Rome. So you have pretty much an independent Serbian Orthodox Church there in about 1219. He crowned his brother Stephen as the Orthodox King, and that made Serbia fully Orthodox as a nation in religion, politics, and culture. So again, we have the wedding of the political and the religious there in the Serbian church. He eventually died in 1236, and people from all faiths would come to venerate him. They thought he was a highly liked individual. Later on, you'll find centuries later, during the Ottoman conquest in Serbia, His shrine became sort of a powerful symbolic figure of unity among those individuals there when the Ottomans ruled. And then finally in 1295, the Ottoman rulers tried to destroy his memory by burning his body, but it just simply led to even more of a legacy of unity because he was even more of a martyr in that sense. All right, so that's the Serbs and under this Sava who kind of got all that going, got that ball going. Tonight, we want to continue by looking at the Mongol rule of the Rus and then the rise of the city of Moscow. So let's talk about the Mongols. The Mongols. It was in 1240. In 1240, the Mongols conquered Kievan Rus'. We all know that Kiev, a lot of people pronounce it Kiev, but I believe it's pronounced Kiev, was the heart, the center of the Rus' people. And again, I'm kind of getting, well, it was. That was the heart of their land. But that kind of marked the fall of the Orthodox Kievan Russia when the Mongols came in. And although the Mongols were pagans, they still recognized one supreme god. While they worshipped all kinds of gods, they recognized there was one supreme god. And so they allowed the peoples that they had conquered to keep their religious practices. So they didn't involve themselves in that or keep them from doing their religion. So as a result, the Russian Orthodox Church wasn't destroyed, even though the Mongols came in and ruled for a long time. The Russian Orthodox Church continued to flourish because the Mongols wouldn't destroy them. It really became the main force for preserving Russian identity, even under Mongol rule. The era of the Mongol rule, you probably have heard this expression known as the Golden Horde. went from 1240 to 1480. That's the era of the Golden Rule. The church played a key role in maintaining a distinct Russian culture during this time, and it prohibited the intermarriage of the Russians and the Mongols. So that kept the purity of the faith there, and it fused Russian nationalism and the Orthodox faith. So together, both of those things, the Orthodox faith and the Russian rule, the Russian nationalism, kind of stood in contrast to the Mongols' non-Christian beliefs. And the Russians did not make much effort to try to convert the Mongols. And eventually, the Mongols traded their traditional paganism for Islam. You'll see that we probably won't get into a lot of that detail. But later on, the Mongols that were pagans became followers of the faith of Islam, and that's what they traded theirs for. Despite the rule of the Mongols, they didn't settle in Russia. They just ruled. They were sort of a small elite ruling class and just kind of controlled everything there as rulers, but didn't live there. There weren't a lot of them there. They didn't settle in that area. There was one northern city, the city of Novgorod, Novgorod was not completely conquered by the Mongols because it was pretty much its own independent state by this time. It had already gained significant freedom from Kiev, you go all the way back to the year 1150 and it was independent from there. It became very wealthy, it was an independent trading hub and so the Mongols didn't take it, they didn't take Novgorod. So when Kiev fell, remember Kiev fell to the Mongols, The Novgorod then became kind of a guardian of the Russian Orthodoxy. All this is, you're saying, well, what is this Novgorod stuff? Well, it'll show you where the central power moved from Kiev over to Moscow, and we'll see how that happened. They had a prince, his name was Alexander Nevsky, Alexander Nevsky, who was the leader of Novgorod, and he was both a political and a spiritual hero. He was looked upon in both realms as a great hero. He successfully defended Russia against two Catholic invasions. Remember I said earlier that one of the developments of the Crusades was that the Catholic Church used Crusades against others, and they did here against the Rus. And there were two of those battles, one against the Swedes, in one battle in 1240 and then another battle against the Teutonic Knights in 1242. So he's kind of looked upon as a great hero because he helped defend the Russians against these invasions by the Western Church. Unlike the Mongols, the Catholics attempted to have religious domination. You'll know that in order to join the Western Roman Catholic Church at this time, you had to bow to the Pope. And this is something that these rulers would not do. And so they remained Eastern Orthodox. And they actually kind of made peace with the Mongols. as their rulers, because they didn't force them to do stuff as the Roman Church would have done. And so they made peace with the Mongols, but resisted the Roman Catholic Church. He severely, really, he firmly rejected any Catholic attempts at religious domination. He told, some envoys had come to him from Rome, and they had said, you know, you're going to follow the Pope, right? He said, no. He told the envoys that Russia followed apostolic tradition and had no need for Rome's doctrines. And I don't know