Of which I have not done any lately. First I was all happy about having finished writing on the Iconoclasm and Latin Palaeography and then I was busy doing research and then I was morose and then I got sick¹ and now here we are, you and I, at the end of all things.

However, I have some interesting things to talk about. Professor Karalis, the lecturer for whom I wrote that Iconoclasm essay, had some pretty positive things to say about it today- including pointing at me and gesticulating wildly while Professor Shboul lectured on Islam. This bodes well, I feel, especially as I agreed with Shboul on the issues in question. For an introduction (which covers about a quarter to third of my essay), see this post.² I apparently get the essay back to confirm this on Tuesday, although I am still healthily skeptical as Professor Karalis is notorious about deadlines.

The Palaeographical exercises I did were returned, with a lovely grade of distinction (80%). I cannot express my relief at this, although I strongly suspect that Professor Pryor was marking kindly because of both my obvious, ah, freshness to the material and my...limited Latin abilities. He did comment with quite high praise on my analyses, wherein I more-or-less accurately placed all the pieces in question. So, hooray!

Coming up very soon is a Latin grammatical excerise and a (thrust on me in the midst of my sickness!) Latin something which I have to retrieve from the office of Professor Tatum. Cue dramatic bass music. I will almost certainly be railing about these in the usual manner: oh, woe is me, with the writing at the last minute, waah wahh wahhhh it's so hard. So it goes.

But! What I was originally wanting to talk about! The second essay for Karalis' class on Byzantium, I intend to do on...Russia.

Stop looking at me like that, it makes sense. Everyone knows³ that the rise of Russia and especially of Moscow is linked with Byzantium. Russia is famously deeply Orthodox. One need but glance at Russian religious artworks to see deep traces of Byzantine influence. Most importantly, there are claims made in Russia that it is the "Third Rome" after the corruption of the first (Latin Christendom) and the fall of the second (Constantinople fell in 1453). It is the Third Rome and there will be no other- prefiguring the End of Days detailed in the visions of John.⁴

I intend to examine that claim in my teeny-tiny (1500 words! so pathetic!); to see how genuine the claim of the Third Rome is, and see Russians implemented it. There are three ways that this could be true: culturally, politically and religiously.

While culture would be super to look at, I don't have the time or training to do so. Speaking neither Greek nor Old Russian,⁵ I wouldn't be able to examine the literature or folklore. Disliking and lacking training in art history, I can't examine the art. Not being a Russian scholar (or a Byzantine one, not really), I'm not familiar with the scholarship. So scratch that. I'll make a footnote apologising to Professor Vrasidas I-Love-Art-History Karalis.

My readings on this matter lead me to conclude that there is almost no political implementation of the 'Third Rome' ideology politically. For an example, when Ivan III was crowned tsar, he was proclaimed "Tsar of all the Russians" rather than "of all the Romans" which one would rightfully expect if he were trying to claim an imperial descendence from Rome/Constantinople.⁷ Ivan's usage here strikes me as trying deliberately to avoid inheriting the Roman tradition.

Generally the Russian political system seems to have been almost entirely native, with cultural Byzantine trappings. I don't intend to go into much detail here, and mostly refer to modern scholars who have discussed these things approximately a hojillion times over. Besides, empty political claims to be the inheritors of Rome? Every backwater would-be empire claimed that- case in point being the United States.⁸

So, this leaves a religious Third Rome. AND HOO BOY HOWDY do we have something here. Yes indeedy. Not only was the claim of Third Romeness made by a churchman, it seems to match a great deal of Orthodox ideology. After the Council of Florence of 1439 the Orthodox Church of Constantinople became...Roman. It rejoined with the Latin west, accepted the authority of the Pope and generally betrayed that past couple centuries of faithful. That last part is the bit the Russians picked up especially, becoming extremely angry and electing a new church head without Patriarchal approval. It gets messy with the Fall, and this is an incredibly brief summary, but in short: True Orthodoxy ended with the Council of Florence in 1439. The 'political' fall in 1453 was more-or-less simply God crushing the empty shell of the Empire, where the spiritual shell had already fallen to the Western Latinists.

The only remaining refuge of true Orthodoxy then, was Russia. It is some time (and a little beyond my scope, I think) before Moscow makes herself the fifth patriachate (after Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria and ranked lowest) to replace the long-lost Rome. Of course, as Russia was reminded before the fall of Constantinople, Christianity cannot flourish without an Emperor to protect it- so one must be named.

Nonetheless, given that the Russians called their Tatar overlords tsar and didn't attach any particular significance to that (the real emperor was the one in Constantinople), I see no reason why modern scholars should equate Ivan III's taking of the title tsar with any serious 'Third Rome' ideology. However, I am inclined to press a case that perhaps it was meant in reference to the cradle of true faith which 'Rome' was supposed to provide and the first had corrupted and the second had failed.

We'll see.

Also, how about all them footnotes, hey?

===
1: I'm still recovering, but the doc prescribed me about a hojillion mgs of penicillin a day. Which is exactly 2000mg/day. I think that is a lot. It feels like a lot.
2: A note to my regular commentator, H: I didn't 'drill down' the exact mechanisms of how Leo III made Iconoclasm imperial policy. It seemed pretty transparently clear in the original sources (both eastern and western) that it was him who promulgated the 'heresy.' Working within that assumption, I was interested in seeing what may or may not have influenced him. Seeing that it was nothing from the outside, I looked at how much it could have been 'internal' to him. Sort of. I don't think it was a great essay, but that's what I did.
3: Where 'everyone' means 'me and people as nerdy as me.'
4: Please forgive my lack of an exact quote or even a reference- I'm at university, and left that book at home.
5: And Eastern European things are annoyingly rarely translated into English. It grates on me. We get re-translations and re-translations of many things repeated in the West (i.e, Beowulf⁶), but anything further east than Berlin becomes rare and inaccessible in English.
6: Don't get me wrong- I love Beowulf. And things should be constantly re-translated. But it would be nice to have things translated for the first time. I need to learn Old Russian.
7: We are all aware that the Byzantine Empire called itself Roman, yes? Good.
8: I totally have a reference for that claim, too.