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The Tsar’s Last Philosopher on the Method of Architectural History: Orthodox Theology versus Geistesgeschichte

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Extract

A photograph dating from the years of the Russian Civil War shows Vasiliy Pavlovich Zubov in the uniform of the Red Army: an unlikely conscript to it, given his poor eyesight (as betrayed by his thick glasses), but in fact one who served as a scribe in an artillery unit located near Moscow (Fig. 1). Another photograph, taken not long before his death in 1963, shows him in the greyish suit of the Khrushchev years: a survivor who, by becoming Russia’s greatest intellectual historian, managed to avoid playing any active part in political history (Fig. 2).

Zubov is the towering figure of Russian architectural history in the twentieth century. The most pertinent way to introduce him here is as the Russian translator of Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria (Fig. 3) and as one of the two co-translators of Daniele Barbara’s commentary on Vitruvius. The former treatise is notorious for the complexities of its text, and it took a team of three scholars to produce the most recent English translation. Understanding of the latter work demands such an extensive knowledge of both Renaissance and Roman intellectual history that it is considered virtually untranslatable, and the translation on which Zubov collaborated is the only one ever published in any living language. He was also the author of an extensive commentary on Alberti’s architectural treatise (Fig. 4), much praised by those Renaissance scholars who can read Russian, while those few of his articles on Leon Battista Alberti that were published in French or Italian during his lifetime are still widely cited today.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2008

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References

Notes

1 Alberti, Leon Battista (De re aedificatoria), Russian trans. and comm. Vasiliy Pavlovich Zubov 2 vols (Moscow, 1935 and 1937)Google Scholar; Daniele Barbaro and Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (Vitruvius’ Ten Books on Architecture with Daniele Barbaros Commentary and Giuseppe Salviati’s Treatise About the Method of Geometrical Construction of Ionic Volute), Russian trans. A. I. Venediktinov and Vasiliy Pavlovich Zubov (Moscow, 1938).

2 Alberti, Leon Battista, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, English trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass., 1988)Google Scholar.

3 Pavlovich Zubov, Vasiliy, (‘Commentary on the Treatise On Building’), in Alberti, De re aedificatoria, Russian trans, and comm. Zubov, 11, 263681 Google Scholar. For the reception of the commentary outside Russia, see the glowing review by , A. P., ‘Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) De re aedificatoria libri decern’, Isis, 30 (1938), pp. 52325 Google Scholar. Zubov’s articles on Leon Battista Alberti published in French and Italian are as follows: Pavlovich Zubov, Vasiliy, ‘Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) et les Auteurs du Moyen Age’, (‘Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) and Medieval Authors’), Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 4 (1958), pp. 24566 Google Scholar; ‘Leon Battista Alberti e Leonardo da Vinci’, (‘Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci’), Raccolta Vinciana, 18 (1960), pp. 1–14; ‘Quelques aspects de la théorie des proportions esthétiques de Leon Battista Alberti’, (‘Some Aspects of Leon Battista Alberti’s Aesthetic Theory of Proportions’), Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 22 (1960), pp. 54–61; ‘Les sources de Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) dans son traité: De re aedificatoria’, (‘Leon Battista Alberti’s (1404–1472) Sources in his Treatise De re aedificatoria’), Isis, 28 (1938), pp. 93–94.

4 A comprehensive bibliography of Zubov’s works appears in Vasiliy Pavlovich Zubov, (Works on Architectural History and Theory), ed. Maria Vasilyevna Zubova (Moscow, 2000), pp. 489–504. The most important publications of Zubov’s works since this book was published are: (Alberti’s Architectural Theory), ed. Dimitri Aleksandrovich Bayuk (St Petersburg, 2001), (Selected Works on Philosophy and Aesthetics), ed. Maria Vasilyevna Zubova, (Moscow, 2004); (Aristotle) (Moscow, 2000); (Russian Preachers) (Moscow, 2001); (From the History of Science), ed. Vasilyevna Zubova, Maria (St Petersburg, 2006). This last book contains also a bibliography of Zubov’s works. See also my review of Works, Alberti’s Architectural Theory and Selected Works in the Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 70 (2007), pp. 13944 Google Scholar.

5 Zubov, Vasiliy Pavlovich, 1452-1519 (Moscow, 1961)Google Scholar; English trans. Kraus, David, Leonardo da Vinci (Cambridge, Mass., 1968)Google Scholar.

