Topics in Christianity (349-0-21)

Topic

Eastern Christian Missions and Missionaries

Instructors

Sergey A. Ivanov
Office Hours: Thursday, 5-6 PM (Winter 2027)

Meeting Info

University Hall 112: Tues, Thurs 2:00PM - 3:20PM

Overview of class

Today, Eastern Christianity is far outnumbered by Catholicism and Protestantism, yet in the Middle Ages Eastern Christians made up a majority of the Christian world. From the fourth century to the thirteenth, the Byzantine Empire brought Orthodoxy to the Caucasus, Ethiopia, Nubia, and Eastern Europe, while the Syriac Christians who had broken away from Constantinople carried out an immense program of evangelization across Iran, Central Asia, India, and China. The Eastern Christian missionaries carried their teaching to these distant lands, overcoming extraordinary obstacles and at times risking their lives. Who were they? How did they travel such vast distances? What did they bring with them? How did they find a common language, both literally and figuratively, with the local population? By what means did they win the favor of local elites? How did they manage to prevail over deeply rooted beliefs?


1. What is a religious mission? The history of the term and the emergence of the concept itself.
2. Was there missionary activity in Buddhism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, and Islam?
3. Christianity as a missionary religion. What does "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations." mean? Who were the apostles?
4. Christian proselytism within the pagan Roman Empire. When did the new religion move beyond the imperial borders? Did the apostle Thomas ever visit India?
5. The transformation of Christianity into the state religion of the Empire and the reinterpretation of mission as a form of imperial expansion.
6. Who Christianized Armenia, Georgia, and Caucasian Albania? Greeks and Syrians in the Caucasus.
7. The arrival of missionaries in Ethiopia: who were the "Nine Saints"? Edesius and Frumentius: real people or symbols?
8. How did Constantinople baptize the "barbarians"? After the baptism, did the cease to be "barbarians" in the eyes of the Byzantines?
9. The conversion of Nubia: the state Church and the "heretical" Church as rivals in the mission field.
10. The Eastern Christian Churches: ‘Nestorians' and Miaphysites as missionaries, and their strengths and disadvantages compared to the Church of Constantinople.
11. Syriac missionaries in Central Asia, Tibet, and China. The Buddhist reinterpretation of Christianity.
12. Cyril and Methodius, Byzantine missionaries among the Western Slavs: their triumph and catastrophe.
13. Byzantine and Western Christian missionaries competing for Bulgaria and Hungary. Why did the religious destinies of Serbia and Croatia diverge?
14. Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos and his emissaries in the North Caucasus: a shift in the Empire's missionary paradigm.
15. The baptism of Rus': how many stages? A revolution from above or a gradual percolation from below? Is the sensational claim about the Novgorod Psalter credible?
16. The strange fate of Orthodoxy in Lithuania. Old Rus' as a secondary missionary center: the Karelians, Saams and the Volga Bulgars.
17. Syriac missionaries among the Mongols: the Christianity of the Great Khans.
18. The rise of Islam and the gradual displacement of the Eastern Churches. The last attempts at Byzantine missionary work.
19. Missions initiated by the Muscovite Tsardom and the Russian Empire.
20. Why did missionaries so often succeed, and when did they meet with defeat?

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to explain how various civilizations changed their religious orientation and how today's religious map of the world came about.

Teaching Method

Class Attributes

Ethical and Evaluative Thinking Foundational Disci
SoC Additional Distro