Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2015 number

The article deals with one of the ideologically most significant Old-Believers’ texts - Epistle of Dean Fyodor to the Archpriest Avvakum’s son Ioann (John) about the priests who had accepted the reforms of Patriarch Nikon. This work was written by the Dean Fyodor in the summer of 1669 on behalf of all Pustozersk prisoners in response to Ioann’s question about the newly ordained priests. For the whole Old-Believers’ world this writing served as a guide to action explaining how to behave toward the priests installed by Patriarch Nikon after he was removed from a position of Patriarch. Along with the answers given by the Pustozersk prisoners to the questions about priests it also includes Fyodor’s interpretation of the 13 Chapter of Apocalypse focused on his reflections on “the horns of Antichrist” who will cause Russia’s last “renunciation of faith”: “And from that time on it will be more bitter owing to the ungodly tsars: they are horns of Antichrist… The Divine saw two horns coming up out of the earth: one of them already exists; after it there will be another one, accomplice of the evil”. By the “horn that already exists” the Dean Fyodor meant the Tsar Aleksey; Fyodor repeatedly called him “an evil horn” and “Antichrist”. In Fyodor’s letter there is no personification of the “second horn”, however the text is clearly stating that it will also be a Tsar, “accomplice of the evil”, who will come after Aleksey Mikhailovich. Avvakum’s interpretation of the same chapter of Apocalypse is quite different from that proposed by Fyodor: “The beast has two horns - it marks two powers: one is a winner, another is an accomplice”. Aleksey is assigned the role of only an “accomplice”, while in Fyodor’s interpretation he was presented as the main bearer of evil. Avvakum’s interpretation of Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Aleksey as two horns of Antichrist was accepted by some of the Old-Believers. This has been witnessed by creation of a new version of “The Epistle Addressed to a Certain Ioann”, compilatory in nature. Its textual analysis showed that it contains only abstracts from the Dean Fyodor’s “Epistle” with a milder variant of Avvakum’s interpretation of the 13th chapter of Apocalypse. The article proves that “The Epistle Addressed to a Certain Ioann” attributed to Avvakum was compilatory in nature. The author characterizes both texts and determines the textual evolution of this Old-Believers’ ideologically significant document.