6 For a description of the situation in the Philosophy Department of Moscow University in the years following the Revolution, see Vladimirovich Chicherin, Aleksey (‘On the “Last Russian Philosophers” and the Works of One of Them’), in Zubov, From the History, pp. 51217 Google Scholar.

7 Zubov, , Alberti’s Architectural Theory Google Scholar. At the time of completing this paper, the French translation has only partly been published. See Pavloviã, Vasilij, [sic] Zubov, La Théorie Architecturale d’Alberti Google Scholar, French trans. Feldman, Renata and Bérélowitsch, A., Albertiana, 3 (2000), pp. 1362; 4 (2001), pp. 8798; and 5 (2002), pp. 91108 Google Scholar.

8 In the philosophy of history this debate is referred to as the one between individualism and holism. Gellner, Ernest in his ‘Holism versus Individualism in History and Sociology’, in Theories of History Google Scholar, ed. Gardiner, Patrick (Glencoe, 1959), pp. 489503 (p. 491)Google Scholar, described the individualist position as marked by the belief in reductionism which ‘[it] does not wish to allow that the Whole could ever be a cause, and [insists] that explanations which make [it] appear that it is can be translated into other. … The holistic counter-argument works in reverse; if something (a) is a causal factor and (b) cannot be reduced, then in some sense it “really and independently exists”’. Similarly, Watkins, J. W. N., in his ‘Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences’, in Theories Google ScholarPubMed, ed. Gardiner, , pp. 50315 (p. 505)Google Scholar, described the individualist as marked by the stance that ‘we shall not have arrived at rock-bottom explanations of such large-scale phenomena until we have reduced an account of them to statements about the dispositions, resources and inter-relations of individuals’. On the holist view, however, ‘social systems constitute “wholes” at least in the sense that some of their large-scale behaviour is governed by macro-laws which are essentially sociological in the sense that they are sui generis and not to be explained as mere regularities or tendencies resulting form the behaviour of interacting individuals’. See also Danto, Arthur, Narration and Knowledge (New York, 1985), pp. 25784 Google Scholar; and Mitrović, Branko, ‘Intellectual History, Inconceivability and Methodological Holism’, History and Theory, 46 (2007), pp. 2947, for various approaches to defining individualism and holism in history writingCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Sedlmayr says that the position he describes has been generally achieved only since 1918 (‘auf breiter Front erst seit etwa 1918’). ( Sedlmayr, Hans, Kunst und Wahrheit (Art and Truth), (Munich, 1978), pp. 4647 Google Scholar). For equivalent statements, see also Spranger, Eduard, ‘Was heißt Geistesgeschichte’ (‘What is Geistesgeschichte’), Die Erziehung, 12 (1937), pp. 289302 Google Scholar; and also Rosenauer, Artur, ‘Max Dvřrák — Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte’ (‘Max Dvřrák—Art History as Geistesgeschichte’), in Max Dvřrák, Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte. Studien zur Abendländischen Kunstentwicklung (Art History as Geistesgeschichte. Studies of Western Development of Art), (Berlin, 1995), pp. 27783 Google Scholar. Frey, Dagobert similarly wrote in his Gotik und Renaissance als Grundlagen der modernen Weltanschauung (Gothic and Renaissance as Foundations of Modern Worldview), (Augsburg, 1929), p. xvii Google Scholar, that Geistesgeschichte understands the change of style ‘aus den treibenden geistigen Kraften’ (‘starting from its moving spiritual forces’) and that its purpose is ‘gleichzeitige Einzelerscheinungen … auf gemeinsame geistige Voraussetzungen zurück zu führen’ (‘to deduce contemporaneous individual appearances from their shared spiritual assumptions’). A good summary of the position appears in Hedicke, Robert, Methodenlehre der Kunstgeschichte (Methodology of Art History) (Strasburg, 1924), pp. 13276 Google Scholar. Hedicke’s definition explicitly postulates the existence of a Geist independent of individual humans’ creative processes: ‘Allgemeine Geistesgeschichte ist die historische Wissenschaft von dem alien Geisteswissenschaften gemeinsamen objektiven Geist in seinen verschiedenen historischen Äußerungen und Wandlungen’ (‘General Geistesgeschichte is a historical science studying the objective Spirit which is shared by all sciences of Spirit, in its various historical expressions and transformations’) (p. 132); and ‘Geisteswissenschaften sind also diejenigen Wissenschaften, welche die Aufgabe haben, die Erscheinungsformen des objektiven Geistes im Individuellen zu verstehen, zu erkennen und darzustellen’ (‘The task of the sciences of Spirit is to understand, recognise and describe the forms of the manifestations of the objective Spirit’) (p. 134). The view which all these authors share is that events and creative decisions within a collective are not any mere result of individual creative decisions (sometimes motivated by interpersonal interaction) but are rather manifestations of an immaterial substance, Geist (Spirit), that acts through the individuals that belong to that collective and that causes and explains their creativity. Ernst Gombrich once summarized this view by saying that ‘This tradition postulates that all the manifestations of an era — philosophy, art, social structures, etc — must be considered as expressions of an essence, an identical spirit. As a result, every era is considered as a totality embracing everything’ (Ernst Gombrich, T think art historians are the spokesmen of our civilisation; we want to know more about our Olympus’, The Art Newspaper, 28 (1993): 19, pp. 18–19 (p. 19)).

