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Reading Russia, vol. 1

 | 
Damiano Rebecchini
, 
Raffaella Vassena

Part I. The Long Eighteenth Century

What, How, and Why the Orthodox Clergy Read in Eighteenth-Century Russia

Ekaterina Kislova

Texte intégral

1. Difficulties in reconstructing the clergy’s reading

1What did the Orthodox clergy read in eighteenth-century Russia? To make even a rough approximation is difficult. The first obstacle is the fact that, during the eighteenth century, the Orthodox clergy was undergoing serious social and cultural transformations instigated by Peter the Great’s internal policies, the process of westernization, and new state models of clerical education. We also need to consider two different clerical groups:

  1. The ‘educated’ or ‘modern’ clergy, which became part of the national westernization project. This group was defined by its shared institutional education. These clerics possessed a good knowledge of Church Slavonic and Latin, and, in some cases, they even knew additional foreign languages. This small, elite segment of the clergy was distinct in its ideology and organizational makeup, and its members largely oversaw and directed the wider clergyʼs evolution during this period. They included members of the Holy Synod, rectors and professors from theological seminaries, priests and deacons from capital churches, Fathers Superior from wealthy monasteries, preachers close to the court, catechists, examiners, and so on. They were very close to secular society: students from seminaries were able to enter other educational institutions (medical, academic, etc.), and could ‘secularize’ (“exit into the secular condition”) after their education was finished—or even during the course of it.1
  2. The ‘traditional’ clergy, which was much more numerous and included churchmen from small towns and poor parishes. They learned at home ‘from Fathers [i.e., parish priests],’ were able to read Church Slavonic, and had practical skills in liturgical singing, etc. They did not know Latin or other foreign languages, but this group in particular was familiar with hand-written, manuscript, pre-Petrine literature, which they read both for official and recreational purposes. During the eighteenth century, this group remained much more numerous than the former2 and was treated more like those belonging to the ‘taxed estates’ (podatnye sosloviia); indeed, such individuals were considered “illiterate” by the ‘modern’ clergy and the government. In Russian regions with few seminaries (for example, Siberia), such “traditionalists” constituted the majority of the clergy until the early nineteenth century.3
  • 4   On manuscript literature of the eighteenth century, see M. N. Speranskii, Rukopisnye sborniki XVI (...)

2A second issue concerns the sources that can help us reconstruct the clergy’s reading habits. Narrowly speaking, documents that show a cleric’s reflection upon a text can be considered proof that the cleric had read this text; however, few examples of such documents have survived. We can also consider as evidence notes written about texts or even complete copies of texts, as well as translations from foreign languages, whether they are complete or fragmentary. The practice of making notes about interesting and useful textual fragments, or even hand-written copies of them, was very popular among all social estates in the eighteenth century. Such hand-written collections were often anonymous, so we cannot always tell who the writer was and which sources he used.4 Furthermore, a citation doesn’t necessarily mean that the person had read the entire text: printed and handwritten collections of phrases and quotes from various sources were widespread. Any given text could thus belong to a cleric’s reading only indirectly, through periphrasis, notes, and allusions in other texts. This was common in clerical society because of the tradition of “exempla”—lists of entertaining examples that could be used in sermons as rhetorical illustrations (such as the Russian translations of various Polish collections—the Apophegmata, The Great Mirror [Velikoe zertsalo], etc.). Therefore, the simple fact of textual citation does not definitively indicate in-depth knowledge of that text; we can gain reliable information about that knowledge only if the document is interpreted in consideration with other sources.

3Papers from seminaries—such as professors’ reports, reading lists for classes, discussions on exemplary texts, books for reading in private and in translation, and so on—represent more reliable sources. Significant information can be gained from book catalogues of private and seminarу library collections, as well as lists of books that scholars failed to return to those libraries. On the one hand, possession of a certain book or its circulation within a seminary library did not necessary mean that it was a part of particular clergymen’s reading. On the other hand, orders from seminary authorities to buy particular books, lists of books that were given to exemplary students, and lists of books that were not brought back to the library seem significant. Unfortunately, eighteenth-century seminary archives are in poor condition; such sources have only partly survived and do not provide a complete picture of clerics’ reading material.

4A third issue concerns the number of languages that the clergy read and the evolution of their language skills over the course of the eighteenth century. As opposed to the ‘traditional’ clergy, who commonly only read in Church Slavonic and Russian, the ‘modern’ clergy could also read in Latin, Polish, French, German, and sometimes even Greek and Hebrew.

5Keeping these circumstances in mind, we might distinguish three categories of texts read by eighteenth-century clergy:

  1. ‘Professional’ clerical literature in various languages: liturgical and theological texts in Church Slavonic; theological tracts and books of spiritual content in hybrid Church Slavonic, Russian, and Latin; administrative writings; and sermons.
  2. Secular fiction in Russian (both original and translated).
  3. Literature in foreign languages (Polish, French, German), both ‘professional’ (moralistic and spiritual) and fictional. We should also include here classical Greek and Roman authors such as Cicero, Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Julius Caesar, etc. Their writings were also studied as part of seminary education in poetics and rhetoric but held a specific place in seminary culture; they often represented required rather than voluntary reading, as opposed to contemporary fiction in Russian.

6In what follows, I will consider the primary features of each category of reading material.

2. ‘Professional’ clerical literature in various languages

  • 5   See E. A. Mel’nikova, “Voobrazhaemaia kniga”: ocherki po istorii fol’klora o knigakh i chtenii v (...)

7The literature that was most important for the clergy may be called ‘professional’ because reading these texts was required in order for a churchman to become a successful member of the clerical estate. Liturgical and service books in Church Slavonic represented the core of this material: Gospel and Epistle Books, the Psalter, the Octoechos, Menaion, Triodion, Horologion, Irmologion, Euchologion, and so on. Since liturgical books were considered sacred, they required a different caliber of reading. Members of the clergy read such writings not as ‘food for thought’ or as a simple source of information, but rather as ‘spiritual’ or ‘edificatory’ reading that would help them become a better Christian. In mass, these texts were read over and over, out loud and together with the congregation as an act of worship.5 To this day, there exist special instructions on how to read this kind of Orthodox literature in private; there is even a special prayer to be recited before doing so.

  • 6   A. G. Kravetskii, “Liturgicheskii iazyk kak predmet etnografii,” in E.E. Levkievskaia (ed.), Slav (...)
  • 7   Zol’nikova, Soslovnye problemy, 122.
  • 8   I. K. Smolich, Istoriia russkoi tserkvi. 1700–1917, Vol. 8 part 1 (Moscow, 1996), 348-350; N. Roz (...)
  • 9   See V. M. Zhivov, Iazyk i kultura v Rossii XVIII veka (Moscow, 1996).

8All clerics needed to possess a level of Church Slavonic that would allow them to read such books out loud. Until the late nineteenth century, basic grammar education among all clerics used ecclesiastic books—Primers, the Horologion, and the Psalms,6 which were learned by heart; knowledge of these texts did not necessarily mean that a particular person could read any other ones.7 The level of understanding also varied. The Ecclesiastical Regulation (Dukhovnyi reglament [1721]) demanded not only good pronunciation, but also an understanding of basic Church Slavonic texts. However, during the century in question, church authorities often regretted that the clergy did not understand the Scriptures well enough. In order to show their competence, ‘modern’ clergymen were supposed to pass an examination before taking their vows.8 Church Slavonic was not deemed a language that required special study, as it was seen as a part of the united “slavenorosskii” (Slavonic-Russian) language,9 and until the nineteenth century there were no classes on it in seminaries.

  • 10   See OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 5-5 ob.
  • 11   Reading the Bible in French or German was not prohibited and could be used for studying European (...)
  • 12   P. Znamenskii, Dukhovnyie shkoly v Rossii do reformy 1808 goda (Kazan’, 1881), 468.
  • 13   S. Smirnov, Istoriia Troitskoi lavrskoi seminarii (Moscow, 1867), 267-268, 279.
  • 14   Among these were courses by Apollos Baibakov in 1775 and by Methodius Smirnov between 1784 and th (...)

9The Holy Scriptures were read as a source for theological discussion only in advanced classes—theology and philosophy—and were not included in the program for foundational classes.10 Furthermore, not all seminary students completed their education with these classes; most of them were assigned to parishes just after taking the middle-level (“rhetoric”) class. Until the late eighteenth century, theology in seminaries was taught in Latin and on the basis of Latin tracts, which is why they also studied the Bible itself using the Vulgate.11 The latter obviously had a lower status in the eyes of the Orthodox clergy, so this Latin text seemed more suitable for theological discussions, which were also conducted primarily in Latin.12 Consequently, the 1775 order from Metropolitan Platon (Levshin) that required that the Bible be interpreted on the basis of the Masoretic (Hebrew) text and the Septuagint was quite significant. Previously the Greek New Testament had been a source for studying Greek, while fragments from the Old Testament in Hebrew13 and “the Hebrew Bible” itself were used to study Hebrew. The use of the Church Slavonic Bible in theology classes was thus a significant innovation, one was instituted concurrently with the use of Russian in theology classes.14

  • 15   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 89.
  • 16   There are two versions of this catalogue: OR RGB f. 173.1, d. 585.1 and d. 586. 1. The first was (...)
  • 17   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, l. 87ob.-97ob.
  • 18   Ibid., l. 3 ob.-6-. The catalogue doesn’t mention particular editions, full titles, or even the d (...)

10Advanced students were advised to read from the Church Fathers “in their free time [and] under a professor’s eye,”15 but the language was not specified—this could have been Church Slavonic or Latin. The earliest surviving catalogues of the Trinity Seminary library16 (1761) present a rather traditional list of names and books: the Church Slavonic writings of John Chrysostom, Theophylact of Ohrid, Gregory of Nazianzus, Ephrem the Syrian, Basil of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Climacus, Dionysius the Areopagite, Pope St. Gregory I, John of Damascus, etc. Their texts in the catalog could be either hand-written or printed.17 However, many of these authors also had a presence in Latin: for example, the Trinity Seminary had books in Latin by Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Ephrem the Syrian, etc.18 Still, the list of Latin Church Fathers’ writings in this catalogue was much longer and more diverse in Church Slavonic and included not only traditional Orthodox patristic texts, but also works by authors popular in Western Christianity, such as Hilarius Pictaviensis, Hieronymus, St. Augustine of Hippo, and Pope St. Leo I.

  • 19   Smirnov, Istoriia Troitskoi lavrskoi seminarii, 54-58.

11In the 1761 catalogue we find a diversity of commentary and interpretation by medieval and contemporary Western theologians whose writings existed solely in Latin (e.g., Willem Hessels van Est’s Commentaria in epistolas apostolicas and a 10-volume edition of Joao da Silveira) as well as traditional and contemporary Latin writings on church history published in Europe (Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebii Pamphili, Historia haeresis Monothelitarum, Noël Alexandre’s Historia ecclesiastica veteris novique testamenti, etc.). The Trinity Seminary bought a significant number of these books abroad between 1744 and 1751. For instance, in 1744, the seminary bought for a total of 370 rubles 13 volumes of St. Chrysostom’s works and 37 volumes of Historia Byzantina variorum scriptorum Byzantinorum (both mentioned in the catalogue in 1761), and in 1745 purchased from Amsterdam and London not only Latin editions of Holy Fathers (St. John of Damascus, Eusebius of Caesarea), but also the most popular European collections of theological commentaries and historical works: William Beveridge’s Synodicon sive Pandectae canonum...; Europe Cornelius a Lapide’s Commentaries on the Bible in 12 volumes, which were among the most popular theological works of the seventeenth century; Concordantiae sacrorum librorum; and Historia Synodi Florentinae.19 Despite their Catholic or Protestant character, these books were considered useful as sources of theological knowledge and were used by Orthodox clergy without any restrictions (or at least none can be found in the seminaries’ extant papers). They also served as resources for seminary professors in creating their own theological writings, especially sermons.

  • 20   See Kislova, Latin, 203-210.
  • 21   The “Latin books” also contain a few Polish, German, French, Italian, and Greek editions. Theolog (...)

12The predominance of Latin publications in Trinity Seminary’s library of 1761 was a common feature of seminary culture in the first half of the eighteenth century in general; rhetoric, philosophy, and theology were all studied in Latin, and the Latin language itself was studied through exemplary Latin and Neo-Latin authors.20 The main section of the Trinity library’s catalogue mentions 1,685 items in Latin, and only 502 in “Russian” (i.e. in Russian and Church Slavonic; among these, 183 were hand-written).21

  • 22   S. P. Luppov, Kniga v Rossii v poslepetrovskoe vremia. 1725-1740 (Leningrad, 1976), 302-307.
  • 23   A. B. Postnikov, “Sud’ba starykh bibliotek pskovskikh tserkvei i monastyrei,” Pskov, 31 (2009), 1 (...)

13We find a different picture in catalogues from eighteenth-century monasteries and churches. Even in the second half of the century, Russian monasteries and churches did not possess any secular books (with a few exceptions): their collections were limited to liturgical books, and even lacked any writings by the Church Fathers.22 Moreover, they owned almost nothing in Latin. In a 1765 Inventory of Male and Female Monasteries... (Opis’ muzhskikh i devich’ikh monastyrei…), one can find book collections relinquished by Pskov monasteries and moved to the Pskov kremlin; these included various printed and hand-written Gospels, Irmologions, Euchologions, Menaions, Octoechos, Triodions, Patericons, Synaxarions, etc. There were also some samples of the “newly-corrected Bible,” the 1751 or 1756 Elizabethan edition. Books of homilies and orations by Holy Fathers mentioned here often contain notes about their having been given to eminent members of the church hierarchy: “The book of Ephrem the Syrian (Was given in Zlatoustov [Monastery] to the Hegumen); The Book of Ephrem the Syrian in quire (Was given with a receipt to Ioanniky, Hegumen of the Krypetskii Monastery, August 10, 1765); The book of John Climacus in quire (Was taken back from the archbishop).”23 Books by John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus are also mentioned. From contemporary literature, there are two copies of Fedor Polikarpov’s Trilingual Dictionary... (Leksikon treiazychnyi...) and two of Archbishop Pitirim’s Spiritual Sling (Prashchitsa dukhovnaia), a tract against the Old Believers (which was a common type of work in that region).

  • 24   RGADA, f. 1189, op. 1., d. 334, l. 68-74.
  • 25   See M. A. Fedotova, “O pervom izdatele i pervom izdanii propovedei Dimitriia Rostovskogo,” Slověn (...)

