The Transfigured Kingdom: Sacred Parody and Charismatic Authority at the Court of Peter the Great (Studies of the Harriman Institute) - Hardcover

Ernest A. Zitser

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801441471 ISBN 13: 9780801441479

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2004

Synopsis

In this richly comparative analysis of late Muscovite and early Imperial court culture, Ernest A. Zitser provides a corrective to the secular bias of the scholarly literature about the reforms of Peter the Great. Zitser demonstrates that the tsar's supposedly "secularizing" reforms rested on a fundamentally religious conception of his personal political mission. In particular, Zitser shows that the carnivalesque (and often obscene) activities of the so-called Most Comical All-Drunken Council served as a type of Baroque political sacrament―a monarchical rite of power that elevated the tsar's person above normal men, guaranteed his prerogative over church affairs, and bound the participants into a community of believers in his God-given authority ("charisma"). The author suggests that by implicating Peter's "royal priesthood" in taboo-breaking, libertine ceremonies, the organizers of such "sacred parodies" inducted select members of the Russian political elite into a new system of distinctions between nobility and baseness, sacrality and profanity, tradition and modernity.

Tracing the ways in which the tsar and his courtiers appropriated aspects of Muscovite and European traditions to suit their needs and aspirations, The Transfigured Kingdom offers one of the first discussions of the gendered nature of political power at the court of Russia's self-proclaimed "Father of the Fatherland" and reveals the role of symbolism, myth, and ritual in shaping political order in early modern Europe.

About this title

About the Author:

Ernest Zitser is Librarian for Slavic and East European Studies at Duke University.

Review:

"Peter the Great remains one of the most interesting and most disputed persons in Russian history. Although more biographies have been written about him than about any other tsar, Peter's role in history and the motives of his politics still often seem obscure. Ernest A. Zitser shows in his book that Peter still holds many new aspects for the historian who knows to pose the right questions.... Zitser's book is a highly valuable contribution to research and to our picture of Peter and his reign."

(Martina Winkler, Department of History, Humboldt University Berlin)

"This is one of the most important pieces of scholarship on early modern Russian history to have been produced in the past decade. Ernest A. Zitser's book will change the way people think about the reign of Peter the Great and will amend the persistent but incorrect view that Peter 'secularized' Russia and that his personal relationships were based on simple 'meritocracy.'"

(Lindsey Hughes, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London)

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0801441471
• ISBN 13: 9780801441479
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240