Authors

Discussion

Anna’s paper focuses on the creative transformations of two 17th-century spiritual leaders’ life stories as a process of inter-cultural mediation. Her first case study delves into William Palmer’s monumental six-volume treatise, The Patriarch and the Tsar (1871–1876), which is dedicated to Patriarch Nikon’s trial following his conflict with Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich and the boyars. Palmer’s perspective on Nikon’s life and context reflected his own encounters with religious Orthodox and Anglican officials during his own search for the Universal Church. Anna’s second case study is dedicated to The Life of Archpriest Avvakum, by Himself (1924), which was translated into English by Jane Ellen Harrison in collaboration with D. S. Mirskii. Harrison’s interest in the spiritual leader of the Old Believers reflected her fascination with Russian religious philosophy and her concerns about ‘the religion of today,’ expressed in Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1921). These two case studies show how Palmer’s and Harrison’s translations of Nikon’s and Avvakum’s lives became the foundation of Russian religious history in English as well as their translators’ creative expressions of personal spiritual searches.