CORRESPONDENCE OF THE PUBLICISTS AS AN EXPERIENCE OF FORMING INTELLECTUAL IDENTITY IN MUSCOVIA OF XVI CENTURY
L.I. Zhurova
Institute of History SB RAS, 8, Nikolayeva str., Novosibirsk, 63090, Russian Federation
Keywords: messages, journalism of the XVI century, Maxim Grek, Fedor Ivanovich Karpov, Metropolitan Daniel, intellectual identity
Abstract
The popularity and relevance of letters in XVI century publicism resulted from the fact that during the establishment stage of the Russian autocracy the word became an effective tool for defending opinions, ideas and conceptions. Letters as an epistolary genre transformed into a correspondence between famous people of elite communities - civil and religious. The most peculiar thing in its history is that most of provocative letters did not survive to nowadays. The contacts between Maximus the Greek and Fedor Karpov were documented by the correspondence which transformed from personal communication into the fact of political and church life, and a mark of mental strivings and ideological trends of the epoch. The analysis of correspondence concerning the acquaintance of two vivid personalities has shown that the mutual understanding was based on the correlation of inner world parameters of an educated monk and a man of education at Muscovia court. Disagreements and reconciliations, quarrels and understanding are represented in the correspondence of publicists, which preserved the memory of individual personalities. Dialogues between Maximus the Greek and Fedor Karpov were rich in topical issues (discussion of theological doctrine about a Sacred Trinity, the role of predictive astrology). Despite the friendly relationships, they often polemicized. Clear position of Saint Paisios, systematic representation of facts, deep knowledge of the object of discussion and the affective tone of utterance were food for Russian diplomat’s thoughts. Treating a word as a cure is one of the dominant features of Maximus the Greek and Fedor Karpov’s identity. Both publicists in their letters to Metropolitan Daniel independently of each other took the position of “native” - “non-native”. Closeness of views and positions of Maximus the Greek and Fedor Karpov upon the question of truth and justice in the society organization, similarity of intentions to support the monarchy, tendency to utopian projects of government political organization, and humanist approach to the solution of several social issues altogether comprise a characteristic field of group intellectual identity of publicists in XVI century. From the point of view of dynamic relations, both personalities took leading positions in the correspondence, and their common efforts produced rules and regulations of Muscovia intellectual elite identification in the first half of XVI century.
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