Chrissidis's research is an engaging scholarly endeavor, which will be useful to those interested in early modern Russian history, the history of education and intellectual life in Russia, and Russia's relations with Western Europe and the Orthodox East.
Slavic and East European Journal This important monograph comprises a valuable study on the ... Read moreroots of western-oriented education in Russia, and, indeed, on the intellectual development of the Orthodox East.
Slavic Review Chrissidis should be commended for preparing an approachable text for an audience beyond Russian studies that investigates knowledge networks and the reception of new scientific philosophies in Russia.
Journal of Early Modern History In addition to its very important contribution to the history of education in Russia, this book is a testament to the genius of Jesuit pedagogical principles and their adaptability to a variety of social and religious contexts.
The Russian Review An Academy at the Court of the Tsars is insightful, well-researched, and persuasive. . . . For Russian historians it reveals a new side of late Muscovy. For scholars of Jesuit studies it provides a vivid demonstration of the influence and flexibility of the Jesuit educational model.
Journal of Jesuit Studies The title of this fine monograph may obscure for nonspecialists its subject's larger historical significance. No less than the origins of higher education in Russia, or college-level training in theology, philosophy, science, and the humanities, are being examined here. Put otherwise, the book recounts in detail the arrival in late seventeenth-century Russia of one major element of post-Renaissance, post-Reformation European high culture, a development that worked eventually to bring Russia, with often spectacular results, into the modern intellectual mainstream.
The Catholic Historical Review An important, original, and well-written work, with a major contribution to make. Chrissidis's immersion in the sources, both archival and published, and his familiarity with the secondary literature are extraordinary.
Valerie Kivelson, University of Michigan Chrissidis should be commended for producing a highly readable text on a complex topic. At no point is the reader overwhelmed by the intricacies of Aristotelianism, Orthodox theology, or the machinations of the Muscovite State. Instead, Chrissidis elucidates his arguments in an accessible and engaging manner.
Robert Collis, University of Sheffield Show Less