Abstract: Hagiographic literature of Rus'. Names of Russian saints Lives of Russian saints Canons of ancient Russian hagiography

Notes for the study of hagiographic tradition in Russian literature

As it was noted long ago, the great hagiographic tradition of Eastern Christianity, which for centuries served as a “textbook of life” for Russian people, to a certain extent did not lose its significance in modern times, becoming one of the sources that fed Russian classical literature. Modern science has accumulated abundant material illustrating this position (this especially applies to N. S. Leskov and L. N. Tolstoy). We think, however, that at present a simple statement of a generally accepted fact is no longer enough, and the accumulated materials clearly need systematization and generalization. But there are depressingly few generalizing works on this topic, and preliminary judgments are often lightweight and “skim the surface” of the problem.

In this regard, the article by I. V. Bobrovskaya “Transformation of the hagiographic tradition in the works of writers of the 19th century” seems indicative. (L. N. Tolstoy, F. M. Dostoevsky, N. S. Leskov).” Having rightly noted the genetic connection of the ethical problematics of Russian classics with the Christian ideal in its hagiographic expression, the author of the article examines from this perspective three exemplary texts of their kind in Russian literature. The choice of works by the giants of Russian classical literature was made unmistakably - the connection between “Father Sergius”, “The Brothers Karamazov” (primarily the chapter “Russian Monk”) and “The Immortal Golovan” with the hagiographic tradition is beyond doubt. But how insignificant are the results of the analysis carried out by the researcher (its lightness is especially noticeable when referring to the story of N. S. Leskov, the hagiographic parallels of which were once the subject of a thoughtful article by O. E. Mayorova). This analysis is based on a comparison of literary texts of Russian classics with a certain “hagiographic model”. The content of the “model” is not disclosed anywhere, and one can only guess that it was constructed by the author of the article from some speculative ideas about Orthodox hagiography. It can be assumed that these ideas are based on the type of classical biography of a “righteous man from birth,” which begins with the origin of the hero from pious, God-fearing parents and ends with his peaceful dormition and posthumous miracles. The researcher, it seems, does not even suspect that the vast and diverse world of Orthodox hagiography is far from being exhausted by lives of this type (thus, she clearly does not know the lives of “sinful saints”, which include the episode of the fall of the hagiographic hero). The literary texts selected by I. V. Bobrovskaya are indeed focused on lives, but at the same time lives of different types.

The main hagiographic example of Father Sergius, the Life of Jacob the Faster, belongs to the lives of the patericon type, the action of which is concentrated around a separate, striking episode. The plot of Tolstoy's story in a hagiographic context turns out to be a contamination of two popular plot schemes in patericons. The first of them, “The Temptation of the Righteous,” finds its vivid expression in the already mentioned Life of Jacob the Faster, and this hagiographic text included both options for the development of the plot collision: a righteous man can defeat temptation or succumb to it. The vicissitudes of the monastic life of Tolstoy's hero exactly repeat the ups and downs of the spirit of the Monk Jacob. The second patericon plot scheme, “The Test of True Holiness,” is a curious example of anti-ascetic sentiments in early Christianity, since, according to its creators, “holier” than a hermit monk who fled from the temptations of life turns out to be a layman, at first glance, completely immersed in everyday life or even engaged in reprehensible activities (for example, a buffoon). The meeting of Father Sergius, who was proud and punished by moral failure, with the modest music teacher Pashenka, who humbly bears the burdens of a large and dysfunctional family, is an exact analogue of this paterikon collision (especially if we take into account Tolstoy’s specifically Tolstoy attitude to music).

The “Life” of Elder Zosima is focused on the traditional life-biography of a saint or monk, who was especially successful in mentoring the laity. Such biographies often include an episode of the youthful delusions of the future saint (the easier it will be for him in the future to instruct the laity who have lost their way and come to him for advice).

Finally, the story of “The Immortal Golovan” is more likely comparable to the common people’s lives of locally revered saints, whose connection with the hagiographic canon is arbitrary and even bizarre, and the concept of holiness is far from orthodox. The story borrows individual elements from different levels of the text from traditional hagiography. Therefore, it is not surprising that the attempt to reduce three literary texts so different in their hagiographic origins to some kind of speculative “hagiographic model” turned out to be superficial and unpromising.

Using the example of I.V. Bobrovskaya’s article, it is clear that a fruitful study of the hagiographic tradition in new Russian literature first of all requires in-depth knowledge of hagiographic texts. Meanwhile, hagiography is still one of the least studied genres of ancient Russian literature (until recently this was true even for the well-known type of biographies of the “righteous from birth”).

The literary history and textual criticism of many specific hagiographies, translated and original, have been studied in detail, but the hermeneutical study of the hagiographic genre still remains a matter for the future. When studying hagiographic texts, researchers usually focused their attention far from those features of hagiographic narrative that define it as a genre: for example, hagiographies were used as a historical source or to study the development of fictional trends in the literature of the Russian Middle Ages. Meanwhile, the famous “common passages” (topos) of hagiographical narration, because of which hagiographic texts often seemed monotonous and unartistic, have been practically not studied. Only relatively recently has work begun on their description.

It also seems that the study of the hagiographic tradition in new Russian literature requires clearer ideas about the place of hagiographic texts in the reading circle of a medieval person (it hardly exactly corresponds to the place of fiction in the minds of a modern reader) and the peculiarities of their perception in different periods. Interesting thoughts on this topic by B. N. Berman clearly need clarification and additions. In any case, when comparing a work of new Russian literature on a hagiographic plot with its original source, it is necessary to realize that the retelling of a hagiographic text by secular literature inevitably required a recoding of its entire sign system.

Thus, the vast world of Orthodox hagiography requires deep and varied research. The attention of the author of this book is given to the lives of the “sinful saints”, a relatively small group and far from the most typical group for the hagiographic genre.

Our attention to hagiographic stories about great sinners who rose to the heights of holiness through “fall and rebellion” is caused not only by their continued popularity among readers. With the light hand of writers of the New Age, action-packed and dramatic stories of “sinful saints”, retold or newly created according to hagiographic examples, acquired the significance of a “Russian myth” and even a kind of moral paradigm of a national character. Our observations are also useful for the study of hagiographic tradition in a broader sense. The proposed notes are a cautious attempt to summarize the results of the achievements of predecessors and our own observations on this issue.

One of the possible principles for systematizing materials for the study of hagiographic traditions in Russian literature of the 19th–20th centuries. is their division according to the nature of the attitude of the secular author to the hagiographic texts that existed before him. Firstly, a writer of the New Age can retell a hagiographic monument in prose or verse, as well as dramatize it. Secondly, individual elements of a specific life or an entire hagiographic group can be introduced into a work of new Russian literature (for example, the plot scheme of a life-martyrium is used, the life of the namesake saint is projected onto the characteristics of a secular character, etc.). Finally, according to well-known hagiographic schemes, a secular author can try to create a “literary life” of a saint who never existed.

The first, seemingly the most natural way of mastering hagiographic material, its artistic processing, did not become widespread in Russian literature of the classical period immediately - not earlier than the middle of the 19th century. The main reason for this is not only the severity of spiritual censorship (often aggravated by the self-censorship of the secular author), but also the deep gap between the church and secular branches of Russian culture, which began in the time of Peter the Great and was especially significant for the educated strata of Russian society. The first experiments of this kind remained in manuscripts for a long time or were not completed (“Legend” by A. I. Herzen (1835, published 1881) or “Mary of Egypt” by I. S. Aksakov (1845, published 1888)). These early experiences will be discussed in one of the following sections.

The era of reforms of Alexander II made it easier for the reader to access secular adaptations of spiritual texts (thus, only at this time (in 1861 in Berlin and in 1871 in Moscow) the mystical poem by F. N. Glinka, “The Mysterious Drop,” which had long been circulating in the lists, was published " - an apocryphal “biography” of the Gospel Prudent Thief). At the same time, the successes of scientists of the Russian historical and philological school opened to a wide range of readers the hitherto unknown world of ancient writing and folk poetry, perceived as a living phenomenon of artistic thought and the key to the recesses of the people's soul. In Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century. motifs, images, plot schemes of ancient Russian literature, including hagiographic materials, poured in abundantly. At the same time, hagiographic texts are often passed through the prism of folk stories, and moments of divergence between the “folk faith” and the official church are sometimes specially emphasized. Thus, N. S. Leskov, who devoted a lot of creative energy to retelling stories from the Old Russian Prologue, specifically insisted on the unofficial and “renounced” nature of this important monument of Russian religious and artistic thought.

