ECCLESIASTIC ENLIGHTENMENT IN RUSSIA AND
THE OXFORD MOVEMENT IN THE SECOND
HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
T.V. Chumakova
Abstracts. The article sets the question of a possible influence of ideas, close to those of the
Oxford Movement, on the ecclesiastic enlightenment in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth
century. According to the “Lexicon of the Russian Academy”, the ecclesiastic enlightenment in a broad
context could be understood as a longing of a part of the Russian society to introduce religious enlightenment
and renovation.
The English Church, and first of all its High Church, attracted attention of Russian society, and
that interest increased in 1840-s, when the so called Oxford, or Tractarian Movement had been
shaped in the frames of the High Church. The ideas promoted by that movement included those
ones: restoration of the Church doctrine and the strengthening of its role in the life of society, calling
for “antiquity” – theological and liturgical heritage of the common Christian Church, before its
disintegration. The similar ideas, shaped under the influence of Romanticism, were popular among
the supporters of the liturgical renaissance in the Roman Catholic Church, “Old Catholics”, as well as
among the Kollyvades in Greece.
All this could not but arouse interest of that part of Russian society, which was involved into the
discourse of religious renovation and ecclesiastic enlightenment. There were not only clergymen and
teachers of spiritual schools, but also a broad public: journalists, historians of religion, and philosophers.
A famous participant of ecclesiastic enlightenment, specialist in Biblical studies and Christian
history A. P. Lopukhin called Tractarianism “the great Oxford Movement”.
Key words. Church of England, Oxford movement, spiritual enlightenment, religious philosophy,
Slavophilism, Anglican-Orthodox dialogue, the Russian Orthodox Church.