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Russia Engages the World, 1453-1825
1453 Through the Reign of Ivan the Terrible (1533-1584) The Time of Troubles to the First Romanovs (1598-1682) Peter the Great and His Legacy (1682-1762) The Age of Catherine the Great (1762-1801) The Reign of Emperor Alexander I (1801-1825)

                                     

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Russia's Globalization: A Key

Events marked Russia Symbol are specific to Muscovy/Russia's internal development.
Those marked World Symbol are important world historical or cultural events.
Engagement Symbol indicates specific points of sociocultural or military engagement between Muscovy/Russia and foreign powers or individuals.


Gospels for a Russian National Saint?
Russia Symbol   A Russian Ladder to Heaven
    A Russian Ladder to Heaven
NYPL, Spencer Collection

Russia Symbol   Russia Looks at the World
    Russia Looks at the World
NYPL, Map Division

Russia Symbol   Gospels for a Russian National Saint?
    Gospels for a Russian National Saint?
NYPL, Spencer Collection

Russia Symbol   Ivan the Terrible
    Ivan the Terrible
NYPL, Slavic and Baltic Division

Photographic Services & Permissions
Russia Symbol    Gospels for a Russian National Saint?
Evangelie [ The Gospels]
Moscow : [A. M. Radishevskii.M., typographer; ], 1606
NYPL, Spencer Collection

This copy of the Gospels was printed by the Belarusan typographer Anisim Radyshevsky (in Russian, Anisim Radishevskii, ca. 1560-ca. 1631). The ornamentation and coloration of this leaf, showing the evangelist John dictating his Gospel to Saint Prochoros on Patmos Island, suggest the stylistic "Orientalism" of Muscovite design in the 17th century. Few extant copies of this work have such brilliant hand-coloring, suggesting that the Library's copy may originally have belonged to the contemporary Moscow Patriarch (later Saint) Germogen (ca. 1530-1612).

It was St. Irenaeus who first adopted the four sacred creatures of Ezekiel's vision as the symbols of the four evangelists, attributing the lion to St. John and the eagle to St. Mark (in the west, the opposite attribution was adopted). Both traditions must have co-existed in Russia, until, toward the end of the 16th century, the western attribution of the eagle replaced the lion on icons of St. John the Evangelist.