At the same time, hagiographic literature and its moral lessons seem to be an effective means of public education. For example, L. N. Tolstoy, who first read the stories of the Four Menaions of St. Demetrius of Rostov as an adult and educated man and a famous writer, began to actively include hagiographic texts and their retellings in his educational program of literature for the people: “ABC”, plans of the publishing house “Posrednik” and their own “folk stories.” The folklore retellings of the lives themselves turn out to be a powerful means for Russian writers of depicting the spiritual processes occurring among the people at turning points in Russian history. It is enough to compare the “common people” retellings of the same hagiographic text – the Sufferings of the Martyr Boniface – in I. A. Bunin’s story “The Saints” and A. M. Gorky’s essay “The Spectators”.

Having reverently accepted “folk truth” as a criterion of truth, Russian literature accepted along with it a considerable part of its free-thinking, for example, like folk Christianity, Russian writers remained alien to the ideal of ascetic renunciation from the world, fundamentally important for canonical Orthodoxy (the rarest exception is Bunin’s story “ Aglaya" (1916) - depicts the spiritual choice of the heroine of the story from the outside). The phenomenon of “folk hagiography”, which for a long time did not attract much attention in science, did not go unnoticed by Russian writers. We are talking about quasi-hagiographical stories about “common saints” that were very popular among the people, and the life path and reasons for the veneration of which by ordinary people did not correspond much to the requirements of the hagiographic canon (it is no coincidence that a significant part of such “saints” spontaneously revered by the common people never received official recognition ). For example, it seems to us that the influence of folk hagiography is noticeable in F. M. Dostoevsky’s attitude towards suicide and suicides: humane and merciful, it clearly runs counter to the harsh demands of church dogma (we will show this possible influence using the example of one of the fragments of his novel “ Teenager" - "a story about a merchant").

A wide range of treatments of hagiographic texts in Russian literature of the “godless” 20th century. can be designated by two extreme points. One of them is the “medieval” stylization of hagiographic plots in the dramaturgy of the Silver Age, for example, in the “comedies” of M. A. Kuzmin or in “Rusal Actions” by A. M. Remizov. The second is a collection of short prose “Harvest of the Spirit” (1922), written by the now canonized ascetic of the last century E. Yu. Kuzmina-Karavaeva (Mother Mary). This is a kind of “patericon” in which seventeen spiritual texts of Russian Orthodoxy, including several Lives, receive an artistic and philosophical rethinking in accordance with the author’s central idea of ​​the “harvest of the spirit,” understood as the salvation of perishing people through the power of sacrificial Christian love.

Let us note another important feature of literary adaptations of the lives of the 20th century - even a sincere believer and reverent writer of a spiritual text does not limit his work to its retelling. As an example, a special section examines B.K. Zaitsev’s short story “The Heart of Abraham” (1925), which turned the rather dry Life of Abraham of Galich into a dramatic story about the spiritual ascent to God of another Russian “great sinner” (the original hagiographic text has no basis for this gives). The next step in this direction will be the creation of “literary lives” of fictional saints, vividly represented in the works of I. A. Bunin (stories “John the Sorrower”, “Aglaya”, “Saints”).

Another method of mastering hagiographic materials was clearly ahead of the described process. This method, widely represented already in the works of N.V. Gogol, involves the use of various techniques for the conscious or intuitive introduction of hagiographic elements into a secular text. The first tendencies of this process are already revealed by the famous Life of Archpriest Avvakum - an innovative work of a complex genre nature, created during the transition period of Russian literature. The use of hagiographic elements in the text of the Life is sometimes fundamentally different from the centonic inclusion of “alien text”, which is characteristic of medieval literature (we have specifically considered one case of this kind).

One of these techniques, called syncrisis, which involves a consistent comparison of the depicted character with his famous predecessor (in Christian literature, a saint usually named after this character), has become widespread in Russian literature, ancient and modern. The use of syncrisis in Russian classical literature is illustrated by the example of the system of character names in some works by N. S. Leskov.

Sometimes even a single detail borrowed from life can acquire symbolic meaning for a work of new Russian literature. A striking example of this is the famous “red bag” that accompanies Anna Karenina on her tragic path (throwing away this object that interferes with her will be one of the heroine’s last movements at the moment of suicide). In interpreting this obviously significant, but somewhat mysterious detail, A. G. Grodetskaya not only draws attention to the color of the bag: “red” in the symbolism of L. N. Tolstoy is the color of carnal sin (among the many meanings of this color in hagiographic poetics there is such ). The researcher found a hagiographic parallel to the subject itself. Thus, in one of the most famous and popular texts of Russian Orthodoxy - “Theodora’s Walk through the Aerial Ordeals” (from the Life of Basil the New) - the sinful heroine after death is subjected to a trial, to which all her deeds and thoughts are presented. Ultimately, to atone for the soul of the sinner-adulteress, the angels are given a “sack of scarlet,” filled with the “labor and sweat” of Theodora herself and Saint Basil, who patronizes her. This is, as it were, a poetic personification of the idea of ​​alms and mercy, central to this hagiographic story. As you know, L.N. Tolstoy free-thinkingly did not recognize posthumous retribution for sins. His heroine goes through her “ordeals” during her lifetime. Taking into account this circumstance, we find the assumption of A.G. Grodetskaya very convincing, who saw in the “red bag” of Tolstoy’s heroine a hint or indication of the possibility of her pardon, and perhaps “a symbolic evidence of the ordeals already passed, the guilt already atoned for by the ordeals.”

An equally effective technique is to transfer the hagiographic model of a saint’s behavior onto a lay character or to use a hagiographic situation in everyday conditions. One example of the use of this technique is an episode of I. A. Goncharov’s novel “The Precipice” (part three, chapter 12). In this episode, Raisky, secretly admiring his own nobility and at the same time struggling with acute carnal temptation, tries to set the flighty Ulyana Andreevna, the unfaithful wife of his university friend Leonty Kozlov, on the true path. According to external signs, the “sermon” has achieved its goal - the lovely sinner is overcome with shame and even breaks into hysterical sobs. The “preacher” rushes to console her, and, to his considerable embarrassment, the scene of the “harlot’s” conversion ends in banal adultery. However, later Raisky quickly consoled himself, remembering that holy ascetics also happened to stumble and fall...

Another example of this kind is A. I. Kuprin’s story “The Pit” (1910–1915), one of the heroes of which, the resonant reporter Platonov, is traditionally considered a double of the author himself. It seems to us that the “shadow” cast by this character has a hagiographic nature, as shown in the corresponding section of the book.

The described technique of transferring a hagiographic model of behavior to a secular character, in our opinion, is associated with that religious and cultural phenomenon of Russian life of the New Age, which A. M. Panchenko called “secular (or secular) holiness.” The meaning of this unique phenomenon, which has no Western analogues, is as follows. Church historians have repeatedly pointed out the gradual process of the “fading of Russian holiness.” This process reaches its logical conclusion in modern times - for two centuries, the eighteenth and nineteenth, not a single new saint was added to the hagiography of Russian Orthodoxy. However, national self-consciousness, accustomed to being proud of the large number of ascetics of Holy Rus' and feeling their invisible presence and help in the earthly world, did not reconcile with this, moving the empty “holy place” to the sphere of worldly life.

The process of becoming worldly holiness occurred in several directions. Thus, the desire implanted from above to fill this gaping void in the spiritual needs of the Russian people with the figures of earthly anointed kings turned out to be a failure. Of all the crowned contenders for worldly holiness, only Peter I remained in the national pantheon. (By the way, in the Russian church tradition, until the relatively recent canonization of the Royal Martyrs of the Romanovs, there was not a single holy king, with a considerable number of holy princes, saints or passion-bearers.)

The functions of the missing “holy helpers” in the Russian public consciousness were successfully assigned to poets and, above all, to the greatest exponent of the Russian poetic genius - A. S. Pushkin. The features of the formation of this process are considered by A. M. Panchenko. For illustration, we will refer to one of the novels of I. S. Shmelev, a deeply Russian writer and no less deeply religious, whose work receives an adequate interpretation only when using the Orthodox code of Russian literature. In the novel “A Love Story” (1927), his young hero, fifteen-year-old Tonya, violently experiencing the turmoil of first love and the creative upsurge that accompanies it, turns a naive but passionate prayer to the patron saint of all poets, “the great Pushkin.” Its adult, experienced, sincerely and traditionally believing author does not see any blasphemy in this. At the end of the novel, Tonya, who miraculously survived a serious illness that resulted from the painful contradictions of his first love, re-masters the “living” world around him, permeated with the invisible but clear presence of God. The same “dear Pushkin” remains an unchanging and necessary part of this spiritual world.

