The Public Image of Eastern Orthodoxy: France and Russia, 1848-1870

Focusing on the period between the revolutions of 1848-1849 and the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), The Public Image of Eastern Orthodoxy explores the circumstances under which westerners, concerned about the fate of the papacy, the Ottoman Empire, Poland, and Russian imperial power, began to conflate the Russian Orthodox Church with the state and to portray the Church as the political tool of despotic tsars.

As Heather L. Bailey demonstrates, in response to this reductionist view, Russia...