Russia under the first Romanovs from Cambridge history of Russia, volume 1

Historians who measure Russia with a Western yardstick generally link low achievements in 'book culture' with lack of learning. The idea runs like a refrain through accounts written by Western travellers, many of whom had some form of higher education. The absence of Russian names among the luminaries of the so-called 'scientific revolution' is hardly surprising when we consider that not only did Muscovy have no universities or academies, but also apparently lacked even elementary schools. Some Orthodox churchmen magnified the negative impression by equating foreign learning with 'guile' and 'deception'. At the same time, we should not exaggerate the gap. Even Isaac Newton, a devout Christian, studied topics such as astrology and alchemy that today would be regarded as 'unscientific'. For the mass of people all over Europe the world was explained by divine providence, not the laws of physics. Everywhere book learning, an urban phenomenon, was for the few. Even noblemen often had a minimal grasp of classical languages and Latin

humanism. [378]

Books printed in Cyrillic in foreign centres of Orthodox learning reached Russia, as well as secular books in foreign languages. Translations on secular topics such as medicine and mathematics were commissioned in government departments and works in manuscript on diverse subjects circulated among literate people, while a flourishing oral tradition brought a variety oftexts even to the remote countryside. After the Time of Troubles many historical narratives appeared that retold real-life events and showed an interest in personalities, for example Avraamii Palitsyn's Skazanie of the Troubles and Katyrev-Rostovskii's Book of Chronicles. Such works circulated alongside fictional tales of adventure and mystery. Particularly popular were translations via the Polish from the Great Mirror (Magnum speculum exemplorum) and Deeds of the Romans. Nobles and townspeople read chivalric romances, picaresque tales and parodic works like Liturgy to the Ale House and Shemiaka's Judgement. A new genre was the 'literature of roguery' in which characters constantly transform themselves and adopt new identities.[379] Tales in this category include Savva Grudtsyn and Frol Skobeev, the latter remarkable for its lack of a moral message. Soviet historians exaggerated the significance of such tales, treating them as 'democratic satires' that criticised the status quo. A more nuanced reading is now possible, revealing a mixture of hagiographic framing, foreign borrowings and local embellishments. Redating has pushed these stories to the very end of the century and to the 'margins' of the literary scene.[380]

Traditional forms could accommodate new content, for example the 'Life' of the pious laywoman Iuliania Lazarevskaia written by her son, who stressed her humility and charity rather than her asceticism or devotion to the liturgy.[381]The autobiographical 'Life' of Archpriest Avvakum, composed in the 1670s, contained earthy scenes of family life written in a robust vernacular alongside rhetorical passages underlining the theme of personal struggle.[382]

The emergence ofliterature as an activity with distinct aesthetic and formal requirements carried out by named authors is reflected in the work of the so- called 'chancellery' or Printing Office poets of the first half of the century, who specialised in didactic verse, epistles and appeals in syllabic metre derived from Ruthenian models.[383] The first translated treatise on rhetoric in Russian dates from 1623. The assimilation of new literary forms and a genre system was accelerated by the Church's programme for correcting service books. A major pioneer of sermons, for example, was the Ukrainian scholar and corrector Epifanii Slavinetskii.

The career of Simeon Polotskii (Samuil Gavrilovich Petrovskii-Sinianovich, 1629-80) exemplifies new trends in Latin/Slavonic literary culture.[384] This Kiev- educated monk came to Moscow in i664 to serve as tutor to Tsar Alexis's children. He left a massive legacy ofsacred and secular writings in manuscript, while his published works make him one of the rare authors active in Muscovy whose name appeared in print during his lifetime or very shortly after his death.[385] Most of his publications were produced in the Palace Typography (Verkhniaia tipografiia), which in the 1670s to early 1680s operated alongside the Moscow Press. His Psalter in Verse (1680) was a best-seller. Writings preserved in manuscript include Vertograd mnogotsvetnyi, a massive anthology of 2,763 didactic poems written in syllabic verse, the content borrowed from Latin originals by Jesuit writers, and the Rifmologion of occasional verses for royal events. Polotskii makes frequent reference to classical authors and tales from antiquity. The title page to his History ofBarlaam andJosaphat (1681), designed by Ushakov, has been hailed as 'the first example ofthe use of Classical symbolism by a Russian artist'.[386] In general, poetry was still regarded as a higher form of spiritual activity. Even secular poems concentrated on moral improvement, especially the curbing of pride and avarice.