10 ‘die Ansicht von der Einheit und Unveränderlichkeit der Menschennatur und der menschlichen Vernunft’ (‘the view that human nature and reason are universal and unchangeable’) (Sedlmayr, ‘Einleitung’, p. xxxi).

11 Panofsky, Erwin, ‘The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline’ (cited according to the version published in Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts (Chicago, 1955), pp. 125)Google Scholar; see especially pp. 1–3. For an important survey of problems which motivated Panofsky’s views, see Summers’s, DavidMeaning in the Visual Arts as a Humanistic Discipline’, and Hugh Smith’s, CraigThoughts on Erwin Panofsky’s First years in Princeton’, in Meaning in the Visual Arts: Views from the Outside, ed. Lavin, Irving (Princeton, 1995), pp. 924 and 35359 Google Scholar. For the historical development of Panofsky’s thought, see Ann Holly, Michael, Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History (Ithaca, 1984)Google Scholar.

12 Arguably, the idea is already present in Aristotle’s Physics: (‘there is no choice without thought’), 1978, 8. Boethius is quite explicit: ‘neque enim fuerit ulla rationalis natura quin eidem libertas adsit arbitrii’ (‘nor can there be a rational nature without the capacity to judge freely’) (De consolatane, v, 2, 5).

13 Zubov, , Alberti’s Architectural Theory, p. 31.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., p. 112. The reference is to the general thesis of Heinrich Wölfflin, Renaissance und Barock (Renaissance and Baroque) (Munich, 1908).

15 Zubov, , Alberti’s Architectural Theory, p. 412. The reference is to Dagobert Frey, Gotik und Renaissance, pp. 17, 37 and 8889 Google Scholar.

16 Zubov, Vasiliy Pavlovich: (‘Architectural-Theoretical Heritage and the Task of Studying it’), in Zubov, Works, pp. 37697 Google Scholar.

17 (‘… to dissolve with no residue the objective content of a theoretical work in history in the worldview, in the psychology of the era, or analyse its content as relative to a person, as an expression of personal views or individual tastes’) (ibid., p. 383).

18 Ibid., p. 385. For a more recent English-speaking discussion of Tolstoy’s conception of ‘Russianness’, see in particular Figes, Orlando, Natasha’s Dance. A Cultural History of Russia (London, 2003), pp. xxvxxxiii Google Scholar. One should note that Tolstoy’s or Stasov’s views on Russianness are not quite comparable to the writings on the Englishness of English art by the authors such as Frey, Pevsner or Panofsky ( Frey, Dagobert, Englisches Wesen im Spiegel seiner Kunst (Stuttgart, 1942)Google Scholar; Panofsky, Erwin, ‘The Ideological Antecedents of the Rolls-Royce Radiator’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 107 (1963), pp. 27388 Google Scholar; Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Englishness of English Art. An expanded and Annotated Version of the Reith lectures Broadcast in October and November 1955 (Harmondsworth, 1964)Google Scholar. For a criticism of this kind of collectivist history writing, see Watkin, David, Morality and Architecture (Oxford 1977)Google Scholar.) Frey, Panofsky and Pevsner attempted to describe what they saw as the collective traits of English art, whereas Stasov endeavoured to promote what he regarded as Russianness in the contemporary Russian artistic production.