how orthodox they were. I doubt it was something we would consider orthodox, but they would not follow the Pope. And so his loyalty to that orthodoxy, the Eastern Orthodox theology, kind of shaped the religious identity of Russia. So you'll see that even though there are all these Orthodox churches, Eastern Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, they're all somewhat similar in that they hold to those theologies that were taught and separated them from Rome. We talked about a lot of those a long time ago, mainly the person of Christ and who he is. Nevsky, this fellow here, Alexander Nevsky is the one who kind of laid the groundwork for the rise of Moscow. And he gave that city to the control of his son, Daniel. So Daniel ruled the city of Moscow. And the area of influence around Moscow became known as Muscovy. I think you can see Moscow, Muscovy, I think you can see that. So it's just basically a Russian monarchy in that area. Ivan I, who ruled from 1325 to 1341, was his first powerful leader. So it is Ivan I. He took the title Grand Prince in the year 1328, so he's a very humble man. Under Ivan and his successors, Moscow became the center of anti-Mongol resistance. And Moscow also became the religious heart of Russia. It moved from Kiev to Moscow. The church's top leader is called a Metropolitan. Remember in the West, you had the popes. In the East, you had the archbishops, the patriarchs, But in Russia they are called, they're called metropolitans. And it moved, so the top leader who's called the metropolitan moved from Kiev to Moscow. Remember, Kiev was originally, now it's Moscow. He moves to Moscow and takes up his residence there and living in Moscow. There's one by the name of Peter who was a metropolitan from 1308 to 1326. He made Moscow his home. And that kind of solidified that alliance between the church and the state. So the political rule is in Moscow, and now the religious rule is in Moscow. And so it's sort of like the Rome of the East. You had the political and religious rule in Rome, and now you have the Eastern Orthodox, or the Russian Orthodox there in Moscow. One figure that's kind of a key figure in this is a man by the name of Sergius of Redones. I'm just going to write Sergius. Sergius of Redones. He was born in wealth, but he chose a life of poverty, just as did He also chose a life of poverty and so did Sergius. He became a hermit there in the forest of Radonez which is near Moscow. Moscow is kind of a city, I do not know what it is like today exactly, but at the time of this development, Moscow was pretty much surrounded by forest. And so you had this opening area for the city and forest all around it. So he became a hermit in that forest and he became known for his dreams, his visions, his miracles, all these different miracles that took place. And he founded the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in 1340. And the monastery kind of became a spiritual heart of that Muscovy there near Moscow, with Moscow in its center. And like the earlier monastery in Kiev, it really fueled kind of a religious renewal. So again, we're just talking about how Russian Orthodoxy developed, how it moved from Kiev over to Moscow in these days. And Sergius really, he helped develop missionary works, try to convert some of these other pagans. His disciples founded monasteries everywhere, and they evangelized the pagan people in these remote regions. And one missionary that was really important was a man by the name of Stephen of Perm. Another name for this area, Stephen of Perm. He converted pagans, Finnish tribes that had moved over to that area. Again, evangelistic work. The Monastery of the Holy Trinity also inspired religious art, the iconography. Icon painting flourished during this time. They really call it like the golden age of the church in Russia because of its development of these icons and all this great artwork that took place. One of these individuals was a man by the name of Andre Rublev. If you ever type that name in, you'll see some of the things that he wrote or that he painted. He has a famous one that's of the three individuals that visited Abraham. And they're dressed in certain colors, and there's certain symbology behind the colors. They represent, like, one of them is blue and red. It's supposed to symbolize Christ's humanity and divinity. Anyway, that's one of the things that he's famous for. Some of the icons were believed to perform miracles. There's one icon called Our Lady of Vladimir. It's a painting. You can look it up online. You can see it. It's an icon. It's a picture of Mary holding the baby Jesus. It has been through many, many battles and been kind of redone like five times to try to bring it back to restoration again. It's done in tempera paint. It's very simple, but it's supposed to have provided some sort of miracles. And so there in Russia, it's supposed to have saved Moscow about three different times from invaders that would come and they would say, oh, it's this icon that saved us from such an invader. So that's that story. The 14th century also saw a growth of mystical spirituality. Remember we talked about that, the difference between mystical spirituality and that which is more rational, and the idea that you're led by visions. If you hear people say, well, you know, Jesus came to me in the night and told me to do this, or I saw a vision of Mary, or I saw a vision of Jesus, and he said this, That's the mystical approach to the Christian life, that it's not a rational reading