The present study attempts to present the Russian traveler’s view of Constantinople, based on Andrey Muravyov’s Journey to the Holy Places in 1830 and Letters from the East. When the writer first saw the former capital of Byzantium, he was enchanted by the panorama of the city he could admire from the sea. However, when he stepped ashore, he experienced disappointment with Istanbul’s realities. According to the writer’s idea of Tsargrad as the New Jerusalem, for him its holy center was the Hagia Sophia. In Muravyov’s descriptions, the orthodox cathedral is a kind of an “in‑between” place, a borderland sphere where two orders, Christian and Islamic, intermingle. He saw the church as a Christian object, although it had been converted into a mosque. The paper uses the xenological reflections of the German philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels to demonstrate that although Tsargrad in Muravyov’s work is a place that is “foreign”, since it is located outside its own area, belonging to another state, it is at the same time a space that is “one’s own” for religious reasons.

Pilgrimages to the Holy Land have been an old tradition in the Russian culture. For believers, places related to the life and passion of Christ have been an important element of history and geography of salvation since the beginnings of Christianity in Ruthenia. The paper is an attempt to present the fi rst pilgrimage of Andrey Muraviev (1806–1874), a religious writer, theologian, poet, playwright, church and state activist, to Palestine as a personal religious experience and its refl ection in a literary work of art. The pilgrimage to the East became a breakthrough moment in Muraviev’s life and resulted in the writing of "A journey to Holy places in 1830" (Путешествие ко Святым местам в 1830 году), which initiated the religious stage of his writings and became a great success. Although the poet did not call his journey a pilgrimage, such was indeed its nature. Visiting places important to the history of salvation, he participated in services and sacramental life of the Church.

The purpose of the paper is foremost to present Andrey Muraviev’s approach to fasting, both in his personal life and in literary work. The main basis of the analysis are the memories of the writer and his Letters about the service of the Eastern Catholic [Orthodox] Church (Письма о Богослужении Восточной Кафолической Церкви). Attention is paid to the Slavic word post ‘fast’, to its etymology, sense, its equivalents in biblical languages, i.e. in Hebrew and Greek as well. The writer’s considerations for fasting are confronted with appropriate biblical comments on this topic. The paper emphasizes that Muraviev, despite being brought up in a religious spirit, in his childhood and youth was not used to following the restraints of fasting. Only on his way to the Holy Land, did he fast throughout the entirety of Lent. Then he gradually got used to other multi‑day fasts and to weekly fasts, on Wednesdays and Fridays. In his reflections, referring to the books of the Old and New Testament, the works of Church Fathers and church songs, Muraviev argued that fasting is an important means in man’s spiritual life. He pointed out the need not only to renounce a particular type of food, but also above all to subdue the body to the soul and to tame passions. For the writer, fasting was a sign of faith and a practice supporting prayer.