One of the little-studied aspects of the educational activities of the Russian Orthodox Church among the indigenous people of the Kola North in the first quarter of the 19th century was the dissemination of Biblical texts translated into the “Lapland” language. For the first time, this article examines in detail the attempt of the leadership of the Arkhangelsk diocese, with assistance from the Russian Bible Society to supply parishes in the Kola Deanery with copies of the New Testament between 1813 and 1814. The primary source of information used for this research was documentation found in the archives of the Kem Diocesan Council (National Archive of the Republic of Karelia), which at that time included all parish churches and the clergy serving in Russian Lapland. The preliminary collection of information on the degree of Christianization of the local Lapps allowed the spiritual authorities to identify serious problems that needed to be addressed in the future in order to improve pastoral work in the Kola North: the lack of independent Sámi parishes, the absence of churches and priests to serve “Laplanders”, and the language barrier between the clergy and a significant part of the laity. It was found that the “official” mailing of New Testament books translated into a dialect unfamiliar to the Kola Sámi, carried out Russian Lapland in 1813–1814, did not yield the expected positive results.
Key words: Russian Orthodox Church, Kola deanery, parish clergy, educational activities, Sámi language, Sámi
DOI: 10.22250/2072-8662-2024-3-32-38
About the author
 |
Yana V. Zinenko – Candidate of Philosophy, Assistant Professor of the Department of Literature and World Culture, Amur State University; 21 Ignatievskoe shosse, Blagoveshchensk, 675027, Russia; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |