LOT-BORODINE, MYRRHA

LOT-BORODINE, MYRRHA, lay theologian (21 January 1882–18 July 1957). While in St. Petersburg she studied ancient Greek religion and French literature of the Middle Ages. From 1900 to 1906 she was involved in the effort to reconcile Russian intellectuals with the Orthodox Church. She left Russia permanently in 1906 to settle in Paris where she obtained a doctorate and married the historian Ferdinand Lot. From 1925 on she was associated with the interconfessional activities of N. Berdiaev, while studying with J. Lebreton and E. Gilson and maintaining contact with the Cistercian, Benedictine, and Dominican Orders. Her special interests at this time were love in the Middle Ages, the myth of the Holy Grail, Cistercian spirituality, and the Virgin Mary (q.v.).

The focus of her life’s work changed when in 1930 she attended a talk by Georges Florovsky on theosis (qq.v.) in the Greek Orient. In 1936 she wrote an article castigating Russian nationalist religion and proposed the concept, influenced by Vladimir Lossky (q.v.), of universal Orthodoxy. Until her death she was an avid proponent of Orthodox involvement in the ecumenical movement (q.v.). She was especially influenced by Lossky’s thinking, which led her to examine Gregory Palamas’s (q.v.) doctrine of uncreated energies and the mystical thought of other Byzantine theologians, especially Nicholas Cabasilas (q.v.). She is the author of La Deification de l’homme, selon la doctrine des Peres grecs (1970) and Un Maitre de la spiritualite byzantine au XIVe siecle, Nicolas Cabasilas (1958).