ABSTRACT
Russian twentieth-century theology paid much attention to the Patristic legacy. Systematic study of the works of the holy Fathers, which began in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth-century and reached its climax in the early twentieth-century, was continued after the 1917 revolution by theologians of the Russian emigration. Georges Florovsky was to be the chief impetus behind the 'Patristic renaissance' in Russian theology: his were the key concepts for the interpretation of the Patristic legacy. The past century has contributed much to the study of the Patristic legacy, thanks to new critical editions of the works of the Fathers and to scholarly studies produced by the scholars. A particular place belongs to the different national traditions of Patristic writing be they Syriac, Ethiopian, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian or Georgian. The school of Orthodox theology that formed theological thinking was not so much a theological seminary, academy or university but the Divine Liturgy and other services.
