SUMMARY:

Andrei Korenevskii’s article focuses on the problem of comparison of Western medieval civilization with Eastern one, which is approached through analysis of relationship between the secular authority and Church. A traditional view holds that the difference between the medieval West and East was encapsulated in the autonomous position of the Papal Church and its attempts to subdue the secular authority. The author scrutinizes ideological legitimation of Popes’ claims for supremacy, i.e. the Donatio Constantini and officium stratoris, reconstructing the emergence of the latter as a separate and central ritual with which the Catholic Church overpowered the claims of the Holy Roman Emperors for both religious and secular authority. Korenevskii analyzes the reception of the officium stratoris in the Byzantium, suggesting that this myth and ritual epitomized the heresy of the Catholics in the eyes of the Eastern Church. Though that attitude as well as the Byzantium theocratic doctrine were shared by the Russian Orthodox Church, it too practiced a similar ritual in the 17th century, which was called “The Procession on a Mule.” Korenevskii places the ritual of “The Procession on a Mule” in a historical context of relationship between the tsar and the patriarch and reconstructs the genealogy of that ritual and the legend behind it. The author argues that despite a different symbolic frame (evoking a biblical story of Christ’s entering Jerusalem) the Russian ritual was a result of importation of officium stratoris to a Russian soil, on which a similar contestation between the secular authority and Church was happening in the 15th and 17th centuries.