Introduction

Visual Preaching in Russia explores the paintings derived from exempla in churches of the Golden Ring in Russia. The European concept of the "New Worlds" existed also in Russia, Russians represented the messianic idea of the Russian New World in the utopian project of colonization and orthodox Christianization of all the earth. They were forced to move from the hills of Mount Carmel to Europe in order to secure their own life and the Order's propositum. Since the 1980s, medieval historiography has been interfacing with methodologies implemented by the social sciences in order to study the collective identities and relationships that emerge in the formation of traditions and communities. The first Spanish missionaries who arrived in America made great efforts to adapt their European medieval religious and mental structures to the New World. Atypical for Orthodox art even in a period sympathetic to allegorical paintings, Zotov points out that the pulpit depictions combined possible themes of their sermons.