14A similar list is provided in a 1781-1785 inventory of the Zakonospassk Monastery in Moscow. Until 1797, the Moscow Slavic Greek Latin Academy was situated there, but the monastery’s churches also had their own small libraries.24 These typically included Gospels and Epistles, Psalters, Horologions, Triodions, Octoechos, Synaxarions, Menaions, Euchologions, Kormchaia Books, etc. The Holy Fathers John Climacus, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, Ephrem the Syrian, and St. Gregory I are mentioned once again. There are no polemical writings against the Old Believers because such texts were not as relevant in Moscow, but we can find here several “professional” books, often printed in Kiev, which were important for educated clergy in the capital. These reflect not only the strong Ukrainian influence in the seventeenth and first half of eighteenth century, but also the widespread popularity of specific sermons. They include: Petr Mogila’s Euchologion (Trebnik [1646]), Lazar Baranovych’s The Trumpets of Preaching Words (Truby sloves propovidnykh [1674]), Ioanniky Galyatovskii’s The Key to Understanding (Kliuch razumeniia [1659]), Isaiia Kopinskii’s The Spiritual Alphabet (Alfavit dukhovnyi), ascribed to Dimitri Rostovskii,25 and Symeon Polotskii’s Spiritual Dinner (Obed dushevnyi [1681]). All of these books were written by Ukrainian monastic scholars in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Contemporary ecclesiastic books were represented only by the Ecclesiastic Regulation (Dukhovnyi reglament [1721]) and Gavriil Petrov and Platon Levshin’s Collection of Various Sermons for All Sundays and Holidays (Sobranie raznykh pouchenii na vse voskresnye i prazdnichnye dni [1775]).

15Reading the Church Fathers in Church Slavonic was a more or less typical skill required of Russian clergymen, but for the ‘modern’ clergy this was less important than knowing theological writings in Latin, or knowing Ukrainian and Russian seventeenth and eighteenth-century sermons. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the scope of Latin and Ukrainian books of theology was a lot broader than before, and existing translations into Church Slavonic and Russian were insufficient for an educated clergyman to gain ‘divine knowledge.’ Seminary students only attained the necessary fluency in Latin in their last years of education, so students who did not study beyond the primary or intermediate level remained unfamiliar with these writings and did not have access to them. And so these students merged with the ‘traditional’ clergy again. Ukrainian ecclesiastic books (e.g. Kyrylo Stavrovetskii-Tranquillon’s Didactic Gospel [1619], and various liturgical books published in Kiev) spread everywhere and were obviously popular even among Russian rural clergy.

3. Sermons and spiritual writings

  • 26   On the tradition of manuscript collections and their fate in the eighteenth century, see O. N. Fo (...)
  • 27   Speranskii, Rukopisnye sborniki, 102-103.
  • 28   Ibid., 104-105.

16The most popular and universal genres for reading were sermons and similar writings (orations, homilies, etc.). Among the traditional clergy, such writings circulated in hand-written collections of full or partial works by Church Fathers and of Russian texts with a similar style and content (sometimes anonymous), including sermons, homilies, extracts from saints’ lives, khozhdeniia (travelogues), Bible and Gospel commentaries, and various fragments of ecclesiastic literature.26 The content of such ‘spiritual collections’ remained the same from the fourteenth through eighteenth century. As M. N. Speranskii comments on these texts: “The range of texts read by the average eighteenth-century Russian clergyman was limited to the old tradition (mostly of the seventeenth century) [...] The core writings here are Lives, ascetic articles, lessons on church morals, selections from the Holy Scripture (for one or another purpose), moralistic stories, liturgical writings (masses), and, rarely, dogmatic and theological writings, mostly formal, canonical, and polemical.”27 There is almost no fiction here, but there was some religious syllabic verse, Apocrypha, and occasionally individual articles regarding secular content. Not all readers of these materials were clergymen; such genres were also quite popular among believers from various social strata.28

  • 29   See E. I. Kislova, E. M. Matveev, Khronologicheskii katalog slov i rechei XVIII veka (St. Petersb (...)
  • 30   See E. I. Kislova, “Sermons and Sermonizing in Eighteenth-Century Russia: At Court and Beyond,” S (...)

17Specific to the eighteenth century was the presence of “new type” (“scholastic” or “school”) sermons in handwritten format. This was a new genre which the traditionalists borrowed from the ‘modern’ clergy. This kind of sermon began to spread in the late seventeenth century. The first examples were brought into Russia by Ukrainian clergymen (Lazar Baranovich, Dimitri Rostovskii, etc.), and they gained popularity gradually. From the late eighteenth century on, giving sermons became the strict responsibility of every priest. They were obligated to deliver sermons in church “on every Sunday and every holy day,” as repeatedly demanded by the Synod; panegyric sermons became an obligatory part of worship in court churches, and the best texts were published at the government’s expense. Later—under Catherine II—private typographies started to publish large collections of sermons by Russian clergymen.29 Readers’ demand for sermons remained quite steady, and each one that was published became an example and source for clerics who needed to create their own texts.30 In 1775, Gavriil Petrov and Platon Levshin’s Collection of Various Sermons for all Sundays and Holidays (Sobranie raznykh pouchenii na vse voskresnye i prazdnichnye dni) was published and sent out to eparchies to provide every priest with officially approved exemplars. This was needed, first and foremost, by traditional clergymen who did not have enough knowledge or skill to create their own original sermons.

  • 31   Smirnov, Istoriia Troitskoi lavrskoi seminarii, 315.

18However, the tradition of hand-written collections of sermons continued to exist. From the second half of the eighteenth century on, such collections were closely associated with seminaries; future churchmen collected and copied exemplary texts for themselves and used them for their own study and practice. Such collections could include very different texts, including court sermons from different periods (taken both from publications and hand-written copies), as well as workbooks containing professors’ and other students’ sermons—both final versions and drafts. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the authorities started to actively include sermons in rhetoric classes (from 1798 there was a separate “higher church speech class”). In the Trinity Seminary, sermons by Feofan Prokopovich, Dimitrii Rostovskii, Gedeon Krinovskii, Ilias Miniatis, and Platon Levshin31 served as examples of language and style.

  • 32   OR RGB, f. 173.2, d. 49.
  • 33   Ibid., l. 369-374, l. 375-378 ob., l. 379-381 ob.

19Semen Pavlov, who studied at the Moscow Academy in the 1770s, created a noteworthy collection of handwritten sermons.32 It begins with copies of two sermons from Petrov and Levshin’s Collection of Various Sermons. While their origins go unmentioned, their rhetoric is closely examined in the margins, indicating their importance as models. The collection also contains speeches and sermons by Semen Pavlov himself with corrections and comments by his professors, as well as a few anonymous worksheets with drafts of sermons copied by different hands (but arranged by Pavlov). These contain notes about their use in the 1750s, perhaps even before Pavlov’s birth. Two printed texts are sewn into this collection—Aleksandr Levshin’s “Grateful Sermon to the Omnipotent God on the Solemn Day of the Final End to the Plague in Moscow” (“Slovo blagodarstvennoe ko vsemogushchemu bogu v torzhestvennyi den’ sovershennago presecheniia zarazitel’noi bolezni v Moskve” [1772]) and Feofan Prokopovich’s famous “Oration at the Funeral of Peter the Great” (“Slovo na pogrebenie Petra Velikogo” [1725]). These are followed by Semen Pavlov’s training speech “On the Demise of Someone Well-Known in Education” (“Na prestavlenie kakogo-libo ucheniem slavnago”)33 in Russian and Latin, in which we can find rhetorical figures and devices taken from ‘exemplary’ texts.

  • 34   RGADA, f. 188, op. 1, d. 1031.

20A significant number of such collections were based on copies of court and seminary sermons belonging to professors. Some copies became anonymous (although the writer sometimes mentions a particular publication from which a text was copied), and provide us with few grounds for any definitive conclusions. For instance, a collection in RGADA contains 24 handwritten copies of sermons (as well as a printed one); only nine of them have a specifically designated author, and eight of these were copied from published court sermons of the 1740s.34 Another three were copied from the first volume of Gedeon Krinovskii’s works, again without mentioning any author.

  • 35   Anonymous sermons were regularly attributed to Dimitrii Rostovskii: M. A. Fedotova, “O pervom izd (...)

21The author’s name is more often given in the case of the most influential preachers (Feofan Prokopovich and Dimitrii Rostovskii).35 The author is also mentioned when dealing with a collection of a professor’s or student’s writings, but briefly: the time or occasion (a particular holy day) may be mentioned in the title or in the margin, but the date, place, and name of the author is usually only found at the very end of a text, sometimes in Latin.

  • 36   OR RGB, f. 299, d. 158, l. 325 ob-333 ob.
  • 37   Decree of November 18, 1742. Polnoe sobranie postanovlenii i rasporiazhenii po vedomstvu pravosla (...)

22Among the anonymous texts, we can also find prohibited ones. For instance, the collection made by the Moscow Academy philosophy student Iakov Filippov contains a sermon titled “for marriage,” indicated on the margin.36 This is a sermon by Amvrosii Iushkevich “God’s Blessing...” (“Bozhie blagoslovenie...”) written on the occasion of the marriage between Anna Leopoldovna and Duke Anthony Ulrich of Brunswick in July 3, 1739. This text was prohibited during Elizabeth’s reign and removed from circulation,37 but, surprisingly, was available to seminary students via hand-written copies.

  • 38   OR RGB, f. 299, d. 158.
  • 39   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 163.

23Sermons from educational collections could be used for a very long time; for instance, Feofan Prokopovich and Dimitri Rostovskii remained viable models until the late eighteenth century. The collections could also be moved from one place to another, along with their possessors. One collection that belonged to Iakov Filippov contains 53 sermons (19 by Prokopovich and 15 by Georgii Konisskii) that were held in the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and were never published during the eighteenth century (the texts contain some stylistic corrections, which indicates that they were used for studying).38 Another collection contains three sermons by Simon Todorskii, delivered when he was preacher at the Kiev Academy.39 They remained unpublished until the beginning of the twentieth century. (The collection also includes a copy of a published court homily on the birthday of the Elisabeth’s heir, Petr Fedorovich, in 1743).

  • 40   OR RGB, f. 138, d. 69.

24Such collections were very widespread. For example, a Kostroma Seminary collection from the last quarter of the eighteenth century had previously belonged to Nikifor Zyrin, a priest at the Trinity Cathedral, and includes a large collection of sermons by Dimitrii Rostovskii along with various speeches and sermons from the 1779-1783 period by Kostroma clergymen.40 Among them, the outline of a sermon by Kostroma Bishop Parfenii; speeches and sermons by the priest Lavrentii Skvortsov, by the theology student Hierodeakon Flerov; and by the seminary Prefect Ivan Metelkin. All of this is accompanied by corrections and comments, some made by Zyrin himself.

  • 41   V. M. Zhivov, Ocherki istoricheskoi morfologii russkogo iazyka XVII-XVIII vekov (Moscow, 2004), 2 (...)
  • 42   OR RGB, f. 138, d. 251, from the early nineteenth century.

25By the late eighteenth century, more writings by Church Fathers were being published in modernized Church Slavonic and in Russian.41 The spread of newly translated homilies and orations by Church Fathers minimized any linguistic barriers, and thus the ‘modern’ clergy started to copy these writings into scholarly collections along with court sermons and their own exercises. For example, “A Collection of Educational Notes” from the Kostroma Seminary42 contains items from 1804-1806, including notes from the Epistles; theological speeches in Russian; as well as a “conversation” (sermon) by John Chrysostom and a speech by Patriarch Flavian (both copied from nineteenth-century printed translations), along with a rather traditional speech by Platon Levshin and illustrative examples from sermons by Gedeon Krinovskii (1755-1759).

  • 43   RGADA, f. 188. op. 1, d. 1365, l. 44-50ob.

26Only a few ‘new style’ sermons managed to find their place within the paradigm of traditional collections. In the mid eighteenth century, new style sermons were rarely copied along with Church Slavonic speeches by Church Fathers, although there are some examples—such as “A Collection of Church Content,” in which, among John Chrysostom and Ephrem the Syrian’s homilies and notes from traditional collections, one can find a hand-written copy of Dimitrii Sechenov’s “Sermon on the Day of the Appearance of the Icon ‘Our Lady of Kazan’” (“Slovo v den’ iavleniia ikony Kazanskoi bogomateri...”) presented at Elizabeth’s court in 1742.43 Placing such texts next to each other was probably motivated by multiple goals—saving one’s soul, as well as presenting a worthy repertoire of rhetorical examples and language usage (i.e. Church Slavonic as opposed to Russian with some Church Slavonic elements). In the second half of eighteenth century, “new style” sermons were often accompanied by secular texts: speeches, verses, notes from magazines, etc.

4. Russian fiction and literature translated into Russian

  • 44   Speranskii, Rukopisnye sborniki, 104-105; A. A. Pletneva, “Sotsiolingvistika i problemy istorii r (...)
  • 45   See Iu. Levin (ed.), Istoriia russkoi perevodnoi khudozhestvennoi literatury: Drevniaia Rus’. XVI (...)
  • 46   Journals from the second half of the eighteenth century frequently contained both original Russia (...)

27Among traditional clergy, secular literature in Russian and in hybrid Church Slavonic often accompanied lubok romances (Skazka o Eruslane Lazareviche, Skazka o Bove Koroleviche etc.), and in this regard the clergy was not much different from the urban population (meshchane).44 Contemporary secular literature in the clergy’s reading included both original Russian and a large range of translated contemporaneous writings.45 The place of fiction in the ‘modern’ clergy’s reading is somewhat similar.46 Original Russian was present at the seminaries mostly in the form of poetry and translations of historical, philosophical, and moralistic material. This is quite similar to the general picture of eighteenth-century literary culture in Russia, although the clergy had specific ways of accessing this kind of literature.

  • 47   E.g., the 1732 Latin rhetoric, RNB f.522 d.63.
  • 48   OR RNB, f. 577, d. 75, ll.165-168 ob.

28Literature in Russian spread mostly as a result of Russian authors being included in the seminary syllabus, specifically in the spheres of rhetoric and poetics. Although the seminaries used theoretical rhetoric and poetic guides in Latin until the second half of the century, they sometimes contained small poetic illustrations of living languages, such as Polish, “prosta mova,” and Russian.47 In the first half of the century, examples of such texts were represented by the syllabic verse of Feofan Prokopovich, Stefan Iavorskii, Antiokh Kantemir, as well as anonymous panegyrics (e.g., kanty for Peter the Second),48 etc.

  • 49   R. S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy (Princeton, 1995).
  • 50   N. Iu. Alekseeva, Russkaia oda: Razvitie odicheskoi formy v XVII-XVIII vekakh (St. Petersburg, 20 (...)
  • 51   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 529.
  • 52   V. I. Kolosov, Istoriia Tverskoi dukhovnoi seminarii (Tver’, 1889), 77-91; S. I. Nikolaev, Ot Kok (...)
  • 53   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 529, l. 35ob.-36, l. 39.

29The spread of public festivals with speeches and declamations49 created the necessity to study panegyric writing in Russian, and consequently became part of the clergy’s circle of reading. From the first third of the eighteenth century on, syllabi in rhetoric and poetics began to include modern syllabic-accentual odes, the main panegyric genre at the time.50 Surviving hand-written guides demonstrate that this shift occurred in the 1740s. For instance, the 1748 Moscow Academy poetics guide Phoebus poeticus51 was illustrated not only with syllabic spiritual verse, but also with epitaphs in hybrid Church Slavonic (sometimes from Ukrainian and Polish sources),52 “To the Author of the Satire” by Feofan Prokopovich, and a fragment of “An Ode Written in Honor of Anna Ioannovna” by Trediakovskii.53 Entries for the latter two failed to mention the texts’ authors.

  • 54   In the mid eighteenth century, texts were often copied without mentioning the author, but towards (...)
  • 55   OR RGB, f. 173.3, d. 32.

