Guryanova Natalia S.,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Preface to the Old Believers’ Essay “Known Spiritual Review of the Clear and Hidden in the Scriptures of the Saints”
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2019-2-7
The article introduces to the scientific circulation of the preface to the essay “Known Spiritual Review of the Clear and Hidden in the Scriptures of the Saints. In other way, the truly legend, analysed and confirmed by evidence, with discourses from the Holy Scripture”. A work written by an unknown author in the middle of the 18th century occupies 204 pages of the manuscript and is typical of Old Believers using the collection of “sacred texts” accumulated by that time. In the introduction to the publication, attention is drawn to the process of forming the “canon of sacred texts”, a brief description of its content is given. Analysis of several facts of the use of quotations from this “canon” allowed to conclude that an attempt was made to present all the fragments selected by several generations of opponents of church reform in order to prove the illegitimacy of the innovations in the rite and in the liturgical practice as “sacred texts”. In the preface, this is especially clear, because the Old Believer used the print editions, providing edition notice in the margins, and in the main text the author designated fragments as taken from the Holy Scripture or the patristic tradition. Perhaps the author thus attempted to substantiate his right to describe his essay in the title-summary as written “with discourses from the Holy Scripture”.
Publishing: 29/04/2019
How to cite: Guryanova N.S. Preface to the Old Believers’ Essay “Known Spiritual Review of the Clear and Hidden in the Scriptures of the Saints” // Historical Courier, 2019, # 2 (4). Article 7. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2019/ISTKURIER-2019-2-07.pdf
Links: Issue 2 2019
Keywords: church reform; Old Belief; handwritten collections; writings