19 (… its achievements, which … are achievements not only for its time, but for ours as well’) (ibid., p. 385).

20 Zubov, Vasiliy Pavlovich, ‘L’oeuvre historico-scientifique d’Hélène Metzger’ (‘Helene Metzger’s Work in the History of Science’), Scientia, 97 (1962), pp. 23338, 236 Google Scholar.

21 Zubov, Russian Preachers.

22 Zubov, Vasiliy Pavlovich, (Historiography of Natural Sciences in Russia) (Moscow, 1956)Google Scholar; Gregoryan, A. T., Zubov, Vasiliy Pavlovich (A. T. (Essays on the Development of the Elementary Concepts of Mechanics) (Moscow, 1962)Google Scholar; Zubov, Vasiliy Pavlovich, (Development of Atomic Theories Before the Nineteenth Century) (Moscow, 1965)Google Scholar.

23 Zubov, , ‘Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472)’ and ‘Les sources’Google Scholar.

24 The corpus of scholarship of Alberti’s sources is particularly extensive; one should at least mention Eugenio Garin’s ‘Studi su Leon Battista Alberti’ (‘Studies on Leon Battista Alberti’) in his Rinascite e rivoluzioni: movimenti culturali dal XIV al XVIII secolo (Rebirths and Revolutions: Cultural Movements from XIV through XVIII century) (Rome, 1975), pp. 131–96; la Brasca, Frank, ‘L’arc et la flêche: la culture philosophique d’Alberti’ (‘Bow and Arrow: Alberti’s Philosophical Culture’), in Leon Battista Alberti, Congres International, ed. Furlan, Francesco (Turin, 2000), pp. 173211 Google Scholar; and Rinaldi, Rinaldo, Melancholia Christiana. Studi sulle fonti di Leon Battista Alberti (Christian Melancholy. Studies on Leon Battista Alberti’s Sources) (Florence, 2002)Google Scholar.

25 (‘Leonardo was not merely someone else’s predecessor or successor’), Zubov, Leonardo da Vinci, p. 4. He is particularly explicit in Gregoryan and Zubov, Essays, p. 6: (Vorgänger), (précoursers) (‘… the real task of a historian is not concluded by tracking down the predecessors, forerunners or anticipators, but in accurate determination of that what an individual achieved in relation to his own abilities and the possibilities of the era’).

26 Zubov, Works.

27 Dvřrák, Max, ‘Katakombenmalereien. Die Anfänge der Christlichen Kunst’ (‘Paintings in the Catacombs. The Beginnings of Christian Art’), in Dvřrák, Max, Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte (Art History as Geistesgeschichte) (Berlin, 1995), pp. 140.Google Scholar

28 Zubov, Vasiliy Pavlovich, ‘L’Histoire de la science et la biographie des savants’ (‘History of Science and the Biography of Scientists’), Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki, numero spécial 6 (1962), pp. 2942.Google Scholar

29 ‘de faire ressortir dans la langue usitée d’une école les traits d’un langage individual, d’entrevoir le style personnel, donc, l’homme…. Il faut prendre l’homme tel qu’il est. Toute recherche de source, faite d’une façonmécanique, dépersonalisée, le savant se perd dans la foule de ses “précoursers”, de même qu’il perd son visage quand on le considère comme “précourser” de quelqu’un d’autre’ (Zubov, ‘L’Histoire’, p. 42).