30The panegyric ode became an ideological staple of seminary poetry, so much so that seminary students both read and copied them for further use.54 A late 1740s–early 1760s example of such texts is “A Collection of Examples of Salutary Speeches and Poems, Composed in Trinity Lavra’s Seminary.”55 The collection contains speeches and salutations in Latin and Russian, syllabic, and accentual-syllabic verse, as well as anonymous notes from contemporary poets: Trediakovskii’s “Elegy on Peter the Great’s Death,” Lomonosov’s fables, an eclogue, etc. The writer copied all of the poetical passages from Lomonosov’s 1748 Rhetoric; they were probably needed as examples from which the writer drew for his own texts. The number of anonymous syllabic verses was much smaller than in older guides.

  • 56   See A. S. Silina, “Stikhotvornye opyty viatskikh seminaristov serediny XVIII veka,” XVIII vek, 28 (...)
  • 57   OR RGB, f. 218, d. 501.
  • 58   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l.164 ob.
  • 59   Ibid., l. 90; 94, 94ob., 140 ob.
  • 60   In the Novgorod Seminary - Ibid., l. 89 ob.; 93 ob., 94, 140 ob.; in the Riazan’ Seminary, see D. (...)

31In the middle of eighteenth century, hand-written seminary collections as well as surviving guides for professors began to reflect the corresponding spread of contemporary poetry. In the Viatka Seminary, students copied writings by Lomonosov, Trediakovskii, Sumarokov, and Kheraskov.56 A collection by Iosif Todorskii, a student of the Vologda Seminary during 1781-1787,57 contains several exercises, speeches, and verses in Russian and Latin, among them a large number of Lomonosov’s laudatory odes. In the last quarter of the century, original Russian writings were officially included in seminary syllabi. For instance, in rhetoric classes at the Novgorod Seminary in 1781, students read Lomonosov out loud “with good articulation.”58 In the early nineteenth century, the same odes by Lomonosov and verses by Sumarokov were used, but professors’ reports also mention odes by Derzhavin, cantos from Kheraskov’s Rossiad (Rossiada), poems by Karamzin, and even “The Poems of Ossian.”59 Prosaic texts in Russian remained quite specific in their subject matter (the preachings of Ilias Miniatis and John Chrysostom, sermons by Platon Levshin, etc.); even at that time, secular laudatory speeches were represented mostly by Lomonosov’s works.60

  • 61   RGADA, f. 188, op. 1, d. 756.

32By the late eighteenth century, the repertoire of contemporary authors broadens, and the gap between seminary and contemporary literature narrows. Lyrical poems begin to appear alongside panegyric odes, and magazines and literary collections become citation sources. For instance, a manuscript connected with Pereslavl Seminary entitled “Odes Collected from Various Very Best Russian Rhymers”61 contains a few copies of odes by G. R. Derzhavin—his “Ode to God” (“Bog”) (copied from the journal Sobesednik liubitelei rossiiskogo slova... [Companion of Lovers of the Russian Word] of 1784); “On the Birth of a Porphyrogene Child” (“Stikhi na rozhdenie v sever porfirorodnogo otroka”] (first published in the Sankt-Peterburgskii vestnik [St. Petersburg Herald] of 1779, n. 12); “Ode on the Taking of Ismail” (“Oda na vziatie Izmaila”) of 1790-1791 (provided without source); plus the poem “To the Homeland” by A. Turgenev (“K Otechestvu”) from Vestnik Evropy [Herald of Europe], 1802, n. 4). But the main content was copied from the poetic almanac Aonides:

From Volume 1, 1796:
“On the Death of Count Orlov” (“Stikhi na konchinu grafa F. G. Orlova”, “Sleeping Eros” (“Spiashchii Erot”), and “The Graces” (“Kharity”) by Derzhavin;
“Letter to A. A. P.” (“Poslanie k A.A.P.”), “Answer to My Friend Who Wanted Me to Write a Laudatory Ode to Catherine” (“Otvet moemu priiateliu kotoroi khotel chtoby ia napisal pokhvalnuiu odu Ekaterine”), “To Myself” (“K samomu sebe”), “Farewell” (“Proshchanie”), “The Lilly” (“Lileia”), “Hector and Andromache” (“Gektor i Andromakha”) —all by Karamzin;
“Ossian’s Hymn to the Sun” (“Gimn solntsu. Slepogo startsa Ossiana”) and “Ode on Melancholy” (“Oda na unynie”) by V. V. Kapnist;
“Ode to God” (“Pesn’ Bogu”) by V. V.Izmailov.
From Volume 2, 1797 — “Poetry” (“Poeziia”) by S. M. Magnitskii (never published elsewhere).

33The oldest text in this manuscript is Lomonosov’s “Ode, Excerpted from Job” (“Oda, vybrannaia iz Iova”); there is no syllabic verse at all. Writing by Tikhon Beliaev is presented as exemplary: “Poems on the Arrival of His Grace Ksenofont, Bishop of Vladimir and Suzdal’, at the Pereslavl School” (“Stikhi na prikhod ego preosviashchenstva Ksenofonta Episkopa Vladimirskago i Suzhdal’skago v Pereslavskoe uchil[ishche]”) of 1800; as well as an imitative poem by Petr Kankarov, “The Flower (Yesterday, rose, you were blooming)” (“Tsvetok [Vchera ty, roza, rastsvetala...]”).

34Thus, ‘modern’ clergymen’s reading significantly changes by the early nineteenth century: while in rhetoric and poetics classes still used traditional panegyric poetry, contemporary sentimental lyrics took an important place for seminary students even though such poetry was of no use in seminary life. Students were obviously interested in it. Inventories from seminary libraries also demonstrate that contemporary Russian literature appeared among the “modern” clergy’s reading interests from the 1770s onward.

  • 62   Agntsev, Istoriia Riazanskoi, 133.
  • 63   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 89 ob, 138 ob.

35Nevertheless, seminary students were not able to access the library freely. For instance, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century at the Riazan’ Seminary, the library was open two or three days a week in the afternoon, and students could only work with the books under their professors’ supervision.62 In rhetoric classes at the Novgorod Seminary, a professor provided students with “decent books” in Latin and Russian for reading in their free time, and the students had to make notes and give reports “on the language’s features, on its rhetorical adornments, and on [the text’s] useful moral message as well, etc.”63 Thus, we cannot state that all the books mentioned in library inventories were a real part of the clergy’s reading, but in many cases the content of the libraries correlates with other information we have at our disposal and thus becomes significant.

36When a seminary was established, its library obtained the books that were most necessary for study: ecclesiastical writings (Psalters, Books of Hours, etc.), textbooks (Primers, Institutiones linguae Latinae by Emmanuel Alvar, etc.), Latin dictionaries, and classical Latin literature, all of which was used to teach rhetoric and poetics. Other important Latin writings on history, philosophy, and theology were gradually acquired, and libraries also received collections of books that had belonged to deceased church hierarchs and professors; other books were bought in the capitals or even abroad.

  • 64   Personal collections of the hierarchs were also usually donated to seminary libraries after their (...)
  • 65   Agntsev, Istoriia Riazanskoi, 132.
  • 66   A. Blagoveshchenskii, Istoriia staroi Kazanskoi dukhovnoi akademii (1797-1818) (Kazan’, 1876), 13 (...)
  • 67   Ibid., 133.

37Seminary libraries were strongly influenced by the educated church hierarchs who compiled lists of books to be purchased and who often donated their own collections to the seminaries.64 For instance, Dimitrii Sechenov often sent “books of spiritual content” to the Riazan’ Seminary;65 Luka Konashevich donated “a collection of Church Fathers and church scholars, Bibles of great perfection and the best interpretations of the Holy Writing”66 to the Kazan’ Seminary, and in 1798, Amvrosy Podobedov donated 130 books in Russian (88 on history, 21 on philosophy, and 11 on theology) to it.67 Platon Levshin and Evgenii Bolkhovitinov donated editions of their own works to the seminaries under their authority.

  • 68   OR RGB, f. 757, k. 41, d. 7, l. 60. This donation could somehow be connected with the anti-masoni (...)
  • 69   Blagoveshchenskii, Istoriia staroi Kazanskoi, 133.

38Sometimes there were also donations from secular figures. For example, in January 1786 the famous freemason and editor Nikolai Novikov donated a considerable number of Moscow University printing office editions (mostly containing moralistic and spiritual content) to the Moscow Academy. Some of these books were given to students, some were taken to the library, and some were also sent to the seminaries in Kaluga and Zvenigorod.68 In 1798 Court Counselor V. I. Polianskii donated 44 books “on different topics in the Russian and French languages” to the Kazan’ Seminary.69 As a result of such gifts, seminary library holdings were supplemented on an irregular basis.

  • 70   P. I. Khoteev, Kniga v Rossii v seredine XVIII veka. Biblioteki obshchestvennogo pol’zovaniia (St (...)
  • 71   M. J. Okenfuss, The Rise and Fall of Latin Humanism in Early-Modern Russia. Pagan Authors, Ukrain (...)

39In the first half of the century, Russian-language editions were present in libraries but sporadically and randomly;70 they started to be actively collected in the 1770s, a shift that was obviously tied both to changes in the ethnic composition of the clergy (in Okenfuss’ terms, “Ukrainian humanists” were being replaced by “Great Russians”) and to the general policies of Catherine the Great, who encouraged Russian-language education.71 It is safe to say that, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Russian-language editions had become an important part of the reading material of seminary students and the clerical hierarchy.

  • 72   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, and d. 586.1.

40This process is well reflected in the registry of the Trinity Seminary,72 which has been described above. The section dated 1761-1763 contains few Russian books, mostly ‘practical literature’: official publications (several copies of the Ecclesiastic Regulations, the Vedomosti from 1730-1740, descriptions of Anna Ioannovna and Elizabeth Petrovna’s coronations, descriptions of various fireworks displays); and student editions (the German-Latin-Russian dictionary, Weismann’s Lexicon, of 1731; Pamva Berynda’s Slavonic-Russian lexicon of 1627; several copies of Slavonic grammars without imprints; one copy of the “Russian printed grammar”—Lomonosov’s Russian Grammar of 1755; Krasheninnikov’s Description of the Land of Kamchatka of 1755; geographical atlases; and textbooks on geography, arithmetic, drawing and so on). There are also ‘non-practical’ examples, such as translated scientific encyclopedias, socio-political and historical works: Florin’s Economy (Florinova Ekonomiia] [1738 or 1760], Samuel Pufendorf’s On The Duty of Man and Citizen (Samuila de Pifendorfa o dolzhnosti cheloveka i grazhdanina [1726]), The Life and Deeds of Marcus Aurelius (Zhitie i dela Marka Avreliia [1740 or 1760]), Trediakovskii’s translation of the True Politics of Noble and Gentle Persons (Istinnaia politika znatnykh i blagorodnykh osob [1737 or 1745]), ten copies of H. Curas’ Introduction to Universal History (Vvedeniie v general’nuiu istoriiu [1747 or 1750]), Aesop’s fables (1747), etc.

41After 1763, the library starts receiving books by contemporary Russian authors, for example:

  • 73   Two earlier odes are also possible: “Ode to Her Imperial Majesty... Empress Ekaterina Alekseevna. (...)

N. 132 Luka Sichkarev’s Ode—most probably, the “Ode on the Birthday of Her Imperial Majesty, Empress Ekaterina Alekseevna…” (“Oda e.i.v... imp. Ekaterine Alekseevne... na den’ vysochaishago eia rozhdeniia...,” St. Petersburg, 1765).73
N. 133 “An Extraordinary Bliss” (“Suguboe blazhenstvo”), a poem by Ippolit Bogdanovich, and Luka Sichkarev’s “Funeral Song for the Russian Scholar Lomonosov” (“Nadgrobnaia pesn’... uchenomu rossiiskomu muzhu Mikhaile Vasil’evichu Lomonosovu”), both St. Petersburg, 1765.
N. 137 An ode of Vassilii Petrov, which could be either the “Ode on the Magnificent Carousel” (“Oda na velikolepnyi karrusel’...,” Moscow, 1766), or the “Ode... to Her Majesty Ekaterina Alekseevna... on Electing Deputies to Compose a Project for a New Law Code” (“Oda... gosudaryne imp. Ekaterine Alekseevne... o izbranii deputatov k sochineniiu proekta novogo ulozheniia,” Moscow, 1767).
N. 138 An ode by Luka Tatishchev: “Ode... on the Death of Count Mikhail Illarionovich Vorontsov” (“Oda na... konchinu grafa Mikhaila Larionovicha Vorontsova...,” Moscow, 1767).
N. 140 Hieromonk Theophylact’s “Sermon on the Blissful Death of... Timothey, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kaluga...,” published together with an ode by Vassilii Ruban, (“Propoved’ na blazhenuiu konchinu preosviashchennago Timofeia propovednika ieromonakha Feofilakta vmeste s odoi Vasil’ia Rubana,” Moscow, 1767).

42Judging by the data in the catalogue, these books were acquired at the same time. Their themes are also connected, so we may assume that they were bought with similar purposes in mind.

  • 74   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, l.115 ob. These separate editions were probably bound together by the (...)
  • 75   Ibid., l.116. Here we definitely have different editions bound into one volume: it contains D. Di (...)
  • 76   E. P. Privalova, “O zabytom sbornike Tverskoi seminarii,” XVIII vek, 5 (1962), 407-421.

43Starting in the 1770s, buying current works by Russian authors becomes the rule rather than the exception. We see groups of theatrical works coming into the library, like N. 66: Sumarokov’s tragedies Khorev, Sinav and Truvor, Semira, Vysheslav, Iaropolk and Demiza, The False Demetrius, all in one volume;74 N. 81: Comedies... The Philoprogenitive Father, The Deceived Fiancé, The Natural Son, all in one volume (Komedii... Chadoliubivyi otets, Obmanutyi zhenikh, Pobochnyi syn vse v odnom tome).75 Interest in theater can also be seen in the genre of “conversations”—short interlude-like scenes—that spread throughout the seminaries.76

  • 77   OR RGB, f. 757, k. 41, d. 7, l. 11-12.
  • 78   Ibid., l. 11.
  • 79   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, l. 125 ob.

44Many church hierarchs encouraged this interest in contemporary fiction. In the spring of 1779, Kheraskov’s Rossiad was published. On 9 September 1779, Platon Levshin, the rector and prefect of the Moscow Academy, proposed that the Academy buy a number of books for students; the list included the Rossiad.77 Platon’s signed statement says, “Buy, and also make a list to buy other books of use to the seminary that were published in the Russian language.”78 In the same year, the Rossiad also appears in the library catalogue of the Trinity Seminary.79 It very quickly became one of the exemplary texts used in classes on poetics and rhetoric. Evidently, the personal involvement of educated hierarchs in the literary process, as well as their interest in works of importance for secular society, served to extend the students’ spectrum of reading.

  • 80   OR RGB, f. 757, k. 41, d. 7, l. 17-17 ob.; OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, l. 122, l. 125 ob.
  • 81   Privalova, “O zabytom sbornike,” 409.