Finally, the third group of candidates for worldly holiness consisted of revolutionaries, truth-seekers and other “people's intercessors.” Not popular among modern researchers, this group, however, has received significant artistic expression in works of Russian literature. It is based on the mythologized idea of ​​“Christ the Revolutionary,” who gave his life for the people’s happiness. Without going into an analysis of the roots of this idea, based on the truly democratic tendencies of early Christianity, we will only say that the likening of a fighter for truth to a holy ascetic or martyr, and ultimately to the crucified Christ himself, was readily accepted by Russian writers. Already the “first Russian revolutionary” A. N. Radishchev stylized his story about his friend of his youth, the fighter against despotism Fyodor Ushakov, into a life. He intended to call the experience of his own biography “The Life of Philaret the Merciful.” It is curious that almost two centuries later, another Russian truth-seeker, F. A. Abramov, conceived an autobiographical story with the code name “The Life of Fyodor Stratilates,” after the name of his patron saint, warrior, martyr and serpent fighter. The hagiographic model of behavior clearly shines through in the images of “people's defenders” in the poetry of N. A. Nekrasov or the “new people” of N. G. Chernyshevsky (just remember Rakhmetov’s famous nails). For many years, the constant attributes of a fighter for the people's happiness will remain not only inflexibility and courage in defending one's convictions, reminiscent of the heroes of the Christian martyrs, but also altruism, emphasized asceticism in everyday life and renunciation of personal life.

Thus, this ascetic model of behavior clearly appears in the famous hero of N. A. Ostrovsky’s novel “How the Steel Was Tempered” (1935). The young truth-seeker Pavka is still planning to marry Tonya Tumanova (as it turned out, a class alien to him), but the Komsomol member Korchagin, who has matured beyond his years, builds his relationships with his female comrades exclusively on a comradely basis, although they clearly sympathize with him in a feminine way, and asceticism is not at all is the norm of a new morality taking shape before his eyes. This is most clearly visible in the hero’s relationship with Rita Ustinovich. By his own admission, in this last case, Korchagin, with youthful maximalism, imitated the hero E. L. Voynich, who clearly performed the function of a “new saint.” But it is interesting to note that in this case a kind of aberration occurs in Pavka’s perception of his favorite book. Rivares-Gadfly did not at all abandon his beloved for ideological reasons - his relationships with women and with people in general were largely determined by the deep mental trauma of his youth and the associated feelings of inescapable loneliness and distrust of people. (It was this persistent “teenage” complex that predetermined his break with his lover, the gypsy Zita, and (outside the novel) with his brother and sister Martel; the shadow of the past also darkens the development of his long-standing divided feelings for his like-minded and comrade-in-arms Gemma.)

In our opinion, the hero of N. A. Ostrovsky reads in the novel “The Gadfly” that familiar stereotype of behavior of a “people's defender”, the roots of which, undoubtedly, go back to the hagiographic tradition. Among other “hagiographical” features of Pavel Korchagin, we mention his heroic stoicism in enduring suffering, seemingly also read in “The Gadfly,” but in fact going back to the hagiographic ideal, ardently supported by popular Orthodoxy and Russian classics (the notorious and incomprehensible to a foreigner desire to “suffer”) . A hagiographical parallel is also revealed by Korchagin’s indifference to his personal career, which surprised many of his comrades - this is how St. deliberately refused to advance up the career ladder. Ephraim the Syrian, who remained forever in the rank of deacon. Finally, the serpent fighter archetype, sometimes revealed in the image of Korchagin, is inseparable in Russian consciousness from the feat of martyrdom (the holy serpent fighter martyrs George the Victorious and the two Theodores, Stratilates and Tyrone, have grown into the very depths of popular Orthodoxy). By the way, the archaic motif of the repeated dying and resurrection of the serpent fighter, identified by S. G. Komagina in the structure of N. A. Ostrovsky’s novel, is also firmly associated with the type of martyrium hagiography.

Another hagiographic attribute of a secular character, regularly reproduced in Russian literature, is a description of the blessed, truly Christian death of this character. An illustrative example of this is the death and dormition of the old communard Kalina Dunaev in F. A. Abramov’s novel “Home” (1978), accompanied in the spirit of hagiographic tradition by an unusual weather phenomenon.

Sometimes a modern writer can use a secular refraction of a hagiographic plot, without even suspecting its hagiographic roots. Thus, in the center of the film script by G. I. Gorin “Say a word for the poor hussar” (1984) is the fate of the actor Afanasy Bubentsov, who, having been forced to participate in a provocative re-enactment of the execution of a “rebel carbonari,” unexpectedly gets used to the role and ultimately dies “ for one’s own.” Essentially, we have before us a “worldly version” of the long-standing hagiographic plot “The Overplayed Actor”: a pagan actor playing a Christian suddenly calls himself an adherent of a persecuted religion and is awarded the crown of martyrdom. However, the genesis of this plot was hardly clear to the talented playwright.

Finally, the third way for a secular author to master hagiographic material is to create a “literary hagiography” of a saint who has never existed using ready-made hagiographic models. This method, which requires a lot of artistic audacity and skill from the writer, appears no earlier than the beginning of the 20th century. This is the nature of the majority of “common saints” in the works of I. A. Bunin.

The “hagiographic” portraits of Aglaya, John the Rider and some other “Bunin saints” are artistically perfect and seem to be taken from life (which often misled critics and literary scholars, although the author of the stories repeatedly emphasized the fictionality of these characters). However, the view of the creator of these magnificent texts on the religious phenomena he describes remains the keen but cold gaze of an outside observer. Thus, in the story of the peasant Ivan Ryabinin, who became the holy fool John Rydalets for Christ’s sake, the hero of the story of the same name (1913), the writer is attracted not by the mysterious phenomenon of Orthodox foolishness, the external manifestations of which he depicts with such artistic force, but by the spiritual confrontation between the hero and his freethinking master, ending with the moral victory of the holy fool. As the narrator emphasizes, in the not very long-lasting memory of his fellow countrymen, John the Weeper was preserved “only because he rebelled against the prince himself, and the prince amazed everyone with his dying order” (to bury him next to his serf slave). The story does not say a word about the possible holiness of the village holy fool, as well as about his miracles of clairvoyance expected in accordance with the canon. Moreover, the very language of the “folk faith,” carefully memorized and so brilliantly applied by the writer, still remains alien and exotic for I. A. Bunin. It is significant that, lamenting the lack of attention of critics to his favorite brainchild, the story “Aglaya,” among the undoubted advantages of this text, the writer equally mentioned the mastery of artistic detail (“long-armed” Aglaya), and the use of rare church words, and knowledge of Russian saints .

An example that clearly deserves attention, because the exaggeration of atheistic (more precisely, anticlerical and godless) tendencies in the work of Russian writers among many representatives of Soviet philological science was replaced in post-Soviet literary criticism by an equally reckless and exaggerated emphasis on the Orthodox orthodoxy of Russian literature. But, as already mentioned, Christian motifs and plots in Russian literature of the 19th–20th centuries. are often passed through the prism of the “folk faith”, which is far from orthodox, and church leaders and publicists treat the hagiographical opuses of secular writers, as a rule, with a completely justified prejudice.

It should be noted in passing that not every depiction of plot collisions that are Christian in nature, even those devoid of polemical or parodic overtones and highly artistic, are an expression of the religious feelings of its creator. An expressive example of this is I. A. Bunin’s story “Clean Monday” (1944, included in the book “Dark Alleys”), which invariably excites readers. The departure of the heroine of the story to a monastery is hardly a manifestation of her true religiosity. This beautiful secular woman’s interest in Christianity is by no means an attempt to return to the faith of her fathers, adopted with the milk of her peasant nurse, but a search for something unusual and exotically bright that would fill the emptiness of her apparently prosperous life. (Otherwise it would not have occurred to her to look for the Indian roots of the image of the Mother of God of Three Hands!) Nothing other than the incomprehensible mystery of the soul of a Russian woman motivates either her sudden departure to a monastery, or the break in relations with the man who loves her, to whom she first surrenders on the eve of this departure . And who knows whether monastic life will not turn into an unbearable burden for this restless and self-ignorant soul!.. The goal of the writer himself is a nostalgic reproduction of the unforgettable signs of the old Russia gone forever and at the same time an attempt “in Bunin’s style” to rewrite “The Noble Nest” (such there are many creative competitions with masters of the past in “Dark Alleys”).

