The Rise and Fall of Latin Humanism in Early-Modern Russia: Pagan Authors, Ukrainians, and the Resiliency of Muscovy

298 Pages·1995·16.366 MB·English

by  Max J. Okenfuss

BRILL'S STUDIES
IN
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
General Editor
A J. VANDERJAGT, University of Groningen
Editonal Board
M. COLISH, Oberlin College
J.I. ISRAEL, University College, London
J.D. NORTH, University of Groningen
H.A. OBERMAN, University of Arizona, Tucson
R.H. POPKIN, Washington University, St. Louis-UCLA
VOLUME 64
THE RISE AND FALL
OF LATIN HUMANISM
IN EARLY-MODERN RUSSIA
Pagan Authors, Ukrainians, and the Resiliency of Muscovy
BY
MAX J. OKENFUSS
to
• S
E J. BRILL
LEIDEN · NEW YORK · KÖLN
1995
The author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Fulbright Commission for
Educational Exchange, and the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, for a
sabbatical in Göttingen in 1989-90. Additional support was generously provided by the
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Department of History, Washington
University, St. Louis.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library
Resources.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Okenfuss, Max J. (Max Joseph)
The rise and fall of Latin humanism in early-modern Russia : pagan
authors, Ukrainians, and the Resiliency of Muscovy / Max J.
Okenfuss.
p. cm. — (Brill's studies in intellectual history, ISSN
0920-8607 ; v. 64)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 9004103317 (alk. paper)
1. Classical education—Russia—History—18th century.
2. Humanism—Russia—History—18th century. 3. Books and reading-
-Russia—History—18th century. 4. Russia—Civilization—18th
century. I. Title. II. Series.
LA831.5.039 1995
370.1 Γ2Ό947— dc20 95-15028
CIP
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufhahme
Okenfuss, Max J.:
The rise and fall of Latin humanism in early-modern Russia :
pagan authors, Ukrainians, and the Resiliency of Muscovy / Max
J. Okenfuss. - Leiden ; New York ; Köln : Brill, 1995
(Brill's studies in intellectual history ; Vol. 64)
ISBN 90-04-10331-7
NE:GT
ISSN 0920-8607
ISBN 90 04 10331 7
© Copyright 1995 by E.J. Bull, Leiden, The Netherlands
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PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. A Moving Target 1
2. Principal Questions and Methods 6
3. Contexts and Acknowledgements 17
Chapter One: Book Culture in Muscovy
1. Humanism and Book Culture in the 17th Century 21
2. Muscovite Book Culture and Soviet Historiography
A. Attitudes Toward Books and Printing 26
B. The Repertoire of Books: How Secular? 30
C. The Manuscript Tradition and Reading 37
D. Awakum as a Mirror of Traditional Muscovy 41
3. Ukrainian Humanism's Challenge to
Muscovite Culture
A. The Alien Nature of Ukrainian Humanism 45
B. The Coming of the Ukrainians and Their Books .... 52
C. The Significance of Polockij and Ukrainian
Humanism 58
4. The Impact of Polish Court Culture
A. The Opening of Muscovy by Tsar Aleksei 63
B. Polonized Book Culture at Court 65
C. Peter Tolstoi, Polonized Courtier 71
5. Conclusion 75
Chapter Two: Russian Book Culture in the First Half
of the Eighteenth Century
1. European Book Culture in the Pre-Enlightenment 80
2. The Classics in the Petrine Age and Beyond
A. The Classics in Print in Russia 88
B. Modern Thought Without the Classics:
Pososhkov 101
3. Eighteenth-Century Russian Humanistic
Book Culture 104
A. Humanistic Libraries in Pe trine Russia 105
B. Teofan Prokopovych and His Books 110
C. Teofan Prokopovych as Humanist 113
vi CONTENTS
4. Eighteenth-Century Courtly Book Culture
A. Courtly and Noble Libraries in Russia 119
B. V. N. Tatishchev, Orthodox Courtier 130
5. Conclusion 136
Chapter Three: Russian Book Culture in the Later
Eighteenth Century
1. European Book Culture in an Enlightened Age 138
2. The Classics vs. Tradition in Catherine's Russia
A. Translating and Publishing the Classics 147
B. Book Consumption in an Enlightened Age 157
3. Learning Latin in Post-Petrine Russia 161
4. Book Culture in Catherine's Russia
A. The Problem of Sources (I) 173
B. The Library of the Humanistically Educated:
Lomonosov 173
C. Other Humanists' Libraries in Russia 181
5. Russian Nobles' Libraries and Culture
A. The Problem of Sources (II) 184
B. Nikolai Novikov, Courtier 185
C. Paul Demidov and A. T. Bolotov,
Noble Readers 190
D. Alexander Radishchev, the Culmination of
Humanism 194
Chapter Four: Epilogue: The Fate of Latin Culture in the
Late Eighteenth Century
1. Catherine's Public Schools and the End of Latin
A. Introduction: Catherine's School Reform 198
B. Elementary Textbooks and Ideals 201
C. On the Duties of Man and Citizen 206
D. The Fate of Latin 213
E. The Context: A Religious Revival 216
2. Afterword: The Historiographie Context and the
Creation of the Russian Enlightenment 223
Conclusion 231
Bibliography of Works Consulted 243
Index 281
INTRODUCTION
1. A Moving Target
This is the story of the physical presence of the Classics in Russia,
1650-1789. In the mid-seventeenth century the tsarist court, some
governmental offices (ρτϋεαζή, and some in the Church's leadership,
announced themselves to be open to the West. The proximate West
was Poland, and it offered both its courtly and military culture, and
the values of its Ukrainian and Belorussian clergy, who shared Or­
thodoxy with the Muscovites. To be sure the receptive elites took
measures to shield the lower orders of Muscovy from these new values,
as would subsequent Russian governments down to 1861. This was
Westernization for the upper strata of society.
In the mid-seventeenth century learned Western Civilization and
a Latin book-culture were still synonymous. By the end of the En­
lightenments,1 that unity was largely shattered, although everywhere
centuries of Latin learning would still shape the education and out­
look of every schooled European. The rhetoric of the French Revo­
lution, for example, was incomprehensible without an education in
the Classics: on a single day in 1793, addressing a decidedly non-
aristocratic audience, Robespierre proclaimed, "I would gladly be one
of Aristides' sons," and St. Just reminded his listeners that "oppressors
arose after the time of Lycurgus who destroyed his work."2 At that
moment such orators scarcely existed in Russia, in spite of a century
and a half of "Westernization." This study asks why that was so.
Tentatively, in the middle of the seventeenth century the political
leaders of Muscovy took aim at a moving target. A military meta­
phor is the appropriate beginning for this story, because it was in­
creasing involvement with new-style armies, navies, and fortifications
1 Following a recent historiographie trend, I recognize several distinct enlighten­
ments; see Porter and Teich, eds., The Enlightenment.
2 Reynolds, ed., Spokesmen, pp. 126, 133. See in general, Parker, The Cult of An­
tiquity. Compare also Reinhold, Classica Americana, p. 102 and passim: "It was the
Constitutional Convention of 1787 ... that the appeal to classical political theory
and practice reached its peak.... [In] the records of the Federal Convention, and
The Federalist papers... it is discernible that some of these were extracted from
translations of Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Polybius, Livy, Cicero, Sallust, Strabo,
Tacitus, and Plutarch," although modern authors were cited more often.
2 INTRODUCTION
of Western Europe which demanded a redirection of the Muscovite
court's aspirations. Its target was a constellation of dynamic tech
nologies, institutions, and habits of mind which we call Western
Civilization, which gradually a few Russians and most Europeans
came to regard as "superior" to those of old Muscovy, and a few
even as normative for Russia's future. The target was moving in that
Europe was ever changing, even in the glaringly mislabeled Dark
Ages,3 and never more so than in the early-modern period when
change was catapulted along the deadly trajectory of the Gunpow
der Revolution and through the carnage of its aftermath.
One example may suffice. At the end of the seventeenth century
Tsar Peter embarked on his famous Grand Embassy to Europe.
Among the thousands of impressions which tumbled through his ever-
curious mind on that journey was an artifact as simple as the calendar.
Somehow Peter came to contrast traditional Muscovy's creation-based
calendar, in which the year was 7205, with those of the Year of Our
Lord, 1697, in Western Europe. He learned that there were in fact
two calendars in use, Julian and Gregorian, Old-Style and New-Style.
Because that first journey took him to Protestant north-German lands
and to Holland and England, and because his voyage was cut short
before he could spend time in Catholic France, Venice, or the Empire,
Peter came to regard the ways of northern Europe as more imitable
than those of the south. Thus he adopted the Julian calendar still
generally in use there.
As a result two centuries later the Great October Socialist Revo
lution would occur in November, as the February revolution had
occurred in March. It is irrelevant whether Weber was correct about
northern Europe or the Protestant Ethic, or whether the Gregorian
calendar is a more accurate reflection of the solar cycle than the
Julian. The legal use of the former was the visible target in Holland
and England when Peter visited, and which he decreed to the Russian
people when a new (Western) century began in 1700. The sighted
target, of course, moved. But in this simple act, subsequendy recorded
in the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire as enactment
#1736, old Muscovy symbolically accepted the cultural imperialism
of the West. Every human society previously and since has had its
own way to reckon the passage of time, and all were and are in
3 I have previously recorded my debt to Jean Gimpel and Lynn White Jr., in my
"Peter Tolstoi in Rome," pp. 35-41.