45The 1760s and 70s mark the beginning of Russian-language periodicals being added to the Trinity Seminary; these included both newspapers (Moskovskie vedomosti and Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti) and literary or literary-historical magazines, which contained translations as well as original works of Russian literature. This process was also guided by the clerical elite. For example, all volumes of Utrennii svet (Morning Light), a masonic journal that began publication in 1777, were bought by the seminary library in 1779 on the personal recommendation of Archimandrite Damaskin and after discussion with Metropolitan Platon.80 Utrennii svet was also popular in other clerical circles; in 1779, Petr Terlikov, a teacher in the Tver’ Seminary, published a whole poem dedicated to this journal.81 Its masonic character wasn’t a problem for Orthodox clergy of the time, and was hardly even considered an issue before the end of the 1780s.

  • 82   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, l. 98 ob.
  • 83   Ibid. l. 99 ob.
  • 84   Ibid., l. 99 ob.
  • 85   Ibid., l. 118 ob.
  • 86   Ibid., l. 119.
  • 87   Ibid., l. 120.

46Scientific and (most of all) historical journals were rather popular. The catalogue contains notes on incoming deliveries of the newly issued Ezhemesiachnye sochineniia (Monthly Works) in 2 volumes in 1764.82 Records also indicate spontaneous purchases of new volumes of Drevniaia rossiiskaia vivliofika (The Ancient Russian Library);83 the edition of Nestor’s Chronicle of 1767;84 and, in 1774, 2 volumes of Drevniaia rossiiskaia vivliofika of 1773. Seminaries also bought actual literary magazines, sometimes with a significant time gap and sometimes without one; for example, the Collection of the Best Works, or Satirical Library, in 4 parts [Sobranie luchshikh sochinenii, ili satiricheskaia biblioteka],85 Zhivopisets (The Painter) (two parts in one volume),86 and Truten’ (The Drone) of 1769 were all bought in 1774.87 We may assume that these were selected based on their subject matter and with consideration for their popularity in secular society. Sometimes journals could be quite out-of-date when they reached the library, but they could be read several years after they were issued.

  • 88   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 189-478.
  • 89   As A. Iu. Samarin notes, “more than a third of the clergy’s subscriptions were to journals” (A. I (...)

47Journals from the second half of the eighteenth century continued to be read by the clergy even at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and seminary administrations took close note of them and even bought whole collections of old journals which they thought would be useful for students. For example, in 1807, the Novgorod Seminary bought 16 volumes of Ezhemesiachnye sochineniia for 1755-1757 and 1760-1765. The same Novgorod Seminary purchased contemporary magazines in 1803-1806 at the same active rate:88 in 1805 they bought the 24 volumes of Vestnik Evropy for 1804; in 1806—24 books of the same journal for 1805; 20 volumes of Drevniaia rossiiskaia vivliofika; 12 books of Drug prosveshcheniia (Enlightenment’s Friend) for 1805; and K. P. Shalikov’s Moskovskii zritel’ (Moscow Spectator). Journals soon began to be acquired on a subscription basis: in April 1806, the first part of Minerva and two volumes of Drug prosveshcheniia arrived.89

  • 90   OR RGB, f. 138, d. 301.
  • 91   Samarin, Tipografshchiki i knigochety, 310. The author assumes that other subjects were not popul (...)

48Journals are also well-represented in the Kostroma Seminary library’s registry from the 1820-1830s:90 20 volumes of Drevniaia rossiiskaia vivliofika; and Ezhemesiachnye sochineniia: volumes 1755-1756, 1759-1761, 1763-1764, and 1768, each in two parts). But here we can also find some provincial literary publications, like Uedinennyi poshekhonets (The Solitary Bumpkin) of 1786; Beseduiushchii grazhdanin (The Talking Citizen) 1789 from Iaroslavl’; and Irtysh, prevrashchaiushchiisia v Ippokrenu (Irtysh Transforming Itself into Hippocrene) for 1789 and 1790 from Tobol’sk. This indicates that journals were extremely popular in seminaries all over the country. Clergy also received subscriptions to theological, philosophical, and historical books.91

  • 92   However, not every seminary had strict control over its book stock; see S. Smirnov, Istoriia Mosk (...)
  • 93   OR RGB, f. 277, d. 4, l. 426-426 ob.

49Thus, the clergy actively bought both journals and books; but did they really read them? One indication of the genuine popularity of this literature can be found in lists of books that were not returned to seminary libraries.92 In most cases, students took away ‘practical literature,’ e.g. dictionaries and grammars of different languages as well as theological and philosophical writings in Latin. However, as soon as libraries acquired more books in Russian, students’ true literary tastes became evident. For instance, by 1770, some “Greek, and Latin and other books” which cost 20.5 rubles had disappeared from the Moscow Academy’s library; among “the others” were Sumarokov’s Parables (Pritchi), and volume 1 of V. K. Trediakovskii’s Compositions and Translations... (Sochineniia i perevody... [1752]), as well as his New and Brief Way of Composing Russian Verse... (Novyi i kratkii sposob k slozheniiu rossiiskikh stikhov... [1735]).93

  • 94   OR RGB, f. 277, d. 7, l. 71-71 ob.
  • 95   The source of this collection was A. Boyer’s reading book for Frenchmen studying Latin, Le compag (...)

50The list of people who did not bring books back shows that, in 1784, a theology student named Ivan Florenov did not bring back the July 1761 issue of Poleznoe uveselenie (Useful Entertainment), and Mikhail Ivanov—Orfelin’s The Life and Glorious Deeds of Emperor Peter the Great... (Zhitie i slavnye dela gosudaria imperatora Petra Velikogo... [Venice, 1772]).94 Pavel Nechaev, a graduate in rhetoric, did not bring back two volumes of Quintus Curtius’s History of Alexander the Great (Istoriia o Aleksandre Velikom tsare Makedonskom...) in S. Krasheninnikov’s translation (St. Petersburg, 1767-1768) and a book by P. Semenov, which had a verbose title reflecting its diverse content: A Sensible and Ingenious Comrade, or A Collection of Good Speeches, Wise Intentions, Quick Responses, Courteous Jeers and Pleasant Adventures of Noble People in Old and Present Ages (Tovarishch razumnoi i zamyslovatoi, ili Sobranie khoroshikh slov, razumnykh zamyslov, skorykh otvetov, uchtivykh nasmeshek i priiatnykh prikliuchenii znatnykh muzhei drevniago i nyneshniago vekov [St. Petersburg, 1764]).95 Nikolai Murav’ev, a student of rhetoric, kept for himself not only the New Testament in Greek, but also the entertaining collection Companion and Collocutor of Merry People, or A Collection of Pleasant and Decent Jokes, Keen and Ingenious Speeches and Entertaining Stories, Collected from the Best Authors (Sputnik i sobesednik veselykh liudei, ili Sobranie priiatnykh i blagopristoinykh shutik, ostrykh i zamyslovatykh rechei i zabavnykh povestei, vypisano iz luchshikh sochinitelei [translation of Ch. Dobrosedov]), a collection very similar to one that Semenov took.

  • 96   RGB, f. 277, d. 7, l. 82-83 ob.

51By 1788, twelve books in Latin had disappeared from library of the Krutitskii Seminary, as well as 63 in Russian, among which were Kheraskov’s Rossiad; Sumarokov’s Sinav i Truvor (St. Petersburg, 1768) and his Raznye stikhotvoreniia (Various Poems [St. Petersburg, 1769]); both volumes of A. T. Bolotov’s Detskaia filosofiia (Children’s Philosophy [1776-1779]); and three volumes of F. Emin’s Nepostoiannaia Fortuna (Inconstant Fortune [1763]).96 Translations of historical and moralistic writings were very popular: Paradise Flowers Placed in Seven Flower Beds (Raiskie tsvety, pomeshchennye v sedmi tsvetnikakh [Moscow, 1784]); A. de Claustre’s History of Thomas Kouli-Kan, King of Persia (Istoriia o persidskom shakhe Takhmas Kuly-khane [St. Petersburg, 1762]); S. Gessner’s poem The Death of Abel (Aveleva smert’ [Moscow, 1780]); both volumes of C. F. Gellert’s Lectures on Morals (Nravoucheniia) in M. Protopopov’s translation (Moscow, 1775-1777); Ia. B. Kniazhnin’s prose translation of G. Marino’s poem “Massacre of the Innocents” (“Izbienie mladentsev” [Moscow, 1779]); and others. Academic and scientific books such as Lomonosov’s translation of G. Heinsius’ Description of the Comet Which Appeared at the Beginning of 1744 (Opisanie komety iavivshiiasia v nachale 1744 goda [St. Petersburg, 1744]) went unreturned less frequently. Old and new journals were also popular among students and professors; librarians themselves did not give back: the first volume of Moskovskoe ezhemesiachnoe izdanie (Moscow Monthly) of 1781 (which before 1779 was known as the masonic Utrennii svet); Svobodnye chasy (Free Hours) for January 1763; several volumes of Sochineniia i perevody (Works and Translations) for 1758 and 1761; the first volume of Poleznoe uveselenie for 1760; and Vecherniaia zaria (Evening Light), volume 4 (no year indicated); and others.

  • 97   Smirnov, Istoriia Moskovskoi Slaviano-greko-latinskoi akademii, 281-283.
  • 98   Ibid., 283.

52According to a 1792 inventory compiled by a librarian named Melchizedek, 1,993 books were missing from the Moscow Academy, while there were only written obligations from 471 borrowers pledging to bring them back.97 A resolution by Metropolitan Platon surmises as to the appeal of specific literature among different clergy groups. According to Platon, missing church books (Prologs, Menaions, etc.) should probably be sought “in churches or from monks.” Theology in Latin (Basilii opera omnia X tomi, Dionysii Areopageiae, Cyrilli Hierosolymitani opera, Pandectae, Poli synopsis) “does not quite seem possible to have been taken out [by students],” and therefore Platon suggests looking for them among professors. According to surviving obligations, students borrowed “small books, as is seemly for students”98—meaning fiction, moralistic works, and historical and entertaining texts.

  • 99   OR RGB, f. 277, d. 7, l. 3-7 ob.

53In the last third of the century there were regular public award ceremonies where the best students received books as a sign of distinction. At first, the choice of books was primarily motivated by efforts to get rid of library books that were in poor condition. For instance, a 1777 Moscow Academy inventory names multiple “award” or “prize” books that were in Latin and from the late and middle seventeenth century; many were from sets whose first volumes were missing. Church Slavonic publications already held in several copies were to be sold.99 This suggests that books in Church Slavonic were considered more valuable by the clergy and be of greater interest to buyers than old Latin theological works.

  • 100   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 492, l. 504-505.

54By the early nineteenth century, the authorities started using books to promote students’ good reading habits. For instance, in 1805-1806 at the Novgorod Seminary, students were given not only practical guides to study (F. I. Iankovich de Mirievo’s Rules for Pupils [1782] and some Latin textbooks), but also books in theology and philosophy that had been issued relatively recently in Russian. These included: Evgenii Bolkhovitinov’s Essay on the Necessity of the Greek Language for Theology and on its Special Benefit for the Russian Language... (Rassuzhdenie o nadobnosti grecheskogo iazyka dlia bogoslovii, i ob osobennoi pol’ze ego dlia rossiiskago iazyka...) and Historical Essay on Ancient Christian Liturgical Singing… (Istoricheskoe rassuzhdenie voobshche o drevnem khristianskom bogosluzhebnom penii... [Voronezh, 1799-1800]), Ilias Miniatis’s The Stone of Temptation, or An Historical Essay on the Beginning and Cause of the East–West Church Schism (Kamen’ soblazna, ili Istoricheskoe iz’’iasnenie o nachale i prichine razdeleniia Vostochnoi i Zapadnoi tserkvi [St. Petersburg, 1783]), G. B. Bilfinger’s Specimen of the Philosophy of the Ancient Chinese… (Opyt drevnei kitaitsov filosofii o ikh nravouchenii i pravlenii [St. Petersburg, 1794]), Theophylact‘s A Gift to Constantine Porphyrogenitus (Dar Konstantinu Porfirorodnomu [St. Petersburg, 1788]), and St. Aurelius Ambrosius’s Speech to the Emperor Theodosius (Slovo sviatago Amvrosiia Mediolanskago k imperatoru Feodosiiu [St. Petersburg, 1790]).100

  • 101   I. E. Barenbaum, Istoriia knigi (Moscow, 1984), 52-66; D. Smith, Rabota nad dikim kamnem: Masonsk (...)

55Thus, by the early nineteenth century, contemporary literature in Russian had gained a significant place in the ‘modern’ clergy’s reading habits. In comparison with the mid 1700s, publishing flourished during the last third of the eighteenth century, and many works of philosophy and theology were printed both in translation and in the original, greatly expanding the amount (and diversifying the content) of contemporary literature.101 Even in rural seminaries, students had access to current journals and texts. All these factors allowed the authorities to shape students’ reading not just by means of traditional theology, but also by means of contemporary materials in Russian. However, hand-written collections and lists of missing books indicate that much of the literature that was of interest to the clergy remained outside of seminary inventories and guides; such texts primarily consisted of contemporary sentimental poetry and a range of recreational literature, including foreign fiction in Russian translation.

5. Literature in foreign languages

  • 102   E. I. Kislova, “Nemetskii iazyk v russkikh seminariiakh XVIII veka: iz istorii kul’turnykh kontak (...)
  • 103   Smirnov, Istoriia Moskovskoi Slaviano-greko-latinskoi akademii, 129-131; Samarin, Tipografshchiki(...)
  • 104   Nikolaev, Ot Kokhanovskogo, 37.

56The ‘modern’ clergy was strongly involved with the Europeanization of Russian culture. During the middle eighteenth century, the teaching of French and German expanded in seminaries, and during the second half of the century many seminary graduates became professional translators.102 During the eighteenth century, church authorities were likewise in charge of censoring translated writings.103 On that front the traditional clergy faced certain obstacles: they only knew some Polish religious songs, mostly hand-written, sometimes in Cyrillic transliteration.104

  • 105   V. Rjéoutski, “Latin in the education of nobility in Russia,” in V. Rjéoutski, W. Frijhoff (eds.) (...)

57Аmong the ‘modern’ clergy, French, Polish, and German books had a large presence. Classical literature in Latin (sometimes in Greek) had its own specific place. These writings were used as exemplary texts in language study, and thus most students in seminaries were familiar with them. Unlike in secular institutions, where the students learned classical literature in French translations and paraphrases,105 seminary students learned these writings in the original Latin and, less often, in ancient Greek.

  • 106   Agntsev, Istoriia Riazanskoi, 33-34.
  • 107   Smirnov, Istoriia Troitskoi lavrskoi seminarii, 318.

58As soon as seminary teaching became oriented towards the ‘Latin model,’ the necessity of buying classical authors became apparent. For instance, in 1741 Riazan’ Seminary purchased— along with basic guides to Latin—Ovid, Virgil, and then the “essential” Horace, Cicero, Livy, Quintus Curtius, Sallust, Justin, Cornelius Nepos, and Terence.106 Among exemplary Latin authors, one can also find Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Julius Caesar, Quintilian, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, and Cato the Elder, that is, almost all of the classics of Latin literature which had shaped the perception of classical culture in Europe.107 In Russian seminaries, Cicero held pride of place; the most common examples in rhetoric classes were taken from his speeches and letters in Latin.

  • 108   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 164 ob.

59From the New Latin, seminarians commonly read the colloquies of Erasmus, M.-A. Muret, and M. Corderius. Students were asked to read these texts out loud with correct pronunciation and to learn exemplary fragments from them by heart.108 They also practiced translation (poetry was often translated into prose) and wrote ‘imitations.’

60At some point, classical Latin literature became the core of seminary reading, which differentiated the “modern” clergy not only from the traditional clergy, but also from people who had a secular education. Knowledge of Latin authors became as important as knowing Russian panegyric odes: both were used as a main source of rhetorical figures and as models for imitation.

  • 109   Smirnov, Istoriia Troitskoi lavrskoi seminarii, 322.
  • 110   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 134; I. Speranskii, Ocherk istorii Smolenskoi Dukhovnoi Seminarii i po (...)

61Although some seminaries taught ancient Greek, this practice became obligatory only after 1778. Greek authors were present in the clergy’s reading lists mostly in the form of Latin translations (for instance, the younger students’ reading of Aesop’s fables).109 Besides the New Testament (mainly the Gospel of Luke), the Acts of the Apostles, and books of the Church Fathers, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Homer, and Lucian were used in Greek classes.110 However, even after 1778, few clerics outside of seminaries had a proper knowledge of Greek, and the Greek classics were mostly read in Russian and Latin.

5.1. Polish Literature

  • 111   Nikolaev, Ot Kokhanovskogo, 15-16, 75-85.

62In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Polish language was used by educated people in Ukraine, so it was natural to find Polish writings in Ukrainian educational institutions. The personal libraries of church hierarchs from Ukraine contained Polish books, and hand-written collections containing Polish texts and writings by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Polish authors in Latin (such as Jan Kochanowski and Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski) were regularly used in classes on poetics and rhetoric in Ukrainian seminaries.111

  • 112   S. I. Nikolaev, “Pol’skaia poeziia v russkikh bibliotekakh XVII - pervoi poloviny XVIII v. i ee c (...)
  • 113   OR RGB, f. 277, d. 6, l. 18.

63Polish hand-written and printed texts came into Russia along with their owners, and when those owners died, their texts absorbed into seminary libraries. We can surmise their content by examining the holdings of Feofan Prokopovich: these books concern mostly economy, history and teology: Jakub Kazimierz Haur’s The Storeroom or the Treasury of Remarkable Secrets for the Gentlemen’s Household (Skład abo skarbiec znakomitych sekretów oekonomiej ziemiańskiej, Kraków 1689); Łukasz Górnicki’s Happenings in the Kingdom of Poland (Dzieje w Koronie Polskiej [...] od roku 1538 aż do roku 1572, W Krakowie, 1637); one sermon on the occasion of king Jan Hodkevic’s death, etc. Theophylacte Lopatinskii, Archbishop of Tver’, possessed a whole collection of Polish vernacular satire as well as Lament of the Dying Mother, Poland (Lament utrapioej Matki Korony Polskiej... around 1655) by Szymon Starowolski and Jan Kochanowski’s David’s Psalms (Psałterz Dawidów).112 Until the 1770s, individual Polish volumes were present in the personal collections of churchmen who were educated in Ukraine. For instance, in a 1774 list of books transferred to the Moscow Academy after the death of Konstantin Borkovskii, archimandrite of the Nizhegorodsko-Pecherskii Monastery, a “Catechesis polona” (Polish catechism) is mentioned.113

  • 114   E. I. Kislova, “Pol’skii iazyk v rossiiskikh seminariiakh XVIII veka: iz istorii kul’turno-iazyko (...)
  • 115   RGB f. 173.1., d. 622, l. 137-178.

64However, such books and collections mostly went unread by the Russian clergy: Polish was not popular in seminaries, and thus books in Polish were of little interest.114 For instance, in the 1761-1762 inventory of the Trinity Seminary, there are about ten Polish books mentioned, but the author of the inventory and his successors did not know Polish and missed some titles that did not have Russian or Latin translations and made mistakes in transcription. From 1762 until the 1830s, the library was not supplied with Polish books. In the catalogue of the Moscow Theological Academy’s library (1820-1830), books in Polish are found only in one inventory, where they are designated as part of “The library of little-known new languages” (“Biblioteka maloizvestnykh novykh iazykov”).115 Such books make up 24 of the 77 listed, and their titles are given in Latin rather than Polish. It is rather unlikely that the clergy of the Moscow Academy read them: seven of them were printed in the seventeenth century, eleven in the eighteenth (before 1760), and some of them are listed as “in poor condition.”

  • 116   Speranskii, Ocherk istorii Smolenskoi, 113.

65Seminaries from the Russian-Ukrainian ‘frontier zone’ may constitute an exception. During the eighteenth century, the cultural and linguistic situation there was very close to that in Ukraine more broadly. In the Smolensk Seminary, for example, Polish was actively taught during the entire eighteenth century; even in the second half of the century, it maintained a popularity comparable to that of French and German. Thus, many Polish books could be found in the library—158 out of 2,157.116 This suggests that Polish books remained a part of the clergy’s reading, but this was more of a regional phenomenon.

  • 117   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 610, l. 93.

66In the second half of the eighteenth century, books in other languages (English, Italian, Spanish) were sometimes present in libraries, although these languages were not taught in seminaries and were not widely known by the clergy; such literature usually came into the clergy’s purview through French and German translations. For instance, a German translation of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” was found in the Moscow Academy’s library.117 Ieronim Poniatskii, a professor at the Kolomna Seminary, translated into Russian a German translation of Edward Harwood’s English Cheerful Thoughts on […] a Religious Life (1764) (Garvooda radostnye mysli o blazhenstve blagochestivoi zhizni... [Moscow, 1783]). Contemporary European literature became known mostly in French and German—and later Russian—translation.

5.2. French and German books

  • 118   Levin, Istoriia russkoi prervodnoi, vol. 1, 148–150.
  • 119   Seminary teachers and students authored many published translations, and even though Latin was th (...)

67French and German were widespread in seminaries from the middle of the eighteenth century and took on an even stronger position after the 1786 “Statute on Popular Schools in the Russian Empire.” The teaching methods for these languages were not atypical—learning texts by heart, translating into and from Russian, etc. The advanced level included grammatical and rhetorical analysis of fiction and the composition of new texts. The most important teaching method both in secular and church institutions was translation of fictional works118—both collectively in class “with grammar criticism” and individually (although in the second case the books were still chosen by the teachers).119 Obviously, the choice in text was often motivated by a book’s presence in the library, but we can still ascertain some broader patterns.

  • 120   Chistovich, Istoriia Sankt-Peterburgskoi, 114; Speranskii, Ocherk istorii Smolenskoi, 110.

68Students began studying translation as soon as they began studying language, and they used texts that were widespread both in secular and clerical education and were considered fundamental both in Russia and in Europe. These included Fénelon’s Les Aventures de Télemaque (1699) and Briefe, nebst einer praktischen Abhandlung von dem guten Geschmacke in Briefen (1751) by Ch. F. Gellert. Books by Gellert are mentioned in a 1787 report from the Trinity Seminary, in a students’ plan of 1804 from the Alexander Nevskii Seminary in St. Petersburg, and in a 1802 report from the Smolensk Seminary.120

  • 121   Attributed to N. Rémond des Cours; the Russian translation was published by Vasilii Trediakovskii (...)

69German books were used for higher-level reading classes—writings by Lutheran theologians, preachers, spiritual philosophers and other writers, etc. At the same time, secular texts were much more popular in French classes. For instance, in 1803–1806 beginning French students at the Novgorod Seminary were given sections for translation from D.E. Choffin’s Amusements philologiques ou Mélange agreáble de diverses pièces (first edition 1749) and the anonymous La véritable politique des personnes de qualité (first edition 1692).121 At the most advanced levels, students read sermons and other writings by famous French theologians and preachers.

  • 122   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 90.

70The most popular French sermons among the clergy were those by Jacques Saurin (1677–1730); his texts were translated in 1787 at the Trinity Seminary. His writings were also used for studying German: for example, Antonii Znamenskii possessed a handwritten book with seven sermons by Saurin, “some [translated] from a German translation, some from the French original” made by students of the Alexander Nevskii Seminary in 1795.122 Saurin’s sermons from the mid eighteenth century could also be found in Ieronim Poniatskii’s personal library, which was purchased by the Trinity Seminary in 1803. These were: Nouveaux sermons sur l’histoire de la passion de Notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ (1745) and Sermons sur divers textes de l’ecriture sainte (1748–1755).

  • 123   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 613, 617, 622.
  • 124   OR RGB, f. 277, d. 6, l. 17.

71In the Moscow Academy library catalogue from the early nineteenth century,123 books by E. Flechier, F. J. Durand, L. Bourdaloue, and J. B. Massillon are also mentioned. Their writings were also used in classes. For instance, in 1781 at the Moscow Seminary, books by J.-B. Bossuet were read in French. Bossuet’s Discourse on Universal History (Iakova Beninga Bossiueta: Razgovor o vseobshchei istorii [St. Petersburg, 1761-1762]) could be found in Russian translation in the personal library of Archimandrite Konstantin Borkovskii.124 In 1803–1806, selected sermons by Massillon, Flechier, Saurin, and Bourdaloue were used at the Novgorod Seminary for individual translation assignments. So too were “Fenelon’s spiritual writings” (possibly something from the Démonstration de l’existence de Dieu, tirée de la connaissance de la Nature et proportionnée à la faible intelligence des plus simples) and A. L. Thomas’s panegyrics. Students learned the best passages by heart.

  • 125   V. V. Luk‘ianov, Opisanie kollektsii rukopisei Gosudarstvennogo arkhiva iaroslavskoi oblasti XIV- (...)

72Almost the same range of texts can be found at the Iaroslavl’ Seminary. For instance, in 1810–1811, students P. Tunoshenskii, K. Miloslavov, and Ia. Bazhenov presented Archbishop Antonii Znamenskii with a collection of their own translations from different languages, among them “Dialogues sur l’éloquence, avec une Lettre à l’Académie française” and “Oraison funèbre d’Henriette de France,” as well as Fénelon’s “Discours prononcé au sacre de l’Électeur de Cologne dans la collégiale de St.-Pierre à Lille.”125

  • 126   See E. Barenbaum, Frantsuzskaia perevodnaia kniga v Rossii v XVIII veke (Moscow, 2006); these aut (...)

73French Catholic theology was esteemed as a model of language, style, and rhetorical art in much the same way that other French authors were read in secular society (albeit as rhetoricians rather than as theologians). For this reason they were relatively rarely translated into Russian during the eighteenth century,126 unlike German spiritual writers, whose moralistic and philosophical writings were actively translated and published both by clerics and by members of Masonic lodges.

  • 127   OR RGB, f. 757, k. 21, d. 9, l. 116 ob.
  • 128   Kniazev, Ocherk istorii Pskovskoi, 41.
  • 129   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, l. 101 ob., 107.
  • 130   Speranskii, Ocherk istorii Smolenskoi, 110.
  • 131   OR RGB, f. 173.I, d. 610, l. 35.

74J. A. Hoffmann (1676-1731) and G. J. Zollikofer (1730-1788) were the most popular German authors in seminaries. In the Trinity Seminary regulations, Hoffmann is openly recommended for study: “translate some good author like Hoffman, if you can buy him in Moscow, or Arndt.”127 This probably refers to Hoffman’s Zwey Bücher von der Zufriedenheit (1725 and later), which was used for studying German in the Pskov Seminary in 1782.128 The Trinity Seminary library catalogue lists nine copies of this book, which suggests its frequent use as educational material.129 From the late 1780s, sermons by Zollikofer gained significant popularity. For instance, at the Smolensk Seminary in 1802, “Zollikofer’s speeches and the like with grammar analysis”130 were studied, and his books can also be found in a 1802 Moscow Academy inventory:131 Zollikofers Predigten, vols. 1-7 (Leipzig 1788-1789; later struck out as removed); Predigten über die Würder des Menschen und den Werth der vorehmsten Dinge, die zur menschlichen Glückseligkeit gehören, vol. 1 und 2 (1783); Warnung vor einigen herrschenden Fehlern unsers Zeitalters, wie auch vor dem Mißbrauche der reinern Religionserkenntniß, in Predigten (1788), and three separate volumes of his sermons from 1772-1774.

75Zollikofer’s books were also used for collective translation. For instance, a translation of the first volume of Andachtsubungen und Gebete zum Privatgebrauche fur nachdenkende und gutgesinnte Christen (Leipzig, 1789) was made by students of the Alexander Nevskii Seminary and edited by the head of the Alexander Nevskii Lavra, Antonii Znamenskii (1765-1824); it was published in 1799 in St. Petersburg under the title Blagogoveinoe zaniatie mysliashchikh khristian.

  • 132   OR RGB f. 277, d. 6, l. 17.

76Both Hoffman and Zollikofer were likewise popular in secular circles. The first translation of Hoffmann’s Zwey Bücher, made by S. S. Volochkov in 1742, went through three editions (1762-1763, 1770, and 1780). This book, inter alia, belonged to the archimandrite of Nizhegorodsko-Pecherskii Monastery Konstantin Borkovskii.132 The second edition was prepared by V. Bogorodskii, a student both at the Slavonic Greek Latin Academy and at Moscow University, and was published as Ioanna Adolfa Gofmana. O spokoistvii i udovol’stvii, Dve knigi, raspolozhennyia po pravilam razuma i very (Moscow, 1796).

  • 133   V. I. Simankov, Iz razyskanii o zhurnale “Pribavlenie k Moskovskim vedomostiam” (1783-1784), ili (...)
  • 134   Ibid., 45.

77Some sermons by Zollikofer were translated and published by N. E. Popov, professor at Moscow University and at the Pedagogical Seminary, and member of a Masonic lodge;133 V. I. Simankov suggests that he also translated five sermons by Zollikofer about moral education (published in Pribavleniia k Moskovskim vedomostiam [Additions to the Moscow News] in 1783). Several years later, the same selections from Zollikofer were translated from German again by Ieronim Poniatskii,134 Archimandrite of the Novgorod-Pecherskii Monastery, as Reliable Guide for Parents and Teachers to Children’s Sensible Christian Education, Collected from the Didactic Works of Zollikofer, the Most Famous Man of this Century for His Christian Moral Teachings (St. Petersburg, 1798) (Nadezhnoe rukovodstvo roditeliam i uchiteliam k razumnomu khristianskomu detei vospitaniiu, sobrannoe iz pouchitel’nykh slov slavneishego v nyneshnem stoletii khristianskim nravoucheniem muzha Tsollikofera).

  • 135   See also V. D. Rak, Stat’i o literature, 534-535.

78Recent graduates who ‘went secular’ sometimes did translation for a living, and a comparison indicates that they chose texts to translate that were familiar to them from seminary classes.135 For instance, in 1799, P. V. Pobedonostsev, a teacher in the Moscow University gymnaisum who had graduated from the Moscow Academy two years earlier, published a translation form Gellert called True and False Happiness (Istinnoe i lozhnoe schast’e).
In 1797, not so long after graduating from the Kiev Academy and retiring from the Moscow State Archive, A. M. Shumlianskii, who later became a famous physician, translated Consoling Reflections on a Feeble and Sickly Life (Uteshitel’nyia razsuzhdeniia protiv nemoshchnoi i boleznennoi zhizni) by the same author.