Thus, the use of the Orthodox code when interpreting works of classical literature requires, despite all the obvious effectiveness of this technique, considerable caution.

Returning to the topic of “literary lives” in Russian literature, let us note some of their features that have become traditional. The spiritual aspirations of the “new saints” of Russian literature of the 20th century, as a rule, are directed not so much “inward”, towards the personal salvation of the ascetic’s soul, but “outward”, embodied in active and selfless help to others.

Characters of this kind are not only democratic and emphatically anti-ascetic, but are also often marked by “non-canonicality,” strangeness, and “eccentricity” (this tradition, in our opinion, began with the images of the paradoxical righteous men of N. S. Leskov). Often the role of helper and comforter of weak and sinful people is entrusted not to a pious righteous person, protected from sin by some kind of spiritual armor from birth, but to a former sinner who has known from his own experience the ups and downs of the human spirit and the charm of evil. The gallery of common saints in Russian literature of the last century gives many examples of this - from the comforter of people Savel the sawyer (once an incestuous sinner), the hero of M. Gorky's story "The Hermit", to the "winged Seraphim", a desperately smoking old rural teacher, the heroine of the story of the same name V.V. Lichutina. Very characteristic in this regard is one of the heroes of F. A. Abramov’s novel “Home” - the drunken Old Believer Yevsey Moshkin, who before our eyes, after his martyrdom, acquires the features of a locally revered saint.

After a long break, positive images of representatives of the clergy are returning to modern Russian literature, which reflected the religious renaissance experienced by society. But the paradoxical “folk” model of Russian holiness is sometimes revealed here too. In a naively straightforward, almost kitschy form, this feature was expressed by Father Anatoly, the hero of the film story by D. Sobolev, on which the sensational film “The Island” was filmed. The holy fool stoker from a remote northern monastery not only bizarrely combined in his daily activities several models of behavior of a Christian ascetic (Father Anatoly is at the same time a wise old man, friendly to the laity, and a very aggressive holy fool, mysterious in his unpredictability). It also seems significant that his life’s path was initially burdened with the burden of a “great sin” (betrayal and murder of a comrade committed out of cowardice during the Patriotic War). By the way, the reproaches of some critics for the historical implausibility of the events shown in the film are caused by a misunderstanding of its artistic task. Before us is a parable designed to express the idea of ​​the omnipotence of repentance, which is equally valid for any century of Christianity. The time and place of action of “The Island” are as conventional as the chronotope of the paterik stories, which were mass “folk” reading in the Middle Ages.

Thus, the study of the hagiographic tradition in the works of Russian writers makes it possible to open up new dimensions in the understanding of long-familiar pages of Russian literature and at the same time makes important additions to the process of artistic self-knowledge of the “mysterious Russian soul.”

Life as a genre of literature

Life ( bios(Greek), vita(lat.)) - biographies of saints. The life was created after the death of the saint, but not always after formal canonization. Lives are characterized by strict substantive and structural restrictions (canon, literary etiquette), which greatly distinguishes them from secular biographies. The science of hagiography studies the lives of people.

The literature of the “Lives of Saints” of the second kind - the venerables and others - is more extensive. The oldest collection of such tales is Dorothea, Bishop. Tire (†362), - the legend of the 70 apostles. Of the others, especially remarkable are: “The Lives of Honest Monks” by Patriarch Timothy of Alexandria († 385); then follow the collections of Palladius, Lavsaic (“Historia Lausaica, s. paradisus de vitis patrum”; the original text is in the ed. Renat Lawrence, “Historia chr istiana veterum Patrum”, as well as in “Opera Maursii”, Florence, vol. VIII ; there is also a Russian translation, ;); Theodoret of Cyrrhus () - “Φιλόθεος ιστορία” (in the said edition by Renat, as well as in the complete works of Theodoret; in Russian translation - in “Works of the Holy Fathers”, published by the Moscow Theological Academy and previously separately); John Moschus (Λειμωνάριον, in “Vitae patrum” by Rosveig, Antv., vol. X; Russian ed. - “Limonar, that is, a flower garden”, M.,). In the West, the main writers of this kind during the patriotic period were Rufinus of Aquileia (“Vitae patrum s. historiae eremiticae”); John Cassian (“Collationes patrum in Scythia”); Gregory, bishop. Toursky († 594), who wrote a number of hagiographic works (“Gloria martyrum”, “Gloria confessorum”, “Vitae patrum”), Gregory Dvoeslov (“Dialogi” - Russian translation “Interview about the Italian Fathers” in “Orthodox Interlocutor” "; see research on this by A. Ponomarev, St. Petersburg, city) and others.

From the 9th century a new feature appeared in the literature of the “Lives of the Saints” - a tendentious (moralizing, partly political-social) direction, decorating the story about the saint with fictions of fantasy. Among such hagiographers, the first place is occupied by Simeon Metaphrastus, a dignitary of the Byzantine court, who lived, according to some, in the 9th century, according to others in the 10th or 12th century. He published in 681 “The Lives of the Saints”, which constitute the most widespread primary source for subsequent writers of this kind not only in the East, but also in the West (Jacob of Voraginsky, Archbishop of Genoa, † - “Legenda aurea sanctorum”, and Peter Natalibus, † - "Catalogus Sanctoru m"). Subsequent editions take a more critical direction: Bonina Mombricia, “Legendarium s. acta sanctorum" (); Aloysius Lippomana, bishop. Verona, “Vitae sanctorum” (1551-1560); Lavrenty Suriya, Cologne Carthusian, “Vitae sanctorum orientis et occidentis” (); George Vicella, “Hagiologium s. de sanctis ecclesiae"; Ambrose Flacca, “Fastorum sanctorum libri XII”; Renata Laurentia de la Barre - “Historia christiana veterum patrum”; C. Baronia, “Annales ecclesiast.”; Rosweida - “Vitae patrum”; Radera, “Viridarium sanctorum ex minaeis graccis” (). Finally, the famous Antwerp Jesuit Bolland comes forward with his activities; in the city he published the 1st volume of “Acta Sanctorum” in Antwerp. Over the course of 130 years, the Bollandists published 49 volumes containing the Lives of the Saints from January 1 to October 7; By this time two more volumes had appeared. In the city, the Bollandist Institute was closed.

Three years later, the enterprise was resumed again, and another new volume appeared in the city. During the conquest of Belgium by the French, the Bollandist monastery was sold, and they themselves and their collections moved to Westphalia and after the Restoration they published six more volumes. The latest works are significantly inferior in merit to the works of the first Bollandists, both in terms of the vastness of their erudition and due to the lack of strict criticism. Müller's Martyrologium, mentioned above, is a good abridgement of the Bollandist edition and can serve as a reference book for it. A complete index to this edition was compiled by Potast (“Bibliotheca historia medii aevi”, B.,). All the lives of the saints, known with separate titles, are counted by Fabricius in the “Bibliotheca Graeca”, Gamb., 1705-1718; second edition Gamb., 1798-1809). Individuals in the West continued to publish the lives of saints simultaneously with the Bollandist corporation. Of these, worthy of mention are: Abbé Commanuel, “Nouvelles vies de saints pour tous le jours” (); Ballier, “Vie des saints” (a strictly critical work), Arnaud d’Andili, “Les vies des pè res des déserts d’Orient” (). Among the newest Western publications, the Lives of the Saints deserves attention. Stadler and Geim, written in dictionary form: “Heiligen Lexicon”, (sl.).

Many works are found in collections of mixed content, such as prologues, synaxari, menaions, and patericon. It's called a prologue. a book containing the lives of saints, along with instructions regarding celebrations in their honor. The Greeks called these collections. synaxars. The most ancient of them is the anonymous synaxarion in hand. Ep. Porfiry Uspensky; then follows the synaxarion of Emperor Basil - dating back to the 10th century; the text of the first part of it was published in the city of Uggel in the VI volume of his “Italia sacra”; the second part was found later by Bollandists (for its description, see the “Messyatsoslov” of Archbishop Sergius, I, 216). Other ancient prologues: Petrov - in hand. Ep. Porphyria - contains the memory of saints for all days of the year, except 2-7 and 24-27 days of March; Kleromontansky (otherwise Sigmuntov), ​​almost similar to Petrovsky, contains the memory of saints for the whole year. Our Russian prologues are alterations of the synaxarion of Emperor Basil with some additions (see Prof. N.I. Petrova “On the origin and composition of the Slavic-Russian printed prologue”, Kyiv,). Menaions are collections of lengthy tales about saints and holidays, arranged by month. They are service and Menaion-Cheti: in the first, for the lives of saints, the designation of the names of the authors above the chants is important. Handwritten menaions contain more information about the saints than printed ones (for more information about the meaning of these menaions, see Bishop Sergius’ “Mesyacheslov”, I, 150).

