THE DORMITION CATHEDRAL OF KYIV PECHERSK LAVRA WITHIN HOLY KYIV (LATE 18TH – EARLY 20TH CT.)
THE DORMITION CATHEDRAL OF KYIV PECHERSK LAVRA WITHIN HOLY KYIV (LATE 18TH – EARLY 20TH CT.)

Summary/Abstract: This work deals with the links between the social system of miraculous icons and relics honoured in Dormition Cathedral of Kyiv Pechersk Lavra and Holy Kyiv. The article is an attempt to amplify the lore about the scantily explored urban and monastic attitude to the Orthodox sacred objects in bureaucratic and formalistic period under the Most Holy Governing Synod rule. The main sources are guidebooks and reference works published in 19th – early 20th ct., memoires and archival documents about the internal monastery life. The acts of exchange between Lavra and other Kyiv temples associated with sacred objects honouring in Dormition cathedral are investigated. The coffin guardians in Lavra and St. Michael’s Golden-Domed monastery are compared. The social features of sacred objects repairs and provision of access for believers in Dormition cathedral are examined. A place of sacred objects of Dormition cathedral in public relations between Lavra brethren and Kyivans is analysed. The ways of belief declaration prevalent among Kyivan prayers in Dormition cathedral and among Lavra brethren outside their monastery are outlined. The symbolic causes of general solidarity around the sacred objects are depicted. In general, the administering as well as ordinary monks of all dignities and novices were deeply involved in maintenance of order near all sacred objects in Dormition cathedral. Separately of participating in divine services these sacred objects custodians spared attention to communication with believers from Kyiv and other localities. A tangle of problems in the Dormition cathedral social system is connected with Church history, cultural studies, urban history, social communications history and cultural anthropology. The scheme of links found between the sacred objects social system in Dormition cathedral and Holy Kyiv is usable as a basic for study of such links between an Orthodox conventual cathedral and its urban surrounding (in 19th – early 20th ct.).

• Details
• Contents