Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2021 number

The Eldery Artemius, accused by Moscow Bishops’ Assembly in 1554 of the aptitude to Protestantism, became strictly Orthodox in Lithuania, a castigator of heretics and active antagonist of the Lutheran Church. The epistles composed in emigration present him as the Orthodoxy proponent in the west. In five epistles (out of nine) of the Lithuanian creative period, representing the author’s discourse, the publicist made denunciations of Luther’s teaching, addressing them to Prince Czartoryski, treasurer Ivan Zaretsky, heretic Simon Budny, Lutheran teachers and a certain prince. The article’s subject of analysis is the issues of the handwritten tradition of «Epistles to Lutheran Teachers», approaches to determine the relations between epistles based on functioning toposes, intertextual connections, and appeals in the polemical narrative. The epistle is an extended treatise of a publicist, in which, along with the Lutherans denunciations, the author expresses his attitude to an ecclesiastical Hesychast writer, the ideologist of non-possession, which makes this work the programmatic work of Artemius. The text’s distinctive feature is the author’s pronounced personality and the system of appeals to Luther and the Orthodox who converted to Lutheranism. The results are disсcussed relating to the book tradition of “Epistles to Lutheran Teachers” preserved in three collections of manuscripts of the XVI century. The text published in the collection “The Russian Historic Library” based on the Russian State Library’s opus № 494 of Undolsky collection does not have a beginning, and its long title is likely to be authored by P. Hiltebrandt. This opus has a title Na Lutory (i.e. “Against Lutherans”) in two other manuscripts. The copy kept in the Russian National Library O.XVII.71 should be considered the most complete and relevant text of the Epistle.