These “monthly menaions,” or service ones, were the first collections of “lives of saints” that became known in Rus' at the time of its adoption of Christianity and the introduction of divine services; these are followed by Greek prologues or synaxari. In the pre-Mongol period, a full circle of menaia, prologues and synaxarions already existed in the Russian church. Then patericons appear in Russian literature - special collections of the lives of saints. Translated patericons are known in the manuscripts: Sinaitic (“Limonar” by Mosch), alphabetic, monastery (several types; see description of the RKP. Undolsky and Tsarsky), Egyptian (Lavsaik Palladium). Based on the model of these eastern patericons in Russia, the “Paterikon of Kiev-Pechersk” was compiled, the beginning of which was laid by Simon, bishop. Vladimir, and the Kiev-Pechersk monk Polycarp. Finally, the last common source for the lives of the saints of the entire church is calendars and month books. The beginnings of calendars date back to the very first times of the church, as can be seen from the biographical information about St. Ignatius († 107), Polycarpe († 167), Cyprian († 258). From the testimony of Asterius of Amasia († 410) it is clear that in the 4th century. they were so complete that they contained names for all the days of the year. Monthly words under the Gospels and the Apostles are divided into three types: of eastern origin, ancient Italian and Sicilian and Slavic. Of the latter, the oldest is under the Ostromir Gospel (XII century). They are followed by monthly books: Assemani with the Glagolitic Gospel, located in the Vatican Library, and Savvin, ed. Sreznevsky in the city. This also includes brief notes about the saints under the church charters of Jerusalem, Studio and Constantinople. The Saints are the same calendars, but the details of the story are close to the synaxars and exist separately from the Gospels and statutes.

Old Russian literature of the lives of Russian saints itself begins with biographies of individual saints. The model by which Russian “lives” were compiled was the Greek lives of the Metaphrastus type, that is, the task was to “praise” the saint, and the lack of information (for example, about the first years of the life of the saints) was filled with commonplaces and rhetorical rantings. A number of miracles of a saint are a necessary component of life. In the story about the very life and deeds of saints, individual traits are often not visible at all. Exceptions from the general character of the original Russian “lives” before the 15th century. constitute (according to Prof. Golubinsky) only the very first J., “St. Boris and Gleb" and "Theodosius of Pechersk", compiled by Rev. Nestor, Zh. Leonty of Rostov (which Klyuchevsky attributes to the time before the year) and Zh., which appeared in the Rostov region in the 12th and 13th centuries. , representing an unartificial simple story, while the equally ancient Zh. Smolensk region (“J. St. Abraham” and others) belong to the Byzantine type of biographies. In the 15th century a number of compilers of Zh. begins Metropolitan. Cyprian, who wrote to J. Metropolitan. Peter (in a new edition) and several J. Russian saints included in his “Book of Degrees” (if this book was really compiled by him).

The biography and activities of the second Russian hagiographer, Pachomius Logofet, is introduced in detail by the study of Prof. Klyuchevsky “Old Russian Lives of Saints as a Historical Source”, M., ). He compiled J. and the service of St. Sergius, J. and the service of Rev. Nikon, J. St. Kirill Belozersky, a word about the transfer of the relics of St. Peter and his service; According to Klyuchevsky, he also owns St. J. Novgorod archbishops Moses and John; In total, he wrote 10 lives, 6 legends, 18 canons and 4 words of praise to the saints. Pachomius enjoyed great fame among his contemporaries and posterity and was a model for other compilers of the Journal. No less famous as the compiler of the Journal is Epiphanius the Wise, who first lived in the same monastery with St. Stephen of Perm, and then in the monastery of Sergius, who wrote J. of both of these saints. He knew the Holy Scriptures, Greek chronographs, palea, letvitsa, and patericon well. He is even more florid than Pachomius. The successors of these three writers introduce a new feature into their works - autobiographical, so that from the “lives” they compiled, one can always recognize the author. From urban centers, the work of Russian hagiography moves into the 16th century. into deserts and areas remote from cultural centers in the 16th century. The authors of these works did not limit themselves to the facts of the saint’s life and panegyrics to him, but tried to introduce them to the church, social and state conditions among which the saint’s activity arose and developed. The works of this time are, therefore, valuable primary sources of the cultural and everyday history of Ancient Rus'.

The author who lived in Moscow Rus' can always be distinguished by tendency from the author of the Novgorod, Pskov and Rostov regions. A new era in the history of Russian Jews is constituted by the activities of the All-Russian Metropolitan Macarius. His time was especially rich in new “lives” of Russian saints, which is explained, on the one hand, by the intensified activity of this metropolitan in the canonization of saints, and on the other, by the “great Menaions-Fours” he compiled. These menaions, which included almost all the Russian journals available at that time, are known in two editions: the Sophia edition (manuscript of the St. Petersburg Spiritual Akd.) and the more complete edition of the Moscow Cathedral. The Archaeographic Commission has been busy publishing this grandiose work, which has so far succeeded through the works of I. I. Savvaitov and M. O. Koyalovich, publish only a few volumes covering the months of September and October. A century later than Macarius, in 1627-1632, the Menaion-Cheti of the monk of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery German Tulupov appeared, and in 1646-1654. - Menaion-Cheti of the priest of Sergiev Posad Ioann Milyutin.

These two collections differ from Makariev in that they included almost exclusively J. and legends about Russian saints. Tulupov included in his collection everything that he found regarding Russian hagiography, in its entirety; Milyutin, using the works of Tulupov, shortened and redid the works he had at hand, omitting prefaces from them, as well as words of praise. What Macarius was for Northern Rus', Moscow, the Kiev-Pechersk archimandrites - Innocent Gisel and Varlaam Yasinsky - wanted to be for Southern Rus', fulfilling the idea of ​​the Kyiv Metropolitan Peter Mogila and partly using the materials he collected. But the political unrest of that time prevented this enterprise from being realized. Yasinsky, however, brought him into this case St. Dimitri, later Metropolitan of Rostov, who, working for 20 years on the processing of Metaphrastus, the great Chetyih-Menai of Macarius and other manuals, compiled the Cheti-Minai, containing not only the South Russian saints omitted from the Menaion of Macarius, but the saints of all churches. Patriarch Joachim treated Demetrius’s work with distrust, noticing in it traces of Catholic teaching about the immaculate conception of the Mother of God; but the misunderstandings were eliminated, and Demetrius’s work was completed.

The Chetyi-Minea of ​​St. were published for the first time. Demetrius in 1711-1718. In the city, the Synod instructed the Kiev-Pechersk archimandrite. Timofey Shcherbatsky revision and correction of Dimitry's work; This commission was completed after the death of Timothy by Archimandrite. Joseph Mitkevich and Hierodeacon Nicodemus, and in a corrected form the Chetya-Minea were published in the city. The Saints in the Chetya-Minea of ​​Demetrius are arranged in calendar order: following the example of Macarius, there are also synaxari for holidays, instructive words on the events of the life of the saint or the history of the holiday , belonging to the ancient fathers of the church, and partly compiled by Demetrius himself, historical discussions at the beginning of each quarter of the publication - about the primacy of March in the year, about the indictment, about the ancient Hellenic-Roman calendar. The sources the author used can be seen from the list of “teachers, writers, historians” appended before the first and second parts, and from quotes in individual cases (Metaphrastus is the most common). Many articles consist only of a translation of the Greek journal or a repetition and correction of the Old Russian language. In the Chetya-Minea there is also historical criticism, but in general their significance is not scientific, but ecclesiastical: written in artistic Church Slavonic speech, they are hitherto a favorite reading for pious people who are looking for in “J. saints" of religious edification (for a more detailed assessment of the Chetyi-Menya, see the work of V. Nechaev, corrected by A. V. Gorsky, - "St. Demetrius of Rostov", M.,, and I. A. Shlyapkina - "St. Demetrius", SPb., ). All individual works of ancient Russian saints, included and not included in the counted collections, number 156. In the present century, a number of retellings and revisions of the Chetyi-Menya of St. have appeared. Demetrius: “Selected Lives of the Saints, summarized according to the guidance of the Chetyih-Menya” (1860-68); A. N. Muravyova, “The Lives of the Saints of the Russian Church, also Iversky and Slavic” (); Philareta, Archbishop. Chernigovsky, “Russian Saints”; “Historical Dictionary of the Saints of the Russian Church” (1836-60); Protopopov, “Lives of the Saints” (M.,), etc.

