In the 1910s, the Russian monks of Mount Athos became involved in a heated controversy about the veneration of God’s name. The Athonite monarchism soon found itself divided into two enemy camps, opposing the ‘imiaslavtsy’ (those who glorified the Name of God) and the ‘imiabortsy’, who were against the veneration of God’s Name.

However, the onomatodoxical debate extended beyond the confines of the Athonite controversy, and present research, based on Hebrew, Greek, Syrian, Slavonic and Russian sources, reveals its multi-secular prehistory. This book presents a study of the veneration of God’s name in the Bible, the patristic tradition and the ascetic traditions of the Christian Orient, as well as the works of Russian theologians. An entire chapter is devoted to the monk Hilarion’s ‘In the Caucasus Mountains’ (1907) and the onomatodoxical controversy it provoked.

Many themes constantly recur in the course of this study: the Biblical conception of God’s name and its reception in the theological, ascetic and liturgical tradition of the Orthodox Church; the patristic doctrine of God’s names; the Christian concept of the name in general and of the relation between name and named object; the meaning of the name ‘Jesus’ and the veneration of this name in the liturgical practice of the Orthodox Church; the theory and practice of the Jesus Prayer.