  • 136   The same text was then translated into prose by the noblewoman E. P. Demidova (married name: Chic (...)

79Translations from Gellert were also published by professors. His Moralische Vorlesungen (Moral Teachings [Nravoucheniia], Moscow, 1775-1777) were translated by M. Protopopov, teacher of Hebrew and Greek at the Moscow Academy. His “Geistliche Oden und Lieder” were translated in verse by the rector of the Trinity Seminary Apollos Baibakov as Spiritual Songs, from the Most Renowned Ch. F. Gellert (Pesni dukhovnyia, Slavneishago Kh. F. Gellerta... [Moscow, 1778, second edition, 1782]).136

  • 137   See M. Naas, Didaktische Konstruktion des Kindes in Schweizer Kinderbibeln: Zürich, Bern, Luzern (...)
  • 138   Kniazev, Ocherk istorii Pskovskoi, 41.

80Although the Bible was rarely read in German, former students were obviously familiar with popular European compilations of Bible stories in German: J. Hübner’s Zweymal zwey und funffzig Auserlesene Biblische Historien, der Jugend zum Besten abgefasset (1714) and J. M. Wagner’s Auserlesene biblische Historien aus dem Alten und Neuen Testament. In Germany and Switzerland such compilations entered the school curriculum and practically served as a new catechism due to their Pietistic tendencies.137 At the Pskov Seminary in 1782, a compilation by Hübner was read in German classes under the title Heilige Historie,138 which demonstrates its status in the clergy’s eyes. The same compilation—dedicated to Metropolitan Platon Levshin—was translated from Latin by M. Sokolov, a student, and underwent seven editions between 1770 and 1795. In 1798, it was translated from German by V. Bogoroskii as One Hundred and Four Sacred Histories, Chosen by Johann Hübner from the Old and New Testaments for Youth, With the Addition of Pious Thoughts (Sto chetyre sviashchennykh istorii, vybrannykh iz Vetkhogo i Novogo zaveta v pol’zu iunoshestva Ioannom Gibnerom, s prisovokupleniem blagochestivykh razmyshlenii [Moscow, 1798; six editions]). In 1775 and in 1793, Two Hundred and Eight Sacred Histories from the Old and New Testaments, Chosen from the Holy Scriptures and Accompanied by the Best Moral Admonitions (Dvesti vosem’ sviashchennykh istorii Vetkhogo i Novogo zaveta, vybrannye iz sviashchennogo pisaniia i izriadneishimi nravoucheniiami snabzhennye) was published; here, an additional hundred and four texts from J. M. Wagner were added to Hübner’s one hundred and four translations. It was translated by the archpriest of Moscow’s Pokrovskii Cathedral Ivan Kharlamov who had taught foreign languages in 1769-1772 at the Trinity Seminary. Significantly, the first edition was published in 1775, not long after Kharlamov moved from the Trinity Seminary to take up the place of archpriest at the Cathedral of the Archangel. The such books could become best-sellers and provide financial help to the seminaries’ graduates and early-career clergymen.

81Poetry by authors popular in Europe and in Russian secular society was widely used for studying German. For instance, in 1781 students at the Moscow Academy translated from G. E. Lessing (1729-1781) and F. G. Klopstock (1724-1803), and in 1782, students in Pskov read Rabner’s satires. A. von Haller (1708-1777) was also popular; his poetry was translated in 1781 in Moscow and in 1782 in Pskov. Such popularity can also be traced through published translations: Haller’s philosophical poem “Über den Ursprung des Übels” (1734) was translated into prose by N. Karamzin in 1786, and in 1798 P. Bogdanov, a student at the Moscow Academy, made a verse translation of that same text.

  • 139   Kislova, “Frantsuzskii iazyk,” 29-30.

82French poetry, however, is poorly represented in translations, excepting the case of Trinity Seminary in 1785. There students of Ivan Sokolskii analyzed “selected epigrams and other poems by Jean-Baptiste Rousseau,” whose most popular poem was “A la Fortune,” which had been previously translated by Sumarokov and Lomonosov. But the students also regularly created “imitations” in French, suggesting that some examples of French poetry were available.139 However, French poetry is represented in the Moscow Academy catalogue only by texts from the early nineteenth century.

  • 140   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 149.

83‘Reverse translation’ (i.e. an attempt to simulate the original text from which a Russian translation was originally derived) was also used in language study. Students at the Novgorod seminary translated foreign fiction from Russian, and it is notable that the teacher did not help with the word choice; students had to use only those words which could be found in French books.140 In 1769 at the Trinity Academy, students of Ivan Kharlamov translated Magasin des enfants, ou Dialogues entre une sage gouvernante et plusieurs de ses élèves de la première distinction by Mme. Leprince de Beaumont from Russian into French. They probably used the translation by Petr Svistunov that was published in 1763–1767.

  • 141   It was also common practice for the nobility, see V. Rjéoutski, “Latin in the education of nobili (...)

84In 1785 at the Trinity seminary, and also in 1803–1806 at the Novgorod Seminary, some of Numa Pompilius was likewise translated from Russian into French. In 1785 in Trinity seminary, it could be only have been the life of Numa Pompilius from Plutarch’s Life of Men Famous in Ancient Times (Zhitie slavnykh v drevnosti muzhei), which had been translated from French by S. Glebov in 1765, but in Novgorod in 1803-1806 this could have been another Numa Pompilius—a book by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian, translated by P. Veliaminov in 1788 and by G. Shipovskii in 1799. As per this case, classical texts in Greek usually became familiar to students via translations from French.141

85In 1803–1806 J.-F. Marmontel’s Bélisaire was used at the Novgorod Seminary for translation from Russian into French; they may have used the collective court translation created under the direction of Catherine II and published in 1768 as Velizar, or the translation by P. P. Kurbatov (Velisarii, first edition 1769).

  • 142   Ibid.
  • 143   N. Novikov, Opyt istoricheskogo slovaria o rossiiskikh pisateliakh... in Idem, Izbrannye proizved (...)
  • 144   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 149.

86For translation from Russian into French, even Russian translations from German texts that were originally translated from English could be used. For instance, at the Novgorod Seminary Edward Young’s The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (Iungovy nochi)142 was recommended for translation; this work had already been translated into Russian by A. M. Kutuzov and printed in Utrennii svet in 1778–1780 under the same title. Similarly, when students translated P. J. Bitaubé’s “Joseph, poème en prose” from Russian into German they used the popular translation by D. I. Fonvizin (Iosif: v deviati pesniakh, six editions, 1769-1819), which was considered an example of both “the importance of Slavonic and the clarity of the Russian language.”143 Obviously, quality and accessibility of the books were important, but the most important criterion was their “moral content.”144

  • 145   Levin, Istoriia perevodnoi, vol. 1, 185-194, 209-211.
  • 146   See Rak, Stat’i o literature, 74-93.

87“Secondary translation” from an earlier translation was widely practiced in Europe: English and Spanish books were translated into Russian from French and German translations, just as Russian texts were translated into English from French or German translations. Hence the author’s individual style was unlikely to be preserved, and details—or even the very subject matter—could also be changed.145 That’s why translations may be considered not only as transferred parts of foreign culture, but also as a phenomenon of the “host” culture.146 But significantly, original texts by Russian writers that were studied in seminaries were never used for translation into French or German (or at least such cases are not mentioned in surviving documents). Thus we may assume that the clergy sensed a clear difference between original Russian texts and translations.

  • 147   Shmurlo, Mitropolit Evgenii, 63.

88Individually, the clergy could read material not included in seminary documentation. For instance, from the 1760s on, the best seminary students were sent to Moscow University to study languages on a regular basis, and there they came into contact with secular culture. As they did in seminaries, these students regularly made notes on what they were reading, although virtually no such notes have survived. A rare example is Evgenii Bolkhovitinov’s “Extracts from French books” (“Vypiski iz frantsuzskikh knig” [1785-1788]). At the time of writing, Bolkhovitinov was a Voronezh Seminary student who was studying German and French at Moscow University. His workbook allows us to reconstruct the range of texts read by a young cleric who also studied in an educated secular environment.147

89Almost all of Bolkhovitinov’s notes are from sources on French and German history, but there also are some from poetry compilations. The main sources were fictional and historical compilations made for entertainment, such as Bibliothèque poétique, ou nouveaux choix des plus belles pièces, de vers en tout genre, depuis Marot jusqu’aux poètes de nos jours (by Le Fort de la Marinière, Paris, 1745); and Variétés historiques, physiques et littéraires, ou recherches d’un sçavant, contenant plusieurs pièces curieuses et interessantes (Paris, 1752). Bolkhovitinov copied the articles “Sur la tristesse et la joye” and “Origine du cardan solaire, représenté symboliquement par la statue de Memnon” in full; and he copied “Chronographe,” “Vertu extraordinaire de la vie d’une femme et de celle d’un homme” and “De la Porte Ottomane” almost in full. Bolkhovitinov took some notes on “Le Diogène de d’Alembert, ou Diogène décent...” by A.-P. Le Guay de Prémontval (1716-1764); and copied a passage (“Il est certain qu’il y a dans la Vulgate des obscurités qu’on ne rencontre par dans l’Hébreu”) from Le Journal des sçavans (April, 1718). Thus Bolokhovitinov created his own hand-written compilation of works on literature and history; he did so, among other reasons, for the purpose of studying languages. Such compilations could serve as sources of information in rural areas where French books were not readily accessible.

  • 148   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, l. 106 ob.
  • 149   Smirnov, Istoriia Troitskoi lavrskoi seminarii, 378.

90The supply of books to seminaries was always an important concern for the clerical hierarchy, especially when the books (like those in French and German) were rare and expensive. By the last quarter of the century the libraries of well-funded seminaries with high standards of foreign language teaching were actively supplied with editions in these languages. Such deliveries are clearly designated in the catalogue of the Trinity Seminary library; for example, in the 1770s, there was a simultaneous purchase of various books by Gellert—namely, his comedies, fables, works in the sciences, spiritual odes, and letters.148 Many French books were bought between 1763 and 1774, the majority purchased in 1772 with Platon Levshin’s money and possibly on his orders.149 These included: Histoire ancienne des Égyptiens, des Carthaginois, des Assyriens, des Babyloniens, des Medes et des Perses, des Macedoniens, et des Grecs by Charles Rollin (1730); Montesquieu’s De l’esprit des lois (1748); Contemplation de la nature by Charles Bonnet (1769); L’alcoran de Mahomet; and others. Records also indicate purchases of seven out of eight volumes of Voltaire’s collected works and some additional editions of Montesquieu.

  • 150   Speranskii, Ocherk istorii Smolenskoi, 113–114.
  • 151   OR RGB, f. 138, d. 301, l. 29 ob.

91Rural seminary libraries were supplied with foreign language books in an uneven manner. For instance, in 1802 the Smolensk Seminary received 40 German and 39 French books (with the total number of books received numbering around 2,000),150 while the Kostroma Seminary library, according to an early nineteenth-century catalogue, had more than 400 French books (compared to only 15 German ones).151 However, in the second half of the eighteenth century, nearly every seminary library had a good selection of Russian translations of French and German books of various genres.

  • 152   Agntsev, Istoriia Riazanskoi, 132.
  • 153   Shmurlo, Mitropolit Evgenii, 106.
  • 154   Evgeny Bolkhovitinov (red.), Volterovy zabluzhdeniia, obnaruzhennye abbatom Nonotom (Moscow, 1793 (...)
  • 155   Shmurlo, Mitropolit Evgenii, 127–134.

92The problem of foreign authors’ theological and philosophical principles contradicting those of the Orthodox Church was undoubtedly brought up in a seminary environment, but amazingly we see that many of the ‘modern’ clergy were rather liberal with regard to ideological bias. Despite the Orthodox Church’s suspicion of works by French Enlightenment philosophers, in the last third of the eighteenth century such texts were regularly added to seminary libraries— sometimes by chance, as the result of purchases of entire book collections at auction, and sometimes as a result of purposeful acquisitions.152 For example, in the 1790s Evgenii Bolkhovitinov bought the Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique, the works of Voltaire, and other texts for the Voronezh Seminary.153 It is unclear whether these books were available to students or if they were only for teachers and Bolkhovitinov himself. Notably, Bolkhovitinov sometimes quotes these works in his sermons, publicly calling Voltaire’s works “the most harmful poison,” “the most revolting and the most impious [books],” and describes them as “infection.”154 He thought it essential to teach students a critique of Voltaire’s views on religion. Under his guidance, the students of a theology class translated Les Erreurs de Voltaire (1762) by Abbot C.F. Nonnotte from French; the resultant text was published in Moscow in 1793 (some manuscript copies also exist).155

  • 156   V. V. Luk‘ianov, Opisanie kollektsii; F. Ia. Priima, “K istorii otkrytiia Slova o polku Igoreve,” (...)

93In contrast to Bolkhovitinov, Ioil Bykovskii, an archimandrite from Iaroslavl’, included in his collection of didactic notes Truth, or An Extract About Truth (Istinna ili Vypiska o Istinne) (Iaroslavl’, 1787), as well as fragments from “Candide” and “La Princesse de Babylon,” all by Voltaire. In 1791 in the same Iaroslavl’ Seminary, a student named Mikhail Palmin translated “La Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard” from Émile, ou De l’Éducation by Rousseau, which had been banned in Russia by Catherine II. These translations were sent to the seminary library and the translator received ten rubles from the seminary fund.156 Thus, we see examples of students being rewarded for taking an interest in the works of banned French authors.

  • 157   Smirnov, Istoriia Moskovskoi Slaviano-greko-latinskoi akademii, 311.
  • 158   Kolosov, Istoriia Tverskoi, 241.
  • 159   Kislova, “Frantsuzskii iazyk,” 21-22.
  • 160   Agntsev, Istoriia Riazanskoi, 132.

94After the French Revolution in the summer of 1794, the Metropolitan of Novgorod Gavriil Petrov sent a letter to all bishops in which he ordered them to cease all classes in French because “as practice has proven, some malevolent people have abused knowledge of this language.”157 In the Tver’ Seminary, French books were confiscated from students and teachers and locked up in the library.158 In Moscow, however, the ban did not affect the teaching of French and had no consequences for the libraries of the Trinity Seminary and Moscow Academy.159 In the Riazan’ Seminary, where French was rarely taught, various “suspicious books” and “definitively prejudicial books” were confiscated from the library. Nevertheless, the library retained P.I. Bogdanovich’s translation of Voltaire’s L’homme aux quarante ecus (Chelovek v 40 talerov) (St. Petersburg, 1780, 1785, 1792).160

  • 161Svodnyi katalog grazhdanskoi pechati XVIII veka. 1725-1800. V 6 tomakh (Moscow, 1966), vol. 3, 42 (...)