More or less independent editions of the Lives of the Saints - Philaret, Archbishop. Chernigovsky: a) “Historical Doctrine of the Church Fathers” (, new ed.), b) “Historical Review of the Song Singers” (), c) “Saints of the South Slavs” () and d) “St. ascetics of the Eastern Church" (

The Life is a story about the life of a person who has achieved the Christian ideal - holiness, gives examples of correct Christian life, and convinces that everyone can live it this way. The heroes of the life are simple peasants, townspeople, princes who once chose this path, follow it and try to become like Jesus Christ. Lives of saints were created throughout the entire period of ancient Russian literature. Most of the authors are unknown to us. The hagiographic canon turned out to be the most stable of all the genres of ancient Russian literature.

The hagiographic story of Epiphanius the Wise “The Life of Our Venerable Father Sergius, Abbot of Radonezh, the New Wonderworker” tells about an outstanding religious figure. It contains information about the structure and way of life of the monastery, about the spiritual assistance of the brethren to Dmitry Donskoy during the war with the Tatars.

The work begins with the author’s self-deprecation and gratitude to God.

The author fills the description of the life of St. Sergius with miracles. By all means he tries to prove the innate righteousness of the teacher, to glorify him as a saint of God, as a true servant of the Divine Trinity. Talking about the life and deeds of the great ascetic, the author preaches the “works of God” that were fulfilled on him. Moreover, he preaches, as he himself admits, with the help of God himself, the Mother of God and Sergius. Hence the mystical and symbolic subtext of his work.

Epiphanius uses biblical numbers with great skill. Most noticeable in the “Life of Sergius of Radonezh” is the use of the number “three”. The author attached special significance to it. The background of the trinary symbolism is uneven. The first three chapters are particularly rich. The entry into life of the future founder of the Trinity Monastery was marked by miracles, which foreshadowed his extraordinary fate. The chapter “The Beginning of the Life of Sergius” talks about four such omens. The most significant foreshadowing occurred when an unborn child cried out from its mother's womb while she was in church. “And some miracle happened before he was born. When the child was still in the womb, one Sunday his mother entered the church while the holy liturgy was being sung.

And she stood with other women when they were about to begin reading the Holy Gospel, and everyone stood silently; the baby began to scream in the womb. Before starting to sing the Cherubic song, the baby began to scream a second time. When the priest exclaimed: “Let us take in, holy of holies!” the baby cried out for the third time. When the fortieth day came after his birth, the parents brought the child to the Church of God... The priest christened him with the name Bartholomew... The father and mother told the priest how their son, while still in the womb in the church, shouted three times: “We don’t know what this means.” The priest said: “Rejoice, for there will be a child chosen by God, a monastery and servant of the Holy Trinity.”

Creating “The Life of Sergius of Radonezh,” the author uses not only sacred visual means to express the Trinity idea. In the process of writing the story “The Life of Sergius of Radonezh,” Epiphanius the Wise showed himself to be a most inspired and subtle theologian. While creating this life, he thought about literary and artistic images, about the Holy Trinity. During his lifetime, Sergius of Radonezh hid his true face and did not allow his students to talk about the miracles associated with him.

The story does not describe turbulent experiences, it talks about difficult trials with restraint, and is silent about the internal struggle. Life, like an icon, shows us an example of holiness, not a face, but a face.

Klyuchevsky V.O. in his speech “The Significance of St. Sergius of Radonezh for the Russian People and State” called Sergius of Radonezh the bearer of a miraculous spark capable of causing the action of the moral force hidden in people, argued that the moral feat of Sergius of Radonezh is very high and worthy of imitation.

Essay

Topic: Hagiographic literature of Rus'

Introduction

1 Development of the hagiographic genre

1.1 The appearance of the first hagiographic literature

1.2 Canons of Old Russian hagiography

2 Hagiographic literature of Rus'

3 Saints of ancient Rus'

3.1 “The Tale of Boris and Gleb”

3.2 “The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk”

Conclusion

List of used literature

Introduction

The study of Russian holiness in its history and its religious phenomenology is now one of the urgent tasks of our Christian revival.

Hagiography (hagiography, from the Greek hagios - saint and... graphy), a type of church literature - biographies of saints - which were an important type of reading for medieval Russians.

Lives of Saints - biographies of clergy and secular persons canonized by the Christian Church. From the first days of its existence, the Christian Church carefully collects information about the life and activities of its ascetics and reports them for general edification. The lives of saints constitute perhaps the most extensive section of Christian literature.

The lives of saints were the favorite reading of our ancestors. Even laymen copied or ordered hagiographic collections for themselves. Since the 16th century, in connection with the growth of Moscow national consciousness, collections of purely Russian lives have appeared. For example, Metropolitan Macarius under Grozny, with a whole staff of literate employees, spent more than twenty years collecting ancient Russian writing into a huge collection of the Great Four Menaions, in which the lives of saints took pride of place. In ancient times, in general, reading the lives of saints was treated with almost the same reverence as reading the Holy Scriptures.

Over the centuries of its existence, Russian hagiography has gone through different forms, known different styles and was formed in close dependence on the Greek, rhetorically developed and decorated hagiography.

The lives of the first Russian saints are the books “The Tale of Boris and Gleb”, Vladimir I Svyatoslavich, “The Lives” of Princess Olga, abbot of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery Theodosius of Pechersk (11-12 centuries), etc.

Among the best writers of Ancient Rus', Nestor the Chronicler, Epiphanius the Wise and Pachomius Logothet devoted their pens to the glorification of saints.

All of the above leaves no doubt about the relevance of this topic.

Purpose of the work: a comprehensive study and analysis of the hagiographic literature of Rus'.

The work consists of an introduction, 3 chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.

1 Development of the hagiographic genre

1.1 The appearance of the first hagiographic literature

Also St. Clement, bishop The Roman, during the first persecution of Christianity, appointed seven notaries in various districts of Rome to daily record what happened to Christians in places of execution, as well as in prisons and courts. Despite the fact that the pagan government threatened the recorders with the death penalty, recordings continued throughout the persecution of Christianity.

Under Domitian and Diocletian, a significant part of the records perished in the fire, so when Eusebius (died in 340) undertook the compilation of a complete collection of legends about the ancient martyrs, he did not find sufficient material for that in the literature of martyrdoms, but had to do research in the archives of institutions, who carried out the trial of the martyrs. A later, more complete collection and critical edition of the acts of the martyrs belongs to the Benedictine Ruinart.

In Russian literature, the publication of acts of martyrs is known from the priest V. Guryev “Warrior Martyrs” (1876); prot. P. Solovyova, “Christian martyrs who suffered in the East after the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks”; "Tales of Christian martyrs revered by the Orthodox Church."

From the 9th century a new feature appeared in the literature of the lives of saints - a tendentious (moralizing, partly political-social) direction, which decorated the story about a saint with fictions of fantasy.

More extensive is the literature of the second kind of “lives of the saints” - saints and others. The oldest collection of such tales is Dorothea, Bishop. Tyrian (died 362), - the legend of the 70 apostles.

Many lives of saints are found in collections of mixed content, such as: prologue, synaxari, menaion, patericon.

A prologue is a book containing the lives of saints, along with instructions regarding celebrations in their honor. The Greeks called these collections synaxarions. The oldest of them is the anonymous synaxarion in the manuscript of Bishop Porfiry Uspensky in 1249. Our Russian prologues are adaptations of the synaxarion of Emperor Vasily, with some additions.

Menaions are collections of lengthy tales about saints on holidays, arranged by month. They are of service and menaion-chetii: in the first, the designation of the names of the authors above the chants is important for the biography of saints. Handwritten menaions contain more information about saints than printed ones. These “monthly menaions” or service were the first collections of “lives of the saints” that became known in Rus' at the time of its adoption of Christianity and the introduction of Divine services.

In the pre-Mongol period, a full circle of menaia, prologues and synaxarions already existed in the Russian church. Then patericons appear in Russian literature - special collections of the lives of saints. Translated patericons are known in the manuscripts: Sinaitic (“Limonar” by Mosch), alphabetic, monastery (several types; see description of the RKP. Undolsky and Tsarsky), Egyptian (Lavsaik Palladium). Based on the model of these eastern patericons, the “Kievo-Pechersk Patericon” was compiled in Russia, which began with Simon, bishop. Vladimir, and Kiev-Pechersk monk Polycarp.

