IOSIF VOLOTSKII AND EASTERN CHRISTIANITY

September 9, 2015, marked the 500th anniversary of the passing of one of the most commanding and remarkable figures in Russian history, Iosif Volotskii. It was in his honor that our Association for the Study of Eastern Christian History and Culture held its biennial conference in March 2013, where the first drafts of this volume’s essays were presented. Steeped in traditions and sacred writings, Iosif would probably have approved of the subject matter of our first section that looks at early Eastern Church history. And as a passionate and engaged activist, he likely would have been curious about our middle section devoted to him and how some of his interests played out in early modern Russia in places where religion remained paramount, though our unavoidable secular approach would have left him cold. How he or any other zealous late medieval abbot, teacher, and father confessor would have related to the issues of our third section on our modern, technologically explosive era is impossible to fathom, except, probably to remind us, as he did his monks, of such timeless wisdom as “it is a great calamity where laws and canons do not dwell.”