30 Panofsky, Meaning, p. 3. For a general presentation of the debate on free will in the Renaissance, see Trinkaus, Charles, ‘The Problem of Free Will in the Renaissance and the Reformation’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 10 (1949), pp. 5162 Google Scholar. Panofsky cites both Erasmus and Luther only indirectly, according to Pfeiffer, Rudolf, Humanitas Erasmiana, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, XXII (Leipzig, 1931), pp. 1920 Google Scholar. The reference there is to Erasmus’ statement: ‘Ad quid valet totus homo, si sic in illo agit deus, quemadmodum figulus agit in lato et quemadmodum agere poterat in silice’, Desiderius Erasmus Roterdamus, De Libero Arbitrio ΔIATPIBH sive collatio (On Free Will. A Diatribe or a Collection), ed. Johannes von Walter (Leipzig, 1935), iv, 11. Luther’s statement cited here is actually from his Assertio, see Martin Luther, Werke (Works), 71 vols (Weimar, 1908), vii, p. 146: ‘quia nulli est in manu sua quippiam cogitare mali aut boni sed omnia … de necessiatate absoluta eveniat’. But Luther’s main treatise in the debate was De servo arbitrio (Werke, xviii, pp. 551–787). Cornelis Augustijn observes that ‘The Lutheran confessions of faith gave a much more cautious, answer to the question than Luther himself. … Nonetheless, the extremely acute formulation of Luther’s position was adopted by Calvin rather than by Luther’s own pupils. In fact, by rejecting Calvin’s doctrine of predestination, they indirectly attacked Luther himself (Erasmus His Life, Works and Influence, English trans. J. C. Grayson (Toronto, 1991), p. 145).

31 ‘Si voluntas non fuisset libera, non potuisset imputari peccatum, quod peccatum esse desinit, si non fuerit volunatarium’ (‘If will were not free, one could not ascribe sin, since a sin ceases to be, if it is not voluntary …’), (Erasmus, De libero, IIa, 7). ‘nee ulli posse fieri iniuriam a deo natura iusto’ (‘… nor can an injustice originate from God, who is just by his nature …’) (ibid., Ia, 8).

32 ‘Est itaque hoc imprimis necessarium et salutare Christiano, nosse, quod Deus nihil praescit contigenter, sed quod omnia incommutabili et aeterna infallibilique voluntate et praevidet et proponit et faciat’ (‘For a Christian it is particularly necessary and beneficial to know that God has no contingent knowledge, but foresees, intends and does everything by unchangeable, eternal and infallible will’) (Luther, De servo arbitrio, p. 615).

33 ‘Ubi id probatum fuerit, extra vires et Consilia nostra in solius opere Dei pendere salutem nostram,…, nonne clare sequitur, dum Deus opere suo in nobis non adest, omnia esse mala faciamus, et nos necessario operari quae nihil ad salutem valent?’ (‘From which it follows, that our salvation depends exclusively on the work of God and is beyond our powers and decisions … is it not clear that as long as God through his work is not present in us, everything we do is evil and necessarily makes no contribution to salvation?’) (ibid., p. 634).

34 Ibid., p. 674.

35 See in particular the ‘Introduction’ by Maria Vasilyevna Zubova, in Zubov, Selected Works, pp. 6–22 (especially p. 7, which gives a series of citations from Zubov’s diaries).

36 St Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio Libri Tres (Three Books on Free Will), in II «De Libero Arbitrio» di S. Agostino, Parallel Latin-Italian edition, ed., trans, and comm. F. de Capitani (Parma, 1987); see especially sections 1.1, 1.11 and 11.1. For a summary of the discussion of free will in this treatise, see David E. Roberts, ‘The Earliest Writings’, in A Companion to the Study of St. Augustine, ed. Roy W. Battenhouse (New York, 1969), pp. 93–126. Augustine’s writings pertaining to the Pelagian debate are published in Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina prior, ed. J. P. Migne, 221 vols, XLIV and XLV (Paris, 1861). For summaries of Augustine’s writings in this debate, see Paul Lehmann, ‘Anti-Pelagian Writings’, in A Companion to the Study of St. Augustine, ed. Battenhouse, pp. 203–34; and James Wetzel, ‘Predestination, Pelagianism and Foreknowledge’, in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 49–58.

37 Aurelius Augustine, De predestinatione sanctorum (On the Predestination of Saints), viii, 13, in Patrologiae … series latina, ed. Migne, XLIV, columns 960–92. Tntelligamus ergo vocationem qua fiunt electi: non qui eliguntur quia crediderunt, sed qui eliguntur ut credant’ (‘Let us understand the calling by which they were chosen: not chosen because they believed, but chosen so that they will believe’). ‘Electi sunt ante mundi constitutionem ea praedestinatione, in qua Deus sua futura facta praescivit: electi sunt autem de mundo ea vocatione, qua Deus id quod praedestinavit, implevif (‘Before the creation of the world, they were chosen by the same predestination, by which God knows in advance His future deeds: in the world, they were chosen by the calling by which God fulfils what He has predestined’) (ibid., xvii, 34, columns 985–86).