Finally, the last common source for the lives of the saints of the entire church is calendars and month books. The beginnings of calendars date back to the very first times of the church. From the testimony of Asterius of Amasia (died 410) it is clear that in the 4th century. they were so complete that they contained names for all the days of the year.

Monthly words, under the Gospels and the Apostles, are divided into three kinds: of eastern origin, ancient Italian and Sicilian, and Slavic. Of the latter, the oldest is under the Ostromir Gospel (XII century). They are followed by monthly books: Assemani, with the Glagolitic Gospel, located in the Vatican Library, and Savvin, ed. Sreznevsky in 1868

This also includes brief notes about saints (saints) under the church statutes of Jerusalem, Studio and Constantinople. The Saints are the same calendars, but the details of the story are close to the synaxars and exist separately from the Gospels and statutes.

From the beginning of the 15th century, Epiphanius and the Serb Pachomius created a new school in northern Rus' - a school of artificially decorated, extensive life. They - especially Pachomius - created a stable literary canon, a magnificent “weaving of words”, which Russian scribes strive to imitate until the end of the 17th century. In the era of Macarius, when many ancient inexperienced hagiographic records were being redone, the works of Pachomius were included in the Chetya Menaion intact.

The vast majority of these hagiographic monuments are strictly dependent on their samples. There are lives almost entirely copied from the ancients; others develop generalities while eschewing precise biographical information. This is what hagiographers involuntarily do, separated from the saint by a long period of time - sometimes centuries, when the popular tradition dries up. But here, too, the general law of the hagiographic style, similar to the law of icon painting, operates: it requires the subordination of the particular to the general, the dissolution of the human face in the heavenly glorified face.

1.2 Canons of Old Russian hagiography

The adoption of Christianity in Rus' led to the subordination of not only the religious, but also the everyday life of people to the Christian tradition, custom, new rituals, ceremonies or (according to D. Slikhachev) etiquette. By literary etiquette and literary canon, the scientist understood “the most typical medieval conventional normative connection between content and form.”

The life of a saint is, first of all, a description of the ascetic’s path to salvation, such as his holiness, and not a documentary recording of his earthly life, not a literary biography. The Life received a special purpose - it became a type of church teaching. At the same time, hagiography differed from simple teaching: in the hagiographic genre, what is important is not abstract analysis, not generalized moral edification, but the depiction of special moments in the earthly life of a saint. The selection of biographical features did not occur arbitrarily, but purposefully: for the author of the life, only what was important was what fit into the general scheme of the Christian ideal. Everything that did not fit into the established scheme of the saint’s biographical traits was ignored or reduced in the text of his life.

The Old Russian hagiographic canon is a three-part model of hagiographic narration:

1) a lengthy preface;

2) a specially selected series of biographical features confirming the holiness of the ascetic;

3) a word of praise to the saint;

4) the fourth part of the life, adjacent to the main text, appears later in connection with the establishment of a special cult of saints.

Christian dogmas presuppose the immortality of the saint after the end of his earthly life - he becomes an “intercessor for the living” before God. The afterlife of the saint: the incorruptibility and miracle-working of his relics - become the content of the fourth part of the hagiographic text. Moreover, in this sense, the hagiographic genre has an open ending: the hagiographic text is fundamentally incomplete, since the posthumous miracles of the saint are endless. Therefore, “every life of a saint never represented a completed creation.”

In addition to the obligatory three-part structure and posthumous miracles, the hagiographic genre also developed numerous standard motifs that are reproduced in the hagiographies of almost all saints. Such standard motives include the birth of a saint from pious parents, indifference to children's games, reading divine books, renunciation of marriage, withdrawal from the world, monasticism, founding a monastery, predicting the date of one's own death, pious death, posthumous miracles and incorruption of relics. Similar motifs stand out in hagiographic works of different types and different eras.

Starting from the most ancient examples of the hagiographical genre, the prayer of a martyr before his death is usually given and the vision of Christ or the Kingdom of Heaven revealed to the ascetic during his suffering is told. The repetition of standard motifs in various works of hagiography is due to the “Christocentricity of the very phenomenon of martyrdom: the martyr repeats the victory of Christ over death, testifies to Christ and, becoming a “friend of God,” enters the Kingdom of Christ.” That is why the entire group of standard motifs relates to the content of itia and reflects the path of salvation paved by the saint.

Not only verbal expression and a certain style become mandatory, but also life situations themselves that correspond to the idea of ​​a holy life.

Already the lives of one of the first Russian saints, Boris and Gleb, are subject to literary etiquette. The meekness and submission of the brothers to their elder brother Svyatopolk is emphasized, that is, piety is a quality that primarily corresponds to the idea of ​​a holy life. The same facts of the biography of the martyred princes that contradict him are either specified by the hagiographer in a special way or suppressed.

The principle of similarity, which underlies the hagiographic canon, also becomes very important. The author of a hagiography always tries to find correspondences between the heroes of his story and the heroes of Sacred history.

Thus, Vladimir I, who baptized Rus' in the 10th century, is likened to Constantine the Great, who recognized Christianity as an equal religion in the 4th century; Boris - to Joseph the Beautiful, Gleb - to David, and Svyatopolk - to Cain.

The medieval writer recreates the behavior of the ideal hero, based on the canon, by analogy with the model already created before him, strives to subordinate all the actions of the hagiographic hero to already known norms, compare them with the facts that took place in Sacred history, and accompany the text of the life with quotations from the Holy Scriptures that correspond to what is happening .

2 Hagiographic literature of Rus'

The translated hagiographies that first came to Rus' were used for a dual purpose: for home reading (Mineaion) and for divine services (Prologues, Synaxariums).

This dual use led to the fact that each life was written in two versions: short (prologue) and long (minein). The short version was read quickly in church, and the long version was then read aloud in the evenings with the whole family.

The short versions of the lives turned out to be so convenient that they won the sympathy of the clergy. (Now they would say they became bestsellers.) They became shorter and shorter. It became possible to read several lives during one service.

Old Russian literature of the lives of Russian saints itself begins with biographies of individual saints. The model by which Russian “lives” were compiled were Greek lives, such as Metaphrastus, i.e. whose task was to “praise” the saint, and the lack of information (for example, about the first years of the life of the saints) was filled with commonplaces and rhetorical rantings. A number of the saint’s miracles are a necessary part of life. In the story about the very life and exploits of saints, individual traits are often not visible at all. Exceptions from the general character of the original Russian “lives” before the 15th century. constitute only the very first lives of “St. Boris and Gleb" and "Theodosius of Pechersk", compiled by Rev. Nestor, the lives of Leonid of Rostov and the lives that appeared in the Rostov region in the 12th and 13th centuries, representing an unartificial simple story, while the equally ancient lives of the Smolensk region belong to the Byzantine type of biographies .

In the 15th century Metropolitan Cyprian began a series of compilers of lives, writing the lives of Metropolitan Peter and several lives of Russian saints, which were included in his “Book of Degrees”. Another Russian hagiographer, Pachomius Logothetes, compiled the life and service of St. Sergius, life and service of St. Nikon, life of St. Kirill Belozersky, a word about the transfer of the relics of St. Peter and his service; He also owns the lives of the holy Novgorod archbishops Moses and John. In total, he wrote 10 lives, 6 legends, 18 canons and 4 words of praise to the saints. Pachomius enjoyed great fame among his contemporaries and posterity, and was a model for other compilers of the lives of saints. No less famous as the compiler of the lives of the saints is Epiphanius the Wise, who first lived in the same monastery with St. Stephen of Perm, and then in the monastery of Sergius, who wrote the lives of both of these saints. He knew St. well. Scripture, Greek chronographs, paleus, ladder, patericon. He is even more florid than Pachomius.

The successors of these three writers introduce a new feature into their works - autobiographical, so that from the “lives” they compiled, one can always recognize the author. From urban centers, the work of Russian hagiography moves into the 16th century. in deserts and areas remote from cultural centers. The authors of these lives did not limit themselves to the facts of the saint’s life and panegyrics to him, but tried to introduce them to the church, social and state conditions among which the saint’s activity arose and developed.

The lives of this time are, therefore, valuable primary sources of the cultural and everyday history of ancient Rus'. The author who lived in Moscow Rus' can always be distinguished, by tendency, from the author of the Novgorod, Pskov and Rostov regions.

