Kain К. (Western Michigan University, USA)

PATRIARCH NIKON'S IMAGE IN RUSSIAN CULTURE: NEW SOURCES, NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND NEW POSSIBILITIES

Patriarch Nikon (1652-1667) is well known in historical literature for struggling to preserve and expand traditional ecclesiastical prerogatives and for imposing the textual and liturgical reforms that led to the raskol [schism] of the Russian Orthodox Church. Yet, although Nikon's image became a fixture of Russian national life and a staple of Russian art, there is no study of his continuous resonance and significance in Russian artistic, political and religious culture. Traditional histories - based entirely on written documents and limited to Nikon's tenure as Patriarch - omitted completely the analysis of art and material culture sources. Art historians traditionally confined their investigations to the aesthetics of select seventeenth century images of the Patriarch and their place in the "development" of Russian painting. (1) Thus, the overwhelming majority of artistic sources, both "elite" and "popular", and the wealth of contextual sources, created in the centuries since the Patriarch's death, remain unexplored.

My study attempts to fill this void by tracing Patriarch Nikon's image in "official/elite" and "popular" art and material culture from the mid-seventeenth century forward with the goal of explicating Nikon's self-presentation, depiction by his contemporaries, and the reasons why and how later artists, historians, churchmen, rulers, intellectuals and "others" appropriated Nikonian images to support their respective agendas. (2) I show that images of Nikon reflect and shape elite and popular attitudes toward salient political and religious issues and the central themes of imperialism, nationalism, "orthodoxy", westernization and secularization. I do so by locating these images in cultural-historical context.

The purpose of this paper is to 1) highlight the previously neglected sources of Patriarch Nikon's image and the methods used to analyze and interpret them; 2) present the tentative conclusions and demonstrate the contributions of the project; 3) discuss the role electronic technology plays in my research; and 4). outline the potential of my project as an electronic resource.

Sources

My study introduces the artistic and material cultural sources of Patriarch Nikon's image and the written and non-written sources that give them context and meaning. The artistic subjects of investigation include icons, stenopis' [oil painting on dry plaster walls], parsunae [early portraiture], portraits, drawings, miniatures, engravings, history paintings, lithographs, sculpture and archival photographs. The architecture and decoration of Nikon's New Jerusalem, Iversky, and Kii Monasteries, and the diverse artifacts related to his position (e.g., regalia) are my primary material cultural sources. The contextual sources include "literature", (e.g., histories, political and religious tracts), "artistic literature" (e.g., poetry and fiction), "non-literary sources" (e.g., popular belief) and archival documents (sources related to images creation and display).

Method

I employ a cultural-historical approach and adopt the perspective of "total history" by examining the creation and reception of Patriarch Nikon's image in art and material culture from "above" and "below" over a long period. This method combines traditional art historical investigations with iconographical, semiological and documentary textual analyses. Thus, I embrace the "new art history" that has taken scholars beyond the traditional focus on aesthetics toward interpreting the content and meaning of artistic images.

Conclusions

My study yields the following tentative conclusions: 1) Nikon was a significant and influential patron of the arts, who created comprehensive and lasting iconographic expressions of his principal beliefs and initiatives; 2) Nikon's iconographic system(s) outlived him and provided the basis for both Romanov legitimacy and opposition to the autocracy; 3) Artistic works created and displayed in the centuries after Nikon's demise play an important role in the formulation of the Patriarch's larger image; 4) Nikon's image serves as bellwether for larger political, religious and cultural issues in Russian history.

Contributions

This project expands the source base for the study of Patriarch Nikon. The introduction of artistic and material cultural sources provides information not available in written documents usually employed by historians (e.g., the symbols or religious reform). The contextualization of artistic images offers additional perspectives on traditional written sources, (e.g., Nikon's writings) and introduces new ones (e.g., "guides" to museum exhibits). Moreover, it provides the important cultural-historical perspectives of non-historians (e.g., artists). In short, it reveals the central, but largely neglected, role artistic images of historical figures and concepts play in Russian history in general and the history of Patriarch Nikon in specific.

The investigation of Patriarch Nikon's image from "above" and "below" over an extended period stresses the dialectical relationships between visual art and literature, art and ritual, "elite" and "popular" culture and the complex interplay between church, state, and society. By illustrating what, how, where and why a variety of people experienced, negotiated, manipulated and perpetuated Nikon's image I present a more complex view of history. In this account, both elite and marginalized groups play active roles in shaping Russian cultural life.