38 For Augustine’s use of this term, see St Augustine, Four Anti-Pelagian Writings: On Nature and Grace, On the Proceedings of Pelagius, On the Predestination of Saints, On the Gift of Perseverance, trans. John A. Mourant and William J. Collinge (Washington, 1992), p. 25, n. 22.

39 For general reviews of the Orthodox stance on free will, see Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London, 1997), pp. 221–26; and John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (New York, 1979), pp. 176–78. For the early reactions of the Church in the East to Pelagianism, see Lionel Wickham, ‘Pelagianism in the East’, and R. A. Markus, ‘The Legacy of Pelagius: Orthodoxy, Heresy and Conciliation’, both in The Making of Orthodoxy. Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick, ed. Rowan Williams (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 200–13 and 214–34. The author of the latter essay states, regarding the condemnation of Pelagianism at the Council of Ephesus: ‘It does seem that Pelagian teaching was condemned in Ephesus; but the matter was clearly a side-issue, mentioned to cater for Western susceptibilities, but…of insufficient interest to most of the participants to leave more than a trace in the council’s acts’ (p. 216).

40 All quotations of Maximus’ works are taken from S. P. N. Maximi Confessoris Opera Omnia (The Complete Works of Maximus the Confessor), ed. B. P. Franc. Combefis, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus,… Series Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne, 161 vols, xc and xci (Paris, 1860). For Maximus the Confessor, see Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor (Lund, 1965); for the problem of free will, see especially pp. 165, 222–24 and 240; for an account of Maximus’s views on free will, see also Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, pp. 38, 138–43.

41 See Thunberg, Microcosm, pp. 222–23, regarding the identity of Clemens of Alexandria, whom Maximus calls ‘Clemens Stromateos’.

42 Maximus the Confessor, Opuscula theologica et polemica (Minor Theological and Polemical Works), in Opera, ed. Combefis, 2, 9–287, 276–77.

43 As for free will, he discusses things that happen according to human will: Opuscula theologica et polemica, 16D. For the definition of the soul, see the extensive section which proves the rationality of the soul in Maximus the Confessor, Opusculum de anima (Minor Work on the Soul), in Opera, ed. Combefis, 2, 354–62 (360B-D). Maximus concludes there with a definition of the soul as a non-corporeal substance, intellectual, free in the body: (ibid., 361A). Likewise, free will and rationality are directly related to one another in his Disputatio cum Pyrrho where he argues that insofar as beings with intellect have freedom of movement, every being with intellect must have free will: (Maximus the Confessor, Disputatio cum Pyrrho in Opera, ed. Combefis, 2, 287–354, 301C).

44 John of Damascus, Expositio accurata fidei orthodoxae (True Exposition of Orthodox Faith) in Sancii patris nostri Joannis Damasceni, monachi, et presbyteri hierosolymitani opera omnia quae extant (Complete Preserved Works of our Holly Father John of Damascus, Monk and Presbyter of Jerusalem), ed. P. Michaelis Lequien in Patrologiae … series graeca prior, ed. J. P. Migne, vols XCII-XCW, XCIV, cols 789–1228. In relation to the discussion here, see especially chapters 25–30 of the Book Two. For a modern account of John of Damascus’s views, see Michael Frede, ‘John of Damascus on Human Action, the Will and Human Freedom’, in Byzantine Philosophy and its Ancient Sources, ed. Katerina Ierodiakoniou (Oxford, 2002), pp. 63–96. See also the opening section of Frede’s article for a discussion of the circulation of the Expositio in Byzantine times.

45 (‘We say that free will belongs to the rational capacity … free will necessarily attaches itself to the reasoning capacity … for it is either not rational, or if it is rational, it is the master of actions, and self-willed’) (ibid., 2.27, col. 960C-D).

46 (For it is up to us to remain in virtue and obey God who is calling us in that direction, or to leave virtue, be in vice, obey the Devil, who is not forcing us’) (ibid., 2.30, col. 273).