of the scripture and a drawing from that exposition, the word of God as it's written and how it directs our lives. It's more of an individual, personal, and it's kind of hard to fight that with people. You know, this is what I saw. All I can tell you is what I saw. What I saw is what I saw. What I heard is what I heard. And it's very irrational when you come right down to it. So mystical Christianity, spiritualism sort of developed in these days in the Russian church. And many Russian monks began to study in Greece and they brought back their spiritual texts. And this is how it got there. These works were then translated into the Sylvanic language and was read very widely by people. So the Greek Orthodox theology flowed into Russian religious life. This is where it came from. Sergius supported Moscow's Grand Princes. And one of these is a man by the name of Prince Dmitry Donskoy. He faced the Mongols. and he sought Sergius' blessings. So he's going to fight the Mongols and he's asking Sergius to bless him in these battles. So Donskoy eventually defeats the Golden Horde in 1380, at that point, and that marked kind of the first major Russian victory over the Mongols. It's not complete yet, but it's one of the first successful battles against them. And then soon you have the man named Tamerlane. You can look up that name. It's a famous name, Tamerlane. Again, he attacked the Golden Horde and it destroyed their capital. And that weakened the Mongol power and it kind of helped the Russians to further develop their religion and their political system. Finally, the Mongol Empire broke into smaller states. that kind of surrounded the Caspian Sea, Crimea, all of that area. And then it allowed Muscovy, that area around Moscow, to rise in kind of a more dominant power. And it was eventually under Ivan III, Moscow grew even stronger. Ivan called himself the sole ruler of all Russia, another humble guy. They still had to pay tribute to the Mongol states for a time, but in 1480, remember he ruled from 1462 to 1505, and it was in 1480, 1480, the end of the Golden Horde rule, that Ivan stopped all payments of tribute to the Mongols. We're not paying it anymore. And that officially ended the Mongol rule in Russia. There was no opposition. They were too weak. They had broken into little tiny states. and they just didn't have the central power to try to make Russia pay the tribute that they believed that they owed. At the same time, the Russian church gained independence from Constantinople. It was at this time. And it was until then, the patriarch of Constantinople appointed the Russian metropolitans. Remember, the metropolitans were the leaders of the churches in Russia. And at this time, Constantinople appointed these individuals for the church in Russia, but now no more. At the Council of Florence in 1439, Metropolitan Isidore agreed to unite with Rome, and that was in exchange for military help against the Turks. My enemy can become my friend if we have a common enemy. And so now he's fighting against the Turks, so he gets Rome's help. And Isidore was made a Catholic cardinal by the Pope. But when he returned to Moscow, he was rejected. It's like you're a turncoat, you're a traitor to the Russian faith because you accepted this cardinalship from the Pope in Rome. So he was rejected when he got there. And the Russian church then, even though Isidore wanted to unite with Rome, the Russian church refused to submit to Rome. And so Isidore was then imprisoned. I think he later escaped. But now the church has no leader. The metropolitan has kind of shifted. So now they don't have a metropolitan anymore. So in 1448, Russian bishops elected their own metropolitan. His name was Jonas. And that made the Russian church kind of self-governing and just sort of its own ruling body. And though ties with Constantinople were kind of restored, eventually in 1453, Russia kept electing its own leaders. So even though there was a reconciliation with the church in Constantinople, The Constantinople did not appoint the metropolitans anymore. Now this was only the Russian church that did that. Meanwhile, the papacy did appoint its own metropolitan in Kiev. That's the Roman church. And that formed kind of a separate Ukrainian Orthodox church that aligned with Rome. I don't know if that's true today. I guess you could study that if you want, if it's important to you to know. But the Ukrainian Orthodox church, at this time anyways, aligned itself more with Rome than with Constantinople in Byzantium. In 1470, that particular metropolitan rejected the union with Rome and he returned to Constantinople's authority. Then there was religious dissent that also began to emerge in Russia. And there's a little bit more history here, but I'm going to stop here. Our time has expired. And I think that's pretty much enough for us to understand how the Christian faith was extended to the Russians, the Rus people, the Serbs, and then eventually the Ukrainians as well. So you had all these Orthodox churches. So how did that happen? Well, this is how that happened. All right, let's bow in prayer, please. Our Father and our God, we again bow before you, thankful for the look in church history. And some of these things are things we would desire to emulate. However, many of it are lessons for us to avoid. And so we pray, please, that as we continue our study in church history, it will benefit us in our walk with Christ. Blessed in our time of prayer to follow, we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.