95In the same manner, the registry of the Kostroma Seminary library from the 1820s contains, without any explanation, books that had been banned as “Masonic” in the late eighteenth century, e.g. the Russian translation S. P. Ely’s Brüderliche Vermahnungen an einige Brüder Freymäurer von dem Bruder Seddag entitled Fraternal Admonitions of Freemasons (Bratskiia uveshchaniia svobodnykh kamenshchikov) (Moscow, 1784), which in 1786 was declared “of dubious worth” and removed from sale and burned along with other prohibited books.161 The Kostroma Seminary catalogue lists along with that book Platon’s Theology (Bogosloviia Platonova [St. Petersburg, 1780]), Milton’s Paradise Regained (Moscow, 1787), W. Derham’s Physico-Theology... (Estestvennaia bogosloviia... [Moscow, 1784]), and the works of St. Dimitrii Rostovskii (Moscow, 1804). We cannot say to what extent, if at all, seminary students and teachers could access this literature, but the lack of explanatory notes suggests that the late eighteenth-century ban on Masonic books was not important in the Kostroma Seminary come the nineteenth century.

  • 162   S. Mengel, “Russkie perevody khall‘skikh pietistov: Simeon Todorskii, 1729-1735,” Vestnik Moskovs (...)
  • 163Polnoe sobranie postanovlenii i rasporiazhenii po vedomstvu pravoslavnogo ispovedaniia, 495.
  • 164   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 586.1, l. 109.
  • 165   Ibid., l. 113 ob.

96Most illuminating is the case of the banned Russian translations of the Protestant theologian J. Arndt (1555-1621). His Vier Bücher vom wahren Christenthum (1605-1609) were first translated in 1738 by Simon Todorskii, who studied at Halle University, the place where the Arndt’s works were originally published.162 In 1743, this translation was banned in Russia by the Synod’s order; in 1784, Catherine confirmed the ban. The stated reason was that the translation was made abroad and had not been approved by the Synod.163 At the same time, in the 1760s, Arndt’s books were included in two registries of church hierarchs’ private libraries. In 1762, Lavrentii Khotsiatovskii (d. 1766), the archimandrite of the Trinity Lavra, donated 34 books from his private library to the library of Trinity Seminary, including Four Books in One Cover About True Christianity by Ioann Arndt, printed in Halle [in the] year [17]35.164 Another copy of Arndt was included in the same library as a part of a collection of books the seminary purchased after the death of Spaso-Iaroslavskii Monastery archimandrite and former Trinity Seminary teacher Vladimir Kalligraph (d. 1760): Arndtii de vero kristianismo.165 By this time, Arndt’s book had already been translated into Latin several times (e.g. in Germany in 1624 and 1704, and in Britain in 1708), so this edition might have been also in Latin.

97The ban on Todorskii’s translation of Four Books was not always applied to the German original or to new translations. Ivan Kharlamov, a teacher in the Trinity seminary, used Arndt’s books in 1769 in his German classes. This action was approved by the seminary administration and with the knowledge of Platon Levshin. In the second half of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth, Arndt is cited by Arsenii Matseevich, Tikhon of Zadonsk, and Makarii Glukharev as one of the most important religious writers. A second translation of his book was made by I. P. Turgenev at the end of the eighteenth century: Ioann Arndt, About True Christianity, Six Books, With the Addition of Paradise Garden and Some Other Small Works By This Author (Ob istinnom khristiianstve, shest’ knig s prisovokupleniem Raiskago vertograda i drugikh nekotorykh melkikh sochinenii sego pisatelia, Moscow, 1784).

98Hence, in the eighteenth century the application of any government or church ban in practice needs to be studied, for as we can see, prohibited books could be read rather openly.

Conclusion

99Certainly, the above observations cannot fully describe the variety of the eighteenth-century clergy’s reading. By necessity I have not discussed ecclesiastic administrative texts, such as the Kormchaia Book and the Ecclesiastical Regulation (Dukhovny Reglament [1721]), or, at the end of the century, On the Duties of Parish Presbyters (Kniga o dolzhnostiakh presviterov prikhodskikh [1776]), which was learned by heart in seminaries and was clearly influential. Theoretically speaking, all clergymen were obligated to know such texts. Churchmen were also required to read aloud government orders for citizens in their churches.

  • 166   Kislova, “Nemetskii iazyk,” 64.
  • 167   RGIA, f. 796, op. 54, d. 454. OR RGB, f. 277, d. 4, l. 420.

100Many educated churchmen read newspapers in various languages. Newspapers in Russian had a significant presence in the libraries of educational institutions. However, we do not know what kind of access to newspapers the post-seminary clergy possessed, regardless of whether their reading became a habit. European newspapers could also be used in teaching languages;166 in the 1770s, the members of the Synod subscribed to newspapers in Latin and French, which later went to the seminaries with a recommendation to give them to teachers and advanced students.167 As a result, newspapers lost their primary purpose—informing the public about current events—and simply became texts for reading.

  • 168   D. Smith, Rabota nad dikim kamnem, 85.

101One should also separately examine the ties between the clergy and the Masons in order to determine the ways in which their reading overlapped. It should not surprise us to find Evgenii Bolkhovitinov in 1788 creating a reading circle in Voronezh in which clergy and nobles gathered together in order to discuss serious philosophical and scientific books.168 This circle definitely took its inspiration from Masonic ones, but how did this influence its reading program? And how did Novikov’s case influence the clergy’s reading? In what way did attitudes toward ‘spiritual books’ change? Here we should not rush to conclusions.

102Influence between what we have called the traditional and the ‘modern’ clergy should also be properly examined. Undoubtedly, after seminary, children of the traditional clergy often returned to the same environment in which their fathers lived, but they also brought back handwritten copies and new books, which therefore became accessible to the traditional clergy. But, due to the frequent lack of sources, we cannot say how the reading of particular clergymen evolved.

  • 169   O. Tsapina, “Pravoslavnoe Prosveshchenie—oksiumoron ili istoricheskaia real’nost‘?” in S. Ia. Kar (...)

103Thus we can paint a general picture of how and what the Russian clergy read in the eighteenth century (mostly in seminaries), but the question ‘why’ still has no fitting answer. Still, it is obvious that the clergy was also, as noted by O. Tsapina, a significant part of the educated community of readers and writers in Russia.169 Intentionally or not, they became part to the changes taking place in Russian culture, and their intellectual activities were at once rich and in a state of transition over the course of the century.

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Notes

1  This study was funded by RFBR and FMSH, project number 20-513-22001

On the close ties between the clergy and the developing intelligentsia, see L. Manchester, Holy Fathers, Secular Sons. Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia (DeKalb, 2008).

2   According to G. Freeze, seminary students at the end of the eighteenth century numbered around 20,000 (G. L. Freeze, The Russian Levites. Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century [Cambridge-London, 1977], 88). However, it would be sufficient to point out that in 1796, for instance, there were approximately 340,000 clergymen in Russia (B. N. Mironov, Russkii Gorod v 1740-1860e gody [Leningrad, 1990], 254).

3   N. D. Zol’nikova, Soslovnye problemy vo vzaimootnosheniiakh tserkvi i gosudarstva (XVIII v.) (Novosibirsk, 1981), 112-151.

4   On manuscript literature of the eighteenth century, see M. N. Speranskii, Rukopisnye sborniki XVIII veka. Materialy dlia istorii russkoi literatury XVIII veka (Moscow, 1963).

5   See E. A. Mel’nikova, “Voobrazhaemaia kniga”: ocherki po istorii fol’klora o knigakh i chtenii v Rossii (St. Petersburg, 2011), 118-125.

6   A. G. Kravetskii, “Liturgicheskii iazyk kak predmet etnografii,” in E.E. Levkievskaia (ed.), Slavianskie etiudy: sbornik k iubileiu S. M. Tolstoi (Moscow, 1999), 230-231; E. I. Kislova, “Latin as the language of the orthodox clergy in eighteenth-century Russia,” in V. Rjéoutski, W. Frijhoff (eds.), Language Choice in Enlightenment Europe. Education, Sociability, and Governance (Amsterdam, 2018), 201-202.

7   Zol’nikova, Soslovnye problemy, 122.

8   I. K. Smolich, Istoriia russkoi tserkvi. 1700–1917, Vol. 8 part 1 (Moscow, 1996), 348-350; N. Rozanov, Istoriia Moskovskogo Eparkhial’nogo upravleniia so vremeni uchrezhdeniia sv. sinoda (1721-1821) (Moscow, 1870), 86-88. In some eparchies of the late eighteenth century, clergy had to provide catechistic talks to their parishioners on regular basis, but this was not common.

9   See V. M. Zhivov, Iazyk i kultura v Rossii XVIII veka (Moscow, 1996).

10   See OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 5-5 ob.

11   Reading the Bible in French or German was not prohibited and could be used for studying European languages, but the authorities did not encourage the clergy to do this. For example, in 1769 Platon (Levshin) gave a German teacher at the Trinity Seminary the following order: “Attempt to read from German and translate not from the Biblical books only, but from other books in that tongue” (OR RGB, f. 757, k. 21, d. 9, l. 117 ob.). Reading the Bible in French is not mentioned in documents, although in 1779 the Trinity Seminary did buy one especially for French classes.

12   P. Znamenskii, Dukhovnyie shkoly v Rossii do reformy 1808 goda (Kazan’, 1881), 468.

13   S. Smirnov, Istoriia Troitskoi lavrskoi seminarii (Moscow, 1867), 267-268, 279.

14   Among these were courses by Apollos Baibakov in 1775 and by Methodius Smirnov between 1784 and the 1790s. Ibid., 289.

15   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 89.

16   There are two versions of this catalogue: OR RGB f. 173.1, d. 585.1 and d. 586. 1. The first was created in 1761 and was updated through 29 September, 1781; it lists 3,435 books. Catalogue d. 586.1 was a copy of d. 585.1 made in 1763, but it also has some additions which were made up to 1765; it lists 2,655 books. Book lists from private collections that were added to the library after 1761 differ in the two catalogue variants; I mainly refer to d. 585.1, but in some cases also use d. 586.1.

17   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, l. 87ob.-97ob.

18   Ibid., l. 3 ob.-6-. The catalogue doesn’t mention particular editions, full titles, or even the dates and places of the books’ publication; sample records are: “Sancti Basilii magni opera in tribus tomus” or “Sancti Efraëm Syri opera in 5 tomis,” so without further research it is difficult to tell which particular editions were available to Russian clerical readers.

19   Smirnov, Istoriia Troitskoi lavrskoi seminarii, 54-58.

20   See Kislova, Latin, 203-210.

21   The “Latin books” also contain a few Polish, German, French, Italian, and Greek editions. Theological, philosophical, and historical-theological works are in the majority, but there are also grammars, dictionaries, textbooks, various scientific works, and so on.

22   S. P. Luppov, Kniga v Rossii v poslepetrovskoe vremia. 1725-1740 (Leningrad, 1976), 302-307.

23   A. B. Postnikov, “Sud’ba starykh bibliotek pskovskikh tserkvei i monastyrei,” Pskov, 31 (2009), 17-19.

24   RGADA, f. 1189, op. 1., d. 334, l. 68-74.

25   See M. A. Fedotova, “O pervom izdatele i pervom izdanii propovedei Dimitriia Rostovskogo,” Slověne, 7, 1 (2018), 160-161.

26   On the tradition of manuscript collections and their fate in the eighteenth century, see O. N. Fokina, Evoliutsiia drevnerusskogo chet’ego sbornika kak narodnoi knigi v istoriko-literaturnom kontekste XVII-XVIII vekov. Dissertatsiia... doktora filol. nauk (Ekaterinburg, 2009).

27   Speranskii, Rukopisnye sborniki, 102-103.

28   Ibid., 104-105.

29   See E. I. Kislova, E. M. Matveev, Khronologicheskii katalog slov i rechei XVIII veka (St. Petersburg, 2011).

30   See E. I. Kislova, “Sermons and Sermonizing in Eighteenth-Century Russia: At Court and Beyond,” Slověne, 3, 2 (2014), 175-193.

31   Smirnov, Istoriia Troitskoi lavrskoi seminarii, 315.

32   OR RGB, f. 173.2, d. 49.

33   Ibid., l. 369-374, l. 375-378 ob., l. 379-381 ob.

34   RGADA, f. 188, op. 1, d. 1031.

35   Anonymous sermons were regularly attributed to Dimitrii Rostovskii: M. A. Fedotova, “O pervom izdatele i pervom izdanii propovedei Dimitriia Rostovskogo,” Slověne, 7, 1 (2018), 162-166.

36   OR RGB, f. 299, d. 158, l. 325 ob-333 ob.

37   Decree of November 18, 1742. Polnoe sobranie postanovlenii i rasporiazhenii po vedomstvu pravoslavnogo ispovedaniia rossiiskoi imperii. Tsarstvovanie gosudaryni imperatritsy Elizavety Petrovny. T. 1. 25 noiabria 1741- 1743 gg. (St. Petersburg, 1899), 472-473.

38   OR RGB, f. 299, d. 158.

39   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 163.

40   OR RGB, f. 138, d. 69.

41   V. M. Zhivov, Ocherki istoricheskoi morfologii russkogo iazyka XVII-XVIII vekov (Moscow, 2004), 236, 263, 576.

42   OR RGB, f. 138, d. 251, from the early nineteenth century.

43   RGADA, f. 188. op. 1, d. 1365, l. 44-50ob.

44   Speranskii, Rukopisnye sborniki, 104-105; A. A. Pletneva, “Sotsiolingvistika i problemy istorii russkogo iazyka XVIII-XIX vekov,” Zhizn’ iazyka. Sbornik statei k 80-letiiu Mikhaila Viktorovicha Panova (Moscow, 2001), 269-279.

45   See Iu. Levin (ed.), Istoriia russkoi perevodnoi khudozhestvennoi literatury: Drevniaia Rus’. XVIII vek (St. Petersburg, 1995), vol. 1, 9-12, 15-16: V. D. Rak, Stat’i o literature XVIII veka (St. Petersburg, 2008).

46   Journals from the second half of the eighteenth century frequently contained both original Russian works and translations without mentioning the sources, so it seems unlikely that the reader could tell one from the other. See V. D. Rak, “Inostrannaia literatura v russkikh zhurnalakh XVIII veka,” in his Stat’i o literature, 74-204.

47   E.g., the 1732 Latin rhetoric, RNB f.522 d.63.

48   OR RNB, f. 577, d. 75, ll.165-168 ob.

49   R. S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy (Princeton, 1995).

50   N. Iu. Alekseeva, Russkaia oda: Razvitie odicheskoi formy v XVII-XVIII vekakh (St. Petersburg, 2005), 52-70.

51   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 529.

52   V. I. Kolosov, Istoriia Tverskoi dukhovnoi seminarii (Tver’, 1889), 77-91; S. I. Nikolaev, Ot Kokhanovskogo do Mitskevicha: Razyskaniia po istorii pol’sko-russkikh sviazei XVII - pervoi treti XIX v. (St. Petersburg, 2004), 37.

53   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 529, l. 35ob.-36, l. 39.

54   In the mid eighteenth century, texts were often copied without mentioning the author, but towards the century’s end, names of authors and even sources for the copied texts (mainly magazines) start to appear.

