www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Russian Orthodoxy once embraced Immaculate Conception?

I stumbled across this Western Orthodox website which stated that during a period from the Middle Ages through the 1600's, most of the Russian Orthodox Church held a more Western view of original sin and the Immaculate Conception.

All other things being equal, keep in mind that this is not a Western Orthodox website that you stumbled across. It is a website of Holy Trinity Celtic Orthodox Church, A Traditional, Western Rite, Orthodox Church, Served by the Celtic Orthodox Benedictine Fathers. Translate that to mean vagante.

Many years,

Neil

The Academy of Kyiv is not the Russian Orthodox Church. St. Peter Moghila wrote a Confession of Faith in response to the advent of the Unia, but which was considered excessively latinized and underwent significant revision before being accepted as fully Orthodox. I'd be careful of your source, which is oversimplifying and engaging in special pleading. Also be aware that (though they would be loathe to admit it) the Church of Moscow was also subject to significant Western influence from the 17th century onward.

Episcopi vagante literally means 'wandering bishops'. It originated in the Middle Ages when bishoprics were sometimes bought, granted as political plums, or obtained through nepotism. Depending on the circumstances, such bishops may or may not have received a benefice (a diocese or other canonical entity that carried an income with it) and some who did receive such later lost it, as the politics of the kingdom shifted. A bishop without a jurisdiction, or who had been deprived of his, would wander, preaching, and supporting himself by donations and came to be termed an episcopus vagante.

In modern times, the term came to be applied to 'bishops', sometimes validly ordained, sometimes not, who claim to be of a mainstream religious belief, but aren't in communion with the established Church(es) of that faith. Catholics don't have a monopoly on vagante bishops; all of the hierarchical Churches which emphasize the importance of their Apostolic Succession - Latin and Eastern Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican/Episcopalian, and Lutheran (at least in the 'High Church' divisions of the latter two) can point to vagantes whose origins lie with them.

Some potential hallmarks of a vagante, in no particular order, are that:

• they have grandiose titles (e.g.patriarchs, primates, supreme archbishops, and similar styling abounds among the genre);
• they are vested in liturgical finery that would be the envy of a member of the papal court in its hour of greatest opulence;
• they are surrounded by a small cadre of clerics with equally important titles, including sometimes multiple bishops, each of whom has been accorded a piece of the universe as their episcopal jurisdiction;
• they post elaborate hierarchical genealogies on their websites or in their publications, purporting to prove their Apostolic Succession;
• they offer the opportunity for ordination to the priesthood, and perhaps even to the episcopacy, to those who apply by e-mail or letter outlining appropriate credentials for same or who indicate a willingness to undertake a course of study (for a fee);
• they 'float' from one 'Church' to another, as there are splits in their ranks, frequently as a consequence of in-fighting among the leadership;
• the name of their 'Church' will frequently include terms like "Catholic", "Orthodox", "Apostolic", often combined in imaginative ways;
• the name of their 'Church' often suggests that it is a jurisdiction of, a branch of, or otherwise connected with an established mainstream Church or that it is a free-standing canonical jurisdiction (e.g., a patriarchate, an archdiocese, a primature, a diocese);
• the name of their 'Church' suggests an ethnicity of origin that is belied by the appearance or surnames of the hierarchs and/or by any apparent connection with a mainstream Church of similar ethnicity or national origin;
• their 'Churches' frequently are 'in communion' with other 'Churches' whose hierarchs display much the same characteristics as themselves;
• their 'Church' consists of a single edifice, a storefront, an altar in their garage or family rec room, or lacks any street address, apparently existing only in the ethereal plane;
• those whose 'Churches' have 'parishes' will sometimes be shown (e,g., on websites) to each worship according to different rubrics and to even express different theological tenets;
• their 'Churches' may mix theological doctrine with New Age, Eastern, spiritualistic, psychological, even alternative and holistic health concepts;
• they use obscure, sometimes historical, sometimes apocryphal, liturgies in their worship.

(The term ecclesius vagante is sometimes used to refer to the 'Churches' these folks establish, but it doesn't really express a meaningful concept in the same way that episcopus vagante does.)

True vagante have to be distinguished from those who have broken from their parent Churches, but have established an actual ecclesial entity, schismatic and/or heretical in the eyes of the parent, but with a level of respectability not usually accorded to those labeled vagante. To be fair, some of what are now considered mainstream, though schismatic, heretical, or non-canonical, Churches would, at their inception, have been deemed the product of an episcopus vagante.

The excerpts from the site seem to have been copied and pasted (and slightly altered?) from this article from another Orthodox site:
http://www.ukrainian-orthodoxy.org/articles/catholic/holymother.htm

I think it's a good article.
I just realized that it's written by a Ukrainian Catholic named Dr. Alexander Roman.

'vagante' means, in strict translation, 'wandering'. This is an old post that I once used to explain the concept elsewhere;

The Academy of Kiev, with Peter Moghila, Stephen Gavorsky and many others, taught the Immaculate Conception.