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The Laodicean Epistle: Some Possible Sources

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Jack V. Haney
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Extract

The literature of Muscovite Russia is vast and uneven in quality. In spite of the efforts of scholars, many literary works have not been sufficiently studied to permit one to assign them their proper place in Russian literature. One such work is the Laodicean Epistle (Laodikiiskoe poslanie). A number of articles have recently been written on it, and it has figured prominently in the books of two of the leading specialists in Muscovite history and literature. Discussion has centered on questions of the extent of the work, the original text, its interpretation, and possible sources. None of these points has been decided to the satisfaction of scholars concerned with the intellectual and literary developments of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. This article is an attempt to provide other explanations for some of the questions raised by the text.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , December 1971 , pp. 832 - 842
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1971

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References

1. See, among others, Fine, John V. A., Jr., “Fedor Kuritsyn’s ‘Laodikijskoe Poslanie' and the Heresy of the Judaisers,” Speculum, 41, no. 3 (July 1966): 500–504 Google Scholar; Freydank, D, “Der ‘Laodicenerbrief’ (Laodikiiskoe poslanie): Ein Beitrag zur Interpretation eines altrussischen humanistischen Textes,” Zeitschrift fii;r Slazvistik, 11 (1966): 355–70Google Scholar; Freydank, D, “Zu Wesen und Begriffsbestimmung des russischen Humanismus,” Zeitschrift fiir Slawistik, 13 (1968): 98–108 Google Scholar; Frank Kämpfer, “Zur Interpretation des ‘Laodicenischen Sendschreibens, '” Jahrbiicher fiir Geschichte Osteuropas, n.s., 16 (1968): 53-69Google Scholar; Luria, J. (Lur'e, la. S.), “Problems of Source Criticism (with Reference to Medieval Russian Documents),” Slavic Review, 27, no. 1 (March 1968): 1–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Luria, J. (Lur'e, ), “L'hérésie dite des judaīsants et ses sources historiques,” Revue des études slaves, 45 (1966): 49–67 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Luria, J, “Zur Zusammensetzung des ‘Laodicenischen Sendschreibens, ’” Jahrbiicher fiir Geschichte Osteuropas, n.s., 17 (1969): 161–69Google Scholar; Maier, Johann, “Zum jiidischen Hintergrund des sogenannten Laodicenischen Sendschreibens,” Jahrbiicher fiir Geschichte Osteuropas, n.s., 17 (1969): 1–12.Google Scholar

2. Klibanov, A. I., Reformatsionnye dvizheniia v Rossii v XlV-pervoi polovine XVI v. (Moscow, 1960), pp. 63–82 Google Scholar; and la. S. Lur'e, Ideologicheskaia bor'ba v russkoi publitsistike kontsa XV-nachala XVI veka (Moscow and Leningrad, 1960), pp. 172–77.Google Scholar

3. See in particular Klibanov, Reformatsionnye dvisheniia, pp. 63-82.

4. Kazakova, N. A. and Lur'e, la. S., Antifeodal'nye ereticheskie dvizheniia na Rusi XlV-nachala XVI veka (Moscow and Leningrad, 1955), p. Leningrad.Google Scholar

5. The texts were published bv Lur'e, Antifeodal'nye ereticheskie dvisheniia, pp. 256- 77.

6. Klibanov, Reformatsionnye dvizheniia, p. 78. The text is published in Jagić, Vatroslav, Codex Slovenicus Rerum Grammaticarum (reprint; Munich, 1968), pp. 413–15.Google Scholar

7. Kazakova and Lur'e, Antifeodal'nye ereticheskie dvizheniia, pp. 257-64.

8. Ibid., p. 265.

9. On the poetic elements as such see the articles by Kämpfer, “Zur Interpretation,” pp. 54-55, and Freydank, “Der ‘Laodicenerbrief, ’” pp. 365-66.

10. Freydank, “Der ‘Laodicenerbrief, ’” p. 368.

11. See Sreznevsky, I. I., Materialy dlia slovaria drevnerusskago iazyka, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1893-1912), 1: 490.Google Scholar

12. Freydank, “Der ‘Laodicenerbrief, ’” p. 368.

13. M. N. Speransky, Tainopis’ v iugo-slavianskikh i russkikh pamiatnikakh pis'ma, vyp. 4.3 of Entsiklopediia slavianskoi filologii (Leningrad, 1929), passim.

14. Jagić, Codex Slovenicus Rerum Grammaticarum, p. 414. Translation: “the alphabet is (represents) the independence of the mind. Vowels are the soul and its life-force, the consonants are flesh and its corruptibility. Scaffolding is animation, the crossbeams strength. For just as the soul is unknown (cannot be known) without the body, so also is the body insensitive without the soul. The body is the ready structure, the soul its completion. [Only] with both is wisdom discovered… . For fleshes and pillars are so-called because without animated beams there can be no sound, nor substance constructed about them. For the body neither moves nor lives without a soul, but the soul both moves and lives without the body, yet it achieves nothing outside the body.”

15. Freydank, “Der ‘Laodicenerbrief, ’” p. 359.

16. Zolnai, Klára, Bibliographic Bibliothecae Regis Mathiae Corvini (Mátyás Király Kőnyvtárának Irodalma) (Budapest, 1942), passim.Google Scholar

17. Dąbrowski, J., “Pocztek i rozwoj Odrodzenia w Krakowie i na Węgrzech,” Krakowskie Odrodzenie (Krakow, 1954), p. 148.Google Scholar

18. Jagić, Codex Slovenicus Rerum Grammaticarum, p. 721.

19. Ibid., p. 313.

20. Quotations are from The Works of Aristotle edited by W. D. Ross.

21. Jagić, Codex Slovenicus Rerum Grammaticarum, p. 414.

22. The Dialogues of Plqto, trans, Benjamin Jowett, 3rd e.

23. I have found no examples of the use of the word sofist in Old Russian before its usage by Maxim the Greek.

24. Freydank, “Der ‘Laodicenerbrief, ’” p. 368.

25. Lur'e, Ideologicheskaia bor'ba, p. 176.