Along with acceptance of poetry came some sponsorship of education. Some boyars learned Latin and Polish from foreign tutors.[387] The young Tsar Alexis's early lessons were from primers and biblical texts, but later he read cosmographies, astronomy and mechanics, ancient history and travel accounts. A few schools sprang up, attached to monasteries (Miracles (Chudovskii), St Andrew's and Zaikonospasskii), to the Moscow Printing House and government departments, although information about them is fragmentary.[388]Tsar Alexis's son Alexis, instructed by Polotskii, in 1667 was able to deliver a speech in Latin and Polish to a delegation from Poland. In 1682 another son, Tsar Fedor, approved a charter of privileges for an academy in Moscow to teach grammar, poetics, rhetoric, dialectics, rational, natural and legal philosophy and the 'free sciences'. The prototype was the Mohyla academy in Kiev, founded in the 1630s on the Jesuit model. Fedor's plan was implemented under Sophia in 1685-7 when the Slavonic-Greek-Latin academy opened its doors. All its classes were conducted in Latin. The teachers were churchmen. The curriculum included Aristotelian cosmology in the context of Jesuit natural philosophy in an attempt to harmonise secular learning with faith.[389]

Conclusion: secularisation revisited

Our knowledge of seventeenth-century Russian culture is far from complete. Attributions and dating are often imprecise, especially in the case of icons. Surviving monuments may be too few to allow generalisations - wooden buildings, for example - or there may be no examples left at all, as in the case of 'history' paintings executed on the walls of royal palaces. New literary texts in manuscript continue to be discovered and scholars constantly revise the dating of the known ones. Provincial culture in particular requires further study.[390] We may conclude that, by and large, 'high' Russo-Byzantine Orthodox models and 'low' folk culture met most of the needs of the sort of society that Muscovy was in the seventeenth century and reflected the sort of view of the world that most Muscovites still held. Hence, tsars in their portraits, including the young Peter the Great, looked more like Byzantine emperors than French or English kings; Orthodox church design remained distinct from

378

See arguments in Paul Bushkovitch, 'Cultural Change among the Russian Boyars 16501680. New Sources and Old Problems', FOG 56 (2000): 89-111. On astrology and other pseudo-sciences in Muscovy W F. Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight. AnHistorical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, i999); W. F. Ryan, 'Aristotle and Pseudo-Aristotle in Kievan and Muscovite Russia', in J. Kraye et al. (eds.), Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages (London: Warburg Institute, 1986),

pp. 97-i09.

379

Marcia A. Morris, The Literature of Roguery in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Russia (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2000).

380

Zhivov, 'Religious Reform', pp. 188-9.

381

See discussion in Paul Bushkovitch, Religion and Society in Russia. The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, i992), pp. i40-7.

382

See N. S. Demkova (ed.), Sochineniia protopopa Avvakuma i publitsisticheskaia literatura rannego staroobriadchestva (St. Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo S.-Peterburgskogo universiteta,

i998).

383

See A. M. Panchenko (ed.), Russkaia sillabicheskaia poeziia XVII-XVIII vv. (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1970); A. M. Panchenko, Russkaia stikhotvornaia kul'tura XVII veka (Leningrad: Nauka, 1973); Bushkovitch, Religion, pp. 140-5; D. I. Luburkin, Russkaia novolatinskaiapoeziia:materialykistoriiXVII-pervaiapolovinaXVIIIveka (Moscow: RGGU, 2000).

384

Simeon Polotskii, Simeon Polockij. Vertograd mnogocvetnyj, ed. Anthony Hippisley and Lydia I. Sazonova, 3 vols. (Cologne: Bohlau, 1996-2000); L. I. Sazonova, Poeziia russkogo barokko (Moscow: Nauka, 1991).

385

Bushkovitch, Religion, pp. 150-1.

386

Cracraft, Imagery, pp. 127,155.

387

Bushkovitch, 'Cultural Change', 104-5.

388

A. Sakharov et al. (eds.), Ocherki po istorii russkoi kul'tury XVII veka, 2 vols. (Moscow: MGU, 1979), vol. ii, pp. 149-52.

389

See N. Chrissides, 'Creating the New Educational Elite. Learning and Faith in Moscow's Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy, 1685-1694', unpublished PhD thesis, Yale University, 2000.

390

See Valerie Kivelson, Autocracy in the Provinces. The Muscovite Gentry and Political Culture in the Seventeenth Century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996).