47 At Romans 5:12 the Vulgate has ‘in quo omnes pecaverunt (‘in whom [i.e. Adam] everyone sinned’, which suggests that everyone sinned through Adam’s first sin) for the Greek However, the standard way to translate the Greek phrase is ‘because’ and not ‘in whom’, which would make Romans 5:12 state, when read in the Greek original, that death spread to all men because they all sinned (and not as a punishment for the sin they inherited from Adam). For the Byzantine interpretation of this section, see John Meyendorff, ‘Eph ho chez Cyrille d’Alexandrie et Theodoret’, Studia Patristica, 79 (1961), pp. 157–61. In Catholic theology, an additional contribution to the belief in original sin came from Augustine, who insisted that the Church administered baptism precisely for the remission of sin inherited at birth (Augustine, De natura et gratia, iii, 3; Patrologiae … Cursus latinus, ed. Migne, pp. 247–90 (p. 249)). In the Orthodox Church, however, ‘remission of sins’ in baptism is understood as accidental and applicable only to the cases of adult baptism, the more important function of baptism being to convey a new and immortal life which the infant could not have inherited from its parents (see Mayendorff, Byzantine, p. 146).

48 Erasmus suggested translating (Romans 5:12) as ‘in eo quod omnes peccaverunt’. See John B. Payne, ‘Erasmus: Interpreter of Romans’, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 2 (1971), pp. 1–35 (p. 12).

49 See Mayendorff, Byzantine, pp. 143–46, for a general account of Byzantine views on original sin.

50 (‘Their heresy is…as follows. They say that humans sin not by their will, but by their nature’). He names St Jerome, whom he calls Aram, as the originator of the heresy. Cited according to Photius, Bibliotheque, ed. René Henry (Paris, 1960), 2 vols, 2, 177.

51 Meyendorff, Byzantine, p. 145.

52 Fyodor Mikhaiolovich Dostoevsky (Brothers Karamazov) (first edition 1879; all citations from Moscow, 2006), pp. 258–77.

53 Fyodor Mikhaiolovich Dostoevsky, Becu (Demons) (first edition 1871; all citations from Moscow, 2006), pp. 237–41.

54 Berdyaev is listed as one of Zubov’s professors in Maria Vasilyevna Zubova’s biography of her father, in Zubov, Works, p. 481.

55 Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (Philosophy of Freedom), (Moscow, 1911); (The Great Inquisitor), (Moscow, 1907); (Philosophy of Free Spirit) (Paris, 1927). This last book contains a particularly important elaboration of the problems of freedom of spirit (chapter 4) and salvation (chapter 5). Berdyaev’s works in original Russian version are easily available through the internet, from www.krotov.info/library. The English translations of many of his works can be also obtained through the internet; a (somewhat dated) list of published translations is included in Frederick Copleston, Russian Philosophy (London, 1986), pp. 428–29. Copleston’s book also contains a good summary of Berdyaev’s philosophical views (pp. 371–89).

56 Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (‘Inverted Perspective’) in (Collected Works) (Paris, 1985), 4 vols, 1, 117–92. Florensky is an immensely interesting figure in Russian intellectual history of the first half of the twentieth century: a priest and mathematician whose mystical views influenced the rise of the Moscow School of mathematics, he contributed to the early Soviet electrification projects and wrote on art history. See in particular Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor, ‘A Comparison of Two Cultural Approaches to Mathematics. France and Russia, 1890–1930’, lsis, 97 (2006), pp. 56–74. Erwin Panofsky, ‘Die Perspektive als “symbolische Form’”, (‘Perspective as Symbolic Form’), in Vortrdge der Bibliothek Warburg 1924–2925 (Lectures of Warburg Library 1924–1925), ed. Fritz Saxl (Leipzig and Berlin, 1927). See the recent reprint in Erwin Panofsky, Deutschsprachige Aufsatze, ed. Karen Michels and Martin Warnke, 2, vols (Berlin, 1998), 11, 664–757.

57 Maria Zubova, (‘Preface’), in Zubov, Selected Works, pp. 6–22 (p. 9).

58 Panofsky, ‘History of Art’, p. 4, n. 3.

59 Willhelm Worringer, Griechentum und Gotik (Greekness and the Gothic) (Munich, 1928).

60 Max Dvřrák, ‘Idealismus und Naturalismus in der Gotischen Skulptur und Malerei’, in Dvřrák, Kunstgeschichte, pp. 41–148.

61 Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (New York, 1957), p. 23.

62 Gombrich, ‘I think art historians’.

63 cited in Zubov, Russian Preachers, p. 80.

64 A. P., ‘Leon Battista Alberti’.