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Saint Sergius of Radonezh, His Trinity Monastery, and the Formation of the Russian Identity. By David B. Miller. (DeKaIb: Northern Illinois University Press. 2010. $38.00. Pp. x, 348. ISBN 978-0-875-80432-3.)
The Trinity Monastery north of Moscow, founded by St. Sergius of Radonezh in the fourteenth century, was and is the most important Russian monastic foundation. Until the eighteenth-century secularization of monastic lands, it was the richest of the Russian monasteries and for the whole of its history was one of the principal spiritual centers of the Orthodox Church. Like other Russian monasteries, it has come late to historians. There is a considerable literature on the life of St. Sergius and on the texts that inform us about it, and there have been studies of the estates. David Miller has put together their work and his own extensive studies of the manuscript evidence to draw a convincing portrait of the cult of St. Sergius and the monastery...