Praying for the Dead in Muscovy: Kinship Awareness and Orthodox Belief in the Commemorations of Muscovite Royalty
Journal: The Knowledge Bank (The Ohio State University)
Year: 2016

Athanasius the Great, the fourth-century father o f the Christian Church who defended and elaborated many o f Christianity's fun damental teachings,hadalotto say about death and the dead.For him and for early Christians, the dead remained very much a part o f the church itself, still awaiting Christ's return, still hoping fortheir salvation.1They may no longer have been among the living, but the dead were not truly gone forearly Christians.They lived on, souls separated from bodies, yet a part o