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Article: Orthodoxy, Russian
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
- Author:
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ORTHODOXY, RUSSIAN
ORTHODOXY, RUSSIAN.
When the East Slavs adopted Christianity in the tenth century, they acquired portions of Scripture, church services, and selected Byzantine religious writings from Constantinople (old Byzantium) that had already been translated into Slavic.
CHURCH SLAVONIC
Whereas Roman Christianity spread in Europe in the Latin language, Christianity emanating from the eastern regions of the old Roman Empire tended to spread not in Greek, the predominant language of Constantinople prior to the Turkish conquest in the fifteenth century, but in the local languages of the peoples being proselytized. Such are the origins of the "national" churches of the ...