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ONE OF THE MOST DISTINCTIVE MONUMENTS to the Battle of Poltava is the full victory service that Peter I commissioned to commemorate it. Several features establish its uniqueness.
In the Russian Orthodox context, the Poltava service is the first of its kind. Although Russian armies had won notable victories in the past, the Orthodox Church marked those with simple and generic moleben services of thanksgiving. l No services were composed, for example, for Alexander Nevsky's victory over the Swedes (1242), the Battle ofKulikovo (1380), or the capture of Kazan (1552). The routing of the Poles from Moscow in 1612 was marked not by a service commemorating the battle but a service to the Kazan icon of the Mother of God, which received the credit for the victory.2 While Russian victories were celebrated through iconography, sermons, and church construction, they were not so marked in full liturgical compositions.3
The Byzantine tradition shows a similar paucity. Individual saints (St. Demetrius of Thessalonild), the cross, and icons receive credit for military victory in the form of liturgical composition, but full-scale services with mentions of historical actors are remarkably rare. The only victory service proper in the Byzantine tradition is dedicated to Christ the Savior, celebrated on 1 August.4 The Serbs wrote a rare service marking the defeat at Kosovo, but no equivalent among the Orthodox South Slavs exists for victory.5
Thus, before Poltava a variety of Orthodox cultural forms-visual, material, oral, aural, and liturgical-existed to celebrate military valor, victory, and defeat, but a full-length service was not one of them. (At the onset and for the duration of military hostilities, Orthodox hierarchs conventionally called for petitions to be added to litanies and post-liturgy moleben services).6 To these religious forms one might also add a category that will be relevant in the discussion of the Poltava service: anathematization for someone deemed a traitor. In Russia this model had already been applied to the rebel Stepan Razin, and decades later, to Emilian Pugachev. Because they rose up in rebellion against the Orthodox ruler and because of their destruction of icons and churches, the church hierarchy declared such men not only traitors but also individuals who were outside the fold of the Orthodox Church/The villainy and outsider status of these...