Posted on Monday, April 19, 2010
Dr. Russell Martin, Westminster College associate professor of history, wrote "Gifts and Commemoration: Donations to Monasteries, Dynastic Legitimacy, and Remembering the Royal Dead in Muscovy" that was recently published in Forschungen zur Osteuropaeischen Geschichte.
The article is an expansion of a paper Martin delivered in Kiel, Germany, at an international conference on religion and integration in early Russia. According to Martin, Forschungen is one of the leading European academic journals for Eastern European studies.
The article is a study of donations made by Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich to several dozen monasteries for commemorative prayers on behalf of his deceased parents.
"I found an inventory of these donations for one particular year (1651) and studied it for insights into kinship awareness and dynastic continuity," Martin said. "It is a quantitative study that brings a totally new source to bear on an old historical problem: the establishment of the Romanov dynasty."
"It's somewhat controversial in some circles because I argue that the dynasty had to pull out all stops-using ritual, using its muscle, and using religious beliefs like prayer for the dead-to build legitimacy," Martin explained. "The Romanovs did not enjoy unquestionable legitimacy early on and they knew it. They worked hard and imaginatively to assemble their position on the throne over time. That's an idea that runs up against the prevailing view-especially in Russia today-that the dynasty was well-established and fully legitimate from day one."
Martin, who has been with Westminster since 1996, earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Pittsburgh and a master's and Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Martin appeared on A&E Biography in a broadcast on Ivan the Terrible as an expert on the controversial ruler. He is the co-founder of the Muscovite Biographical Database, a Russian-American computerized register based in Moscow of early modern Russian notables. The Neville Island, Pa., native is not only fluent in Russian, but also reads Old Church Slavonic/Russian, French, German, Latin, and Polish.
Martin continues to translate from Russian to English the official Webpage of Her Imperial Highness, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, the heiress to the vacant Russian throne. Translations are available at www.imperialhouse.ru. In 2008, Martin was awarded the Order of St. Anna (with the rank of Knight Companion) by the grand duchess for his work on behalf of the House of Romanov.
Martin currently serves as president of the Association for the Study of Eastern Christian History and Culture, Inc. (ASEC), an international organization of scholarly study of society, culture, and belief among Eastern Christian communities.
Contact Martin at (724) 946-6254 or e-mail martinre@westminster.edu for additional information.
