The “Byzantine Firework” of Paris

This chapter examines the church's reception in France. It talks about the church and the media that accompanied France that started to reshape Orthodoxy's public image. It also explains how Orthodox publicists gained some control over the narratives about Orthodoxy and accurate information about the Eastern Church that was widely disseminated in newspaper articles and tour guides. The chapter also assesses discussions of the church that simultaneously blurred and sharpened the distinctions between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism and between notions of Russian-ness and French-ness. It also describes the term “Byzantine–Muscovite style” and the adoption of pre-Petrine Russian architectural models for church building that simultaneously emphasized Russia's distinctiveness in relation to western Europe and its belonging “to the great European cultural tradition.”