55   OR RGB, f. 173.3, d. 32.

56   See A. S. Silina, “Stikhotvornye opyty viatskikh seminaristov serediny XVIII veka,” XVIII vek, 28 (2015), 45-65.

57   OR RGB, f. 218, d. 501.

58   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l.164 ob.

59   Ibid., l. 90; 94, 94ob., 140 ob.

60   In the Novgorod Seminary - Ibid., l. 89 ob.; 93 ob., 94, 140 ob.; in the Riazan’ Seminary, see D. Agntsev, Istoriia Riazanskoi dukhovnoi seminarii (Riazan‘, 1889), 116; in the Pskov Seminary, see A. Kniazev, Ocherk istorii Pskovskoi seminarii ot nachala do preobrazovaniia ee po proektu 1814 goda (Moscow, 1866), 35.

61   RGADA, f. 188, op. 1, d. 756.

62   Agntsev, Istoriia Riazanskoi, 133.

63   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 89 ob, 138 ob.

64   Personal collections of the hierarchs were also usually donated to seminary libraries after their deaths, but their contents likely reflect the personal interests of the particular collector.

65   Agntsev, Istoriia Riazanskoi, 132.

66   A. Blagoveshchenskii, Istoriia staroi Kazanskoi dukhovnoi akademii (1797-1818) (Kazan’, 1876), 131.

67   Ibid., 133.

68   OR RGB, f. 757, k. 41, d. 7, l. 60. This donation could somehow be connected with the anti-masonic actions of 1785-1786: in 1785 the books printed by N. Novikov were examined and partly confiscated, and Platon Levshin had to examine N. Novikov concerning his Christian faith; he found him a true Christian and found his books mostly acceptable (A. N. Pypin, Russkoe masonstvo. XVIII i pervaia chetvert’ XIX veka [Petrograd, 1916], 185).

69   Blagoveshchenskii, Istoriia staroi Kazanskoi, 133.

70   P. I. Khoteev, Kniga v Rossii v seredine XVIII veka. Biblioteki obshchestvennogo pol’zovaniia (St. Petersburg, 1993), 29-45.

71   M. J. Okenfuss, The Rise and Fall of Latin Humanism in Early-Modern Russia. Pagan Authors, Ukrainians, and the Resiliency of Muscovy (Leiden, New York, Köln, 1995), 213-223.

72   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, and d. 586.1.

73   Two earlier odes are also possible: “Ode to Her Imperial Majesty... Empress Ekaterina Alekseevna... on her much anticipated arrival at the Cadet Corps…” (“Oda e.i.v.... imp. Ekaterine Alekseevne... na vsevozhdelennoe prishestvie v Sukhoputnoi shliakhetnoi kadetskoi korpus...” [St. Petersburg, 1764]); or the “Ode... on her joyful arrival in St. Petersburg from Moscow” (“Oda... na vseradostneishee prishestvie iz Moskvy v Sankt-Peterburg...” [St. Petersburg, 1763]).

74   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, l.115 ob. These separate editions were probably bound together by the library. It couldn’t be Sumarokov’s Volumes of Rossiiskii teatr, because it contain tragedies Sinav and Truvor, Artistona, Semira, Iaropolk, and Dimiza (Rossiiskii featr ili Polnoe sobranie vsekh Rossiiskikh teatral’nykh sochinenii. Chast’ II. St. Petersburg, 1786) or Vysheslav, The False Demetrius, Mstislav, Deidamiia (Rossiiskii teatr... Chast’ III. St. Petersburg, 1786), so this hardly can be “one volume” from our catalogue.

75   Ibid., l.116. Here we definitely have different editions bound into one volume: it contains D. Diderot’s Le Fils naturel (translations of S. I. Glebov [St. Petersburg 1766] or Anonimous [1767] or less likely I. Iakovlev’s [Moscow 1788]), Le Père de famille (translation of S. I. Glebov [St. Petersburg 1765 or less likely Moscow 1788]), L. Holberg’s Pernille, als Tochter vom Hause, translated by A. Shurlin (Moscow, 1768).

76   E. P. Privalova, “O zabytom sbornike Tverskoi seminarii,” XVIII vek, 5 (1962), 407-421.

77   OR RGB, f. 757, k. 41, d. 7, l. 11-12.

78   Ibid., l. 11.

79   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, l. 125 ob.

80   OR RGB, f. 757, k. 41, d. 7, l. 17-17 ob.; OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, l. 122, l. 125 ob.

81   Privalova, “O zabytom sbornike,” 409.

82   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, l. 98 ob.

83   Ibid. l. 99 ob.

84   Ibid., l. 99 ob.

85   Ibid., l. 118 ob.

86   Ibid., l. 119.

87   Ibid., l. 120.

88   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 189-478.

89   As A. Iu. Samarin notes, “more than a third of the clergy’s subscriptions were to journals” (A. Iu. Samarin, Tipografshchiki i knigochety. Ocherki po istorii knigi v Rossii vtoroi poloviny XVIII veka [Moscow, 2015], 310).

90   OR RGB, f. 138, d. 301.

91   Samarin, Tipografshchiki i knigochety, 310. The author assumes that other subjects were not popular among the clergy, but we can see quite the opposite.

92   However, not every seminary had strict control over its book stock; see S. Smirnov, Istoriia Moskovskoi Slaviano-greko-latinskoi akademii (Moscow, 1855), 280-281.

93   OR RGB, f. 277, d. 4, l. 426-426 ob.

94   OR RGB, f. 277, d. 7, l. 71-71 ob.

95   The source of this collection was A. Boyer’s reading book for Frenchmen studying Latin, Le compagnon sage et ingénieux anglois et françois... (London, 1700) with several editions. The translation was very popular among secular society and was even read to Catherine’s son Paul (Rak, Stat’i o literature XVIII veka, 258-267).

96   RGB, f. 277, d. 7, l. 82-83 ob.

97   Smirnov, Istoriia Moskovskoi Slaviano-greko-latinskoi akademii, 281-283.

98   Ibid., 283.

99   OR RGB, f. 277, d. 7, l. 3-7 ob.

100   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 492, l. 504-505.

101   I. E. Barenbaum, Istoriia knigi (Moscow, 1984), 52-66; D. Smith, Rabota nad dikim kamnem: Masonskii orden i russkoe obshchestvo v XVIII veke (Moscow, 2006), 62-64; G. Marker, Publishing, Printing, and the Origins of the Intellectual Life in Russia, 1700-1800 (Princeton, 1985), 103-109.

102   E. I. Kislova, “Nemetskii iazyk v russkikh seminariiakh XVIII veka: iz istorii kul’turnykh kontaktov,” Vestnik Pravoslavnogo Sviato-Tikhonovskogo Gumanitarnogo universiteta. Seriia Filologiia, 1 (41) (2015), 53-70; E. I. Kislova, “Frantsuzskii iazyk v russkikh seminariiakh XVIII veka: iz istorii kulturnykh kontaktov,” Vestnik Pravoslavnogo Sviato-Tikhonovskogo Gumanitarnogo universiteta. Seriia Filologiia, 4 (44) (2015), 16-34.

103   Smirnov, Istoriia Moskovskoi Slaviano-greko-latinskoi akademii, 129-131; Samarin, Tipografshchiki, 9-51.

104   Nikolaev, Ot Kokhanovskogo, 37.

105   V. Rjéoutski, “Latin in the education of nobility in Russia,” in V. Rjéoutski, W. Frijhoff (eds.), Language Choice in Enlightenment Europe. Education, Sociability, and Governance (Amsterdam, 2018), 180-183.

106   Agntsev, Istoriia Riazanskoi, 33-34.

107   Smirnov, Istoriia Troitskoi lavrskoi seminarii, 318.

108   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 164 ob.

109   Smirnov, Istoriia Troitskoi lavrskoi seminarii, 322.

110   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 134; I. Speranskii, Ocherk istorii Smolenskoi Dukhovnoi Seminarii i podvedomykh ei uchilishch... (1728-1868) (Smolensk, 1892), 110.

111   Nikolaev, Ot Kokhanovskogo, 15-16, 75-85.

112   S. I. Nikolaev, “Pol’skaia poeziia v russkikh bibliotekakh XVII - pervoi poloviny XVIII v. i ee chitateli,” XVIII vek, 14 (1983), 167.

113   OR RGB, f. 277, d. 6, l. 18.

114   E. I. Kislova, “Pol’skii iazyk v rossiiskikh seminariiakh XVIII veka: iz istorii kul’turno-iazykovykh kontaktov,” Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta. Seriia 9. Filologiia, 3 (2015), 155-170.

115   RGB f. 173.1., d. 622, l. 137-178.

116   Speranskii, Ocherk istorii Smolenskoi, 113.

117   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 610, l. 93.

118   Levin, Istoriia russkoi prervodnoi, vol. 1, 148–150.

119   Seminary teachers and students authored many published translations, and even though Latin was the main language, there were also a considerable number of French and German books published. For lists of the translations made in seminaries, see: S. Smirnov, Istoriia Troitskoi lavrskoi seminarii, 374–376; S. Smirnov, Istoriia Moskovskoi Slaviano-greko-latinskoi akademii, 335–337; I. Chistovich, Istoriia Sankt-Peterburgskoi dukhovnoi akademii (St. Petersburg, 1857), 91-93; E. Shmurlo, Mitropolit Evgenii kak uchenyi: Rannie gody zhizni. 1767-1804 (St. Petersburg, 1888), 59-85, 125-137, etc.

120   Chistovich, Istoriia Sankt-Peterburgskoi, 114; Speranskii, Ocherk istorii Smolenskoi, 110.

121   Attributed to N. Rémond des Cours; the Russian translation was published by Vasilii Trediakovskii in 1745 under the title of Istinnaia politika znatnykh i blagorodnykh osob. The book was also very popular in seminaries; see above.

122   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 90.

123   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 613, 617, 622.

124   OR RGB, f. 277, d. 6, l. 17.

125   V. V. Luk‘ianov, Opisanie kollektsii rukopisei Gosudarstvennogo arkhiva iaroslavskoi oblasti XIV-XX vv. (Iaroslavl’, 1975), n. 121 (503), n. 124 (502).

126   See E. Barenbaum, Frantsuzskaia perevodnaia kniga v Rossii v XVIII veke (Moscow, 2006); these authors and their school’s translations are not even mentioned.

127   OR RGB, f. 757, k. 21, d. 9, l. 116 ob.

128   Kniazev, Ocherk istorii Pskovskoi, 41.

129   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, l. 101 ob., 107.

130   Speranskii, Ocherk istorii Smolenskoi, 110.

131   OR RGB, f. 173.I, d. 610, l. 35.

132   OR RGB f. 277, d. 6, l. 17.

133   V. I. Simankov, Iz razyskanii o zhurnale “Pribavlenie k Moskovskim vedomostiam” (1783-1784), ili Ob avtorstve sochinenii, pripisyvavshikhsia N. I. Novikovu, I. G. Shvartsu i F. V. Karzhavinu (Khar’kov, 2010), 40-41.

134   Ibid., 45.

135   See also V. D. Rak, Stat’i o literature, 534-535.

136   The same text was then translated into prose by the noblewoman E. P. Demidova (married name: Chicherina, 1767-1834) and published in 1782 and 1785 as Spiritual Odes and Songs of Ch. F. Gellert (Dukhovnyia ody i pesni, g. K.F.Gellerta... [St. Petersburg, 1785]). The contemporaneous publication of two variants of the same text, translated by people of different social standing, shows a clear interest among educated Russian society in this work.

137   See M. Naas, Didaktische Konstruktion des Kindes in Schweizer Kinderbibeln: Zürich, Bern, Luzern (1800-1850) (Göttingen, 2012), 171-172; S. M. Huber, Für die Jugend lehrreicher: Der religionspädagogische Wandel des Bildes des Kindes in Schweizer Kinderbibeln in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 2013), 86-91.

138   Kniazev, Ocherk istorii Pskovskoi, 41.

139   Kislova, “Frantsuzskii iazyk,” 29-30.

140   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 149.

141   It was also common practice for the nobility, see V. Rjéoutski, “Latin in the education of nobility in Russia,” in V. Rjéoutski, W. Frijhoff (eds.), Language Choice in Enlightenment Europe. Education, Sociability, and Governance (Amsterdam, 2018), 169-189.

142   Ibid.

143   N. Novikov, Opyt istoricheskogo slovaria o rossiiskikh pisateliakh... in Idem, Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Moscow, Leningrad, 1951), 360.

144   OR RNB, f. 522, d. 209, l. 149.

145   Levin, Istoriia perevodnoi, vol. 1, 185-194, 209-211.

146   See Rak, Stat’i o literature, 74-93.

147   Shmurlo, Mitropolit Evgenii, 63.

148   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 585.1, l. 106 ob.

149   Smirnov, Istoriia Troitskoi lavrskoi seminarii, 378.

150   Speranskii, Ocherk istorii Smolenskoi, 113–114.

151   OR RGB, f. 138, d. 301, l. 29 ob.

152   Agntsev, Istoriia Riazanskoi, 132.

153   Shmurlo, Mitropolit Evgenii, 106.

154   Evgeny Bolkhovitinov (red.), Volterovy zabluzhdeniia, obnaruzhennye abbatom Nonotom (Moscow, 1793).

155   Shmurlo, Mitropolit Evgenii, 127–134.

156   V. V. Luk‘ianov, Opisanie kollektsii; F. Ia. Priima, “K istorii otkrytiia Slova o polku Igoreve,” Trudy otdela drevnerusskoi literatury, 12 (1956), 49.

157   Smirnov, Istoriia Moskovskoi Slaviano-greko-latinskoi akademii, 311.

158   Kolosov, Istoriia Tverskoi, 241.

159   Kislova, “Frantsuzskii iazyk,” 21-22.

160   Agntsev, Istoriia Riazanskoi, 132.

161Svodnyi katalog grazhdanskoi pechati XVIII veka. 1725-1800. V 6 tomakh (Moscow, 1966), vol. 3, 429.

162   S. Mengel, “Russkie perevody khall‘skikh pietistov: Simeon Todorskii, 1729-1735,” Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta. Seriia 9. Filologiia, 3 (2001), 89-99.

163Polnoe sobranie postanovlenii i rasporiazhenii po vedomstvu pravoslavnogo ispovedaniia, 495.

164   OR RGB, f. 173.1, d. 586.1, l. 109.

165   Ibid., l. 113 ob.

166   Kislova, “Nemetskii iazyk,” 64.

167   RGIA, f. 796, op. 54, d. 454. OR RGB, f. 277, d. 4, l. 420.

168   D. Smith, Rabota nad dikim kamnem, 85.

169   O. Tsapina, “Pravoslavnoe Prosveshchenie—oksiumoron ili istoricheskaia real’nost‘?” in S. Ia. Karp, S. A. Mezin S.A. (eds.), Evropeiskoe Prosveshchenie i tsivilizatsiia Rossii (Moscow, 2004), 301-313.

Auteur

Ekaterina Kislova graduated from Moscow State University in 2003. Her PhD (2007) is devoted to the language of the 1740s court sermons in Russia. She works as an associate professor at Moscow State University (department of Russian language, Philological Faculty). She teaches the history of Russian language and culture. Her recent research deals with the languages and the culture of the eighteenth-century Russian clergy.

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