This project contributes to, and serves as a remedy for, highly politicized and/or schematic existing scholarship by placing the Patriarch and his actions within the broader context of Russian cultural history. Analysis of widely neglected artistic and material cultural sources complicates simple binary opposites proffered in the traditional polemics by introducing new, richly textured perspectives. Thus, my work expands the study of Patriarch Nikon well beyond the parameters of traditional investigations and paves the way to more comprehensive future reassessments of his place in history and culture.

The Role of Electronic Technology (3)

The researcher studying a large number of artistic and material cultural sources encounters challenges not faced by those investigating written and/or printed documents. I attempt to overcome these challenges with the application of electronic technologies. My increasing employment of digital imaging resulted from 1). the need to have copies of original images, recorded in diverse media, in a single format for the purposes of analysis, storage and presentation and 2). the necessity of creating copies of original images in museums and archives. In the process, I produced an archive of digital files which has the potential to be developed into more sophisticated electronic versions, including web-based applications. Thus, practical necessity resulted in creation of a substantial electronic resource.

Digitizing Artistic Images

I began digitizing the sources I collected during the early stages of my research, photocopies of published images and 35mm photographs, by scanning them at 300dpi in the Jpeg format. After saving at least one "raw" version of every digitized image on the computer hard drive, I "processed" them (rotated, sized, cropped, and "cleaned") using Adobe Photoshop 5.0. The processed images were renamed and re-saved as new files. Because my primary purpose is historical research, the files are named according to abbreviated bibliographical citations.

While scanning produces the highest quality digital files, it is limited by the size, media and location of artistic images. It is not possible to scan large works of art, those not on paper, rare books or examples of material culture. Few of the museums or archives where the later stages of my research are conducted provide scanning services. These factors led to the employment of more advanced technologies.

In the later stage of my research I turned to digital photography.(4) Digital photography makes it possible to create digital images at 72 Dpi in the Jpeg format straight from originals of all media and sizes in most locations. These images, which are first recorded on "smart media", are downloaded directly to and saved on a computer hard drive, or compact disc. They are "processed" according to the procedure described above. Digital photography offers the most versatile, quickest and least expensive means of creating digital files of original art and material culture held in museums and archives.

Once processed, digital files may be used to generate other uniform formats of presentation. These include both electronic (computer screen, digital projections and web based applications) and non-electronic (computer printout and digital 35mm slides (5)) formats. The "quality" of digitized images depends on the size of the original digitized file and the final format.

Potential as an Electronic Resource

Geo Information Systems (GIS) technologies offer some of the most attractive possibilities to the researcher studying artistic images of historical figures. This system makes it possible to catalogue and analyze images (and other related information) in terms of place and time. It is based on "spatial"(geo-reffered) (6) and "attributive"(qualities) (7) parameters. All information, both spatial and attributive, is systematized according to "block" and "layer" structures. The blocks are defined by the subject material they include. They are subdivided into a series of layers, each being devoted to a single element of analysis. The analytical capabilities of the system makes it possible to trace the history of a single image across space and time (e.g., where and when it was created, where and when it was/is displayed in the past/present as well as where and when it was published). GIS prepares digital files for all types of electronic and non-electronic presentation.

My method of investigating artistic images of Nikon, which provides "thick descriptions" based on a set formalized, standardized descriptors, and has already produced much of the attributive data essential to such an information system. Traditional art historical analysis provides detailed data concerning an image's form and (e.g., size, media, and technique) while iconographical and semiological investigations describe the content of an image as manifest in subjects/signs (e.g., Nikon's figure, patriarchal mitre, seven-ended cross, and snake). The "spatial" property data are part of basic bibliographic citations.

Availability of Digitized Images

While the creation of a more sophisticated electronic version of the digitized images technically possible and feasible, its potential for distribution is limited by the legal restrictions and related costs. Nearly three-quarters of the approximately 481 images I digitized, including the large number of originals held in museum and archival collections and the relatively small number covered by copyright protection are not currently available for "publication". However, copies of remaining images, which were published in Russia before 1972 and which represent a substantial sample of the total collection, are available. These images will be included in "The Lomonosov Moscow State University Department of History Library of Electronic Resources" in the immediate future.