In “Life of our Blessed Father Theodosius,” we explore themes of gender, through the role of Theodosius’ mother, and religious devotion and sacrifice. Theodosius’ devotion to his faith through his humility and self sacrificial acts are opposed by his mother who believes his refusal to indulge in material goods brings shame upon their family. In her efforts to preserve her family’s esteem in the eyes of the community, Theodosius’ mother neglects her maternal duties to care for her son and treats him with contempt and abuse. She is concerned with worldly values of social standing and material pleasures rather than obedience to a higher power. The rejection of her feminine caretaking role, Theodosius’ mother also goes against Theodosius’ faith and thus the will of God. Despite her antagonistic role, Theodosius’ mother is still taken pity on by her son who prays for her salvation, again highlighting her sinfulness and immorality of neglecting her son. By finally accepting her son’s faith, Theodosius’ mother dons a veil and takes a passive and subservient role to a greater power, rather than exerting her own power over her son. Through the moral lesson of this tale, gender and religion are tied together to present an idealized version of religious femininity including passivity, reverence to a higher power, and maternal caretaking. Her decision to support Theodosius is not only a submission to God’s will but also the acceptance of her maternal role. This maternal role is also present in the paintings of Russian icons which show male religious figures contrasted against the portraits of Madonna and child. In connection to the story, the female figure is presented as having a supporting and caregiving role to foster male figures’ religious duties. While male religious figures attain sainthood and historical remembrance through great acts of self sacrifice, revere female religious icons attain this through motherhood. Finally, the male figure is expected to go beyond their parental upbringing to fulfill the will of God: “If one does not leave his father or his mother and follow after me, he is not worthy of me” (Life of our Blessed Father Theodosius 124). Again, this paints the female role as bringing life into the world and the male role as transcending their upbringing to achieve a higher purpose. The moral lessons presented within the text also serve to imbue the religious teachings with gendered connotations. 

The beauty and luxury shown in the videos of the Sergiev Posad monastery immediately called to mind the descriptions the Russians used when explaining why they adopted the Greek religious tradition in The Tale of Bygone Years. The embroidered gold vestments of the priests, the vaulted ceilings covered with gold moldings and saints portraits, and the layered choral music all evoked the sentiment of the words, “we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth…for on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty” (The Tale of Bygone Years 67). However, this “splendor” contrasted sharply with St. Theodosius’s self-abnegation in Life of Our Blessed Father Theodosius. St. Theodosius as a “divine youth” dressed in “poor and patched” clothing as a child against his parents’ wishes for him to look more presentable, because he “willed even more to be like one of the poor” (Life of Our Blessed Father Theodosius 120-121). As he grows older, St. Theodosius does everything in his power to “humble his soul with moderation and mortify his flesh through labor and religious striving” (Life of Our Blessed Father Theodosius 126). Nestor, the monk who authored this story, praises St. Theodosius’s “humility” multiple times throughout the story whenever he describes St. Theodosius’s extreme self-denial. Why is St. Theodosius’s self-deprivation of sensory pleasures so praised in Life of Our Blessed Father Theodosius when the Russian Orthodox services are valued for the presence of sensory pleasures? St. Theodosius’s behaviors were seen by his parents to “bring shame” on his family; perhaps his behavior was on the one hand reviled and on the other revered because it deviated from the cultural norm of appreciating material luxury. Those who understood his holiness were able to be in awe of his almost super-human actions.

The early texts we have read about the first kings and queens who ruled over the Kievan-Ruse are inherently biased in the fact that they are aiming to establish a history of a budding nation. Put differently, their goal is to show how cultural values of the new state were established, and how they echo through history. “The Martyrdom of Boris and Gleb” is an interesting tale, both in what it says about early cultural Christian values and in its purpose to show Christianity’s hold within the Kievan-Ruse.

After Vladimir the Great Christianized the Kievan-Ruse, Christianity had to have been looked at as a non-Russian, or this early in history, a non-Kievan-Ruse practice. Russian did not invent its own religion but copied from their neighbors adopting a foreign practice. When Vladimir baptized the Kievan-Ruse, he brought them into a history and legacy far from their own. But the story of “The Martyrdom of Boris and Gleb” establishes a Kievan-Ruse Christian history for these citizens. It points at their own countryman and shows them as Saints for worship. No longer do citizen have to only read about great Christians as from other countries, but now Saints Boris and Gleb are nationally similar.

The Martyrdom of Boris and Gleb” establishes a uniquely Kievan-Ruse Christian history. The efforts of the future Russians to centralize and nationalize Christianity will be an interesting thread to track the rest of the semester, one that seems to start with Boris and Gleb

From what I have been able to gather about Russia based on the readings of this course as well as my general understanding of the country, Russians seem to put enormous pride on their ability to overcome adversity. While completing our most recent reading, I noticed instances in which stories of Russia’s creation paralleled biblical stories in which heroes overcome obstacles in fantastic, divine ways. This was most notably present in the section in which Vladimir was blinded and later healed, in a way reminiscent to the trials of Saul (later Paul).

The video we were assigned on Atheism and religion in Russia had a similar way of narrating Russian history with a focus on overcoming obstacles in the context of Religion. It interested me that the video highlights the struggle of spirituality in Russia under soviet rule whilst painting it as a essential component to the Russian identity. The way Religion in Russia waxed and waned and ultimately endured seems to be a subject of pride.