Depicting Orthodoxy in the Russian Middle Ages

Ágnes Kriza's research interests include medieval Russian, Byzantine, and post-Byzantine art, literature, and theology, with a focus on the interface between text and image. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and is the author of a monograph on the reception of Byzantine iconophile literature in Rus. She is a former Alexander von Humboldt post-doctoral fellow at the University of Cologne, exploring the significance of anti-Latin visual polemics in medieval Russian art.

• Introduction PART I. WORD 1: The Icon and its Commentary 2: The Winged Bride: Quotations in the Sophia Commentary 3: Medieval Russian Sophiology: The Context of the Sophia Commentary in the Manuscripts PART II. IMAGE 4: Representations of Wisdom in Rus 5: The Novgorod Sophia as a Deesis 6: Sophia in the Womb of the Virgin PART III. IDENTITY 7: Slavonic Sophia Churches and the Schism of 1054 8: Leaven and Byzantine Marian iconography 9: Depicting Orthodoxy in Rus PART IV. HISTORY 10: Sophia, the Divine Wisdom and the Union of Florence 11: Evfimii II, Archbishop of Novgorod 12: The Hagia Sophia in Rome Conclusions Appendices: Critical Edition of the Sophia Commentary with English Translation Table 1: The 'Sophiological Block' Table 2: The 'Sophiological Synthesis' Catalogue: The Iconography of the Novgorod Sophia in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

This book underscores the value of engaging with textual and visual sources in historical analyses and highlights the innovative output in local contexts relative to competing traditions in the late Middle Ages. Beautifully produced and richly illustrated with color images throughout, this book brings attention to the history and culture of a part of the world that remains to be thoroughly explored-that is Eastern Europe and the Slavia Orthodoxa-while offering a model for how other perplexing iconographies could be deciphered, localized, and contextualized with the help of interdisciplinary perspectives.