A new era in the history of Russian lives is constituted by the activities of the All-Russian Metropolitan Macarius. His time was especially rich in new “lives” of Russian saints, which is explained, on the one hand, by the intense activity of this metropolitan in the canonization of saints, and on the other hand, by the “great Menaions-Chetii” he compiled. These Menaions, which included almost all the Russian Lives available at that time, are known in two editions: Sophia and a more complete one - the Moscow Cathedral of 1552. A century later than Macarius, in 1627-1632, the Menaion-Chetii of the monk of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery appeared German Tulupov, and in 1646-1654. - Menaion-Chetiya of the priest of Sergiev Posad Ioann Milyutin. These two collections differ from Makariev in that they include almost exclusively the lives and tales of Russian saints. Tulupov included in his collection everything that he found regarding Russian hagiography, in its entirety; Milyutin, using the works of Tulupov, shortened and reworked the lives he had at hand, omitting prefaces from them, as well as words of praise.

The features of the life and the historical word of praise are combined in the most ancient monument of our literature - the rhetorically decorated “Memory and Praise of the Russian Prince Vladimir” (11th century) by the monk Jacob. The work is dedicated to the solemn glorification of the Baptist of Rus', proof of his chosenness by God. Jacob had access to the ancient chronicle that preceded the Tale of Bygone Years and the Primary Code, and used its unique information, which more accurately conveyed the chronology of events during the time of Vladimir Svyatoslavich.

One of the first works of ancient Russian hagiography is “The Life of Anthony of Pechersk.” Although it has not survived to this day, it can be argued that it was an outstanding work of its kind. The Life contained valuable historical and legendary information about the emergence of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery, influenced chronicle writing, served as a source for the Initial Code, and was later used in the “Kievo-Pechersk Patericon”.

The lives of the Kiev-Pechersk monk Nestor (not earlier than 1057 - early 12th century), created according to the models of Byzantine hagiography, are distinguished by their outstanding literary merits. His “Reading on the Life of Boris and Gleb” along with other monuments of the 11th-12th centuries. (the more dramatic and emotional “The Tale of Boris and Gleb” and its continuation “The Tale of the Miracles of Roman and David”) form a widespread cycle about the bloody internecine war of the sons of Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich for the Kiev throne. Boris and Gleb (baptized Roman and David) are depicted as martyrs not so much of a religious as of a political idea. Having preferred death in 1015 to the struggle against their elder brother Svyatopolk, who seized power in Kyiv after the death of their father, they affirm with all their behavior and death the triumph of brotherly love and the need for the subordination of the younger princes to the eldest in the clan in order to preserve the unity of the Russian land. The passion-bearing princes Boris and Gleb, the first canonized saints in Rus', became its heavenly patrons and protectors.

After the “Reading,” Nestor created, based on the memoirs of his contemporaries, a detailed biography of Theodosius of Pechersk, which became a model in the genre of monastic life. The work contains precious information about monastic life and customs, about the attitude of ordinary laymen, boyars and the Grand Duke towards monks. Later, “The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk” was included in the “Kievo-Pechersk Patericon” - the last major work of pre-Mongol Rus'.

Back in the XI-XII centuries. In the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery, legends about its history and the ascetics of piety who labored there were recorded, reflected in the “Tale of Bygone Years” under 1051 and 1074. In the 20s-30s. In the 13th century, the “Kievo-Pechersk Patericon” began to take shape - a collection of short stories about the history of this monastery, its monks, their ascetic life and spiritual exploits. The monument is based on the messages and accompanying patericon stories of two Kiev-Pechersk monks: Simon, who became the first bishop of Vladimir and Suzdal in 1214, and Polycarp. The sources of their stories about the events of the 11th - first half of the 12th century. Monastic and family traditions, folk tales, the Kiev-Pechersk chronicle, and the lives of Anthony and Theodosius of the Pechersk appeared. The formation of the patericon genre took place at the intersection of oral and written traditions: folklore, hagiography, chronicle writing, and oratorical prose.

“Kievo-Pechersk Patericon” is one of the most beloved books of Orthodox Rus'. For centuries it was eagerly read and copied. 300 years, before the appearance of the Volokolamsk Patericon in 30-40. XVI century, it remained the only original monument of this genre in ancient Russian literature.

Russian lives of saints are distinguished by great sobriety. When a hagiographer lacked accurate legends about the life of a saint, he, without giving free rein to his imagination, usually developed meager memories with a “rhetorical weaving of words” or inserted them into the most general, typical frame of the corresponding hagiological order.

The restraint of Russian hagiography is especially striking in comparison with the medieval lives of the Latin West. Even the miracles necessary in the life of the saint are given very sparingly, just for the most revered Russian saints who received modern biographies: Theodosius of Pechersk, Sergius of Radonezh, Joseph of Volotsky.

3 Saints of ancient Rus'

3.1 “The Tale of Boris and Gleb”

The appearance of original hagiographic literature in Rus' was associated with the general political struggle to assert its religious independence, the desire to emphasize that the Russian land has its own representatives and intercessors before God. Surrounding the prince's personality with an aura of holiness, the lives contributed to the political strengthening of the foundations of the feudal system.

An example of an ancient Russian princely life is the anonymous “The Tale of Boris and Gleb,” created, apparently, at the end of the 11th and beginning of the 12th centuries. The “Tale” is based on the historical fact of Svyatopolk’s murder of his younger brothers Boris and Gleb in 1015. When in the 40s of the 11th century. Yaroslav achieved the canonization of the murdered brothers by the Byzantine Church; it was necessary to create a special work that would glorify the feat of the passion-bearers and the avenger for their death, Yaroslav. Based on a chronicle story at the end of the 11th century. and was written by an unknown author “The Tale of Boris and Gleb.”

The author of “The Tale” maintains historical specificity, setting out in detail all the vicissitudes associated with the villainous murder of Boris and Gleb. Like the chronicle, the “Tale” sharply condemns the murderer, the “accursed” Svyatopolk, and opposes fratricidal strife, defending the patriotic idea of ​​​​the unity of the “Great Russian Country”.

The historicity of the narrative “The Tale” compares favorably with the Byzantine martyriums. It carries the important political idea of ​​clan seniority in the system of princely inheritance. “The Legend” is subordinated to the task of strengthening the feudal legal order and glorifying vassal fidelity: Boris and Gleb cannot break fidelity to their older brother, who replaces their father. Boris refuses the offer of his warriors to seize Kyiv by force. Gleb, warned by his sister Predslava about the impending murder, voluntarily goes to his death. The feat of vassal loyalty of Boris’s servant, the youth George, who covers the prince with his body, is also glorified.

The “Tale” does not follow the traditional compositional scheme of a life, which usually described the entire life of an ascetic - from his birth to death. It describes only one episode from the life of its heroes - their villainous murder. Boris and Gleb are portrayed as ideal Christian martyred heroes. They voluntarily accept the “crown of martyrdom.”

The glorification of this Christian feat is presented in the manner of hagiographic literature. The author equips the narrative with abundant monologues - the cries of the heroes, their prayers, which serve as a means of expressing their pious feelings. The monologues of Boris and Gleb are not devoid of imagery, drama and lyricism. Such, for example, is Boris’s cry for his deceased father: “Alas for me, the light of my eyes, the radiance and dawn of my face, the pit of my weariness, the punishment of my misunderstanding! Alas for me, my father and lord! Who will I resort to? Who will I contact? Where will I be satisfied with such good teaching and teaching of your mind? Woe is me, woe is me. How far away is my world, I don’t exist!..” In this monologue, rhetorical questions and exclamations characteristic of church oratorical prose are used, and at the same time, there is the imagery of people’s lament, which gives it a certain tone and allows for a more vivid expression of the feeling of filial grief . Gleb’s tearful appeal to his murderers is filled with deep drama: “You will not reap me, life has not ripened me! You will not reap class, not already ripe, but carrying the milk of innocence! You won’t cut the vines until they’re fully grown, but you’ll still have the fruit!”

Pious reflections, prayers, laments, which are put into the mouths of Boris and Gleb, serve as a means of revealing the inner world of the heroes, their psychological mood. Many monologues are pronounced by the heroes “on the mind and thinking”, “verb in your heart.” These internal monologues are a figment of the author's imagination. They convey pious feelings and thoughts of ideal heroes. The monologues include quotes from the Psalter and the Book of Proverbs.

The psychological state of the characters is also given in the author's description. So, abandoned by his squad, Boris “... in a sad and depressing heart, he climbed into his tent, crying with a broken heart, and with a joyful soul, letting out a pitiful voice.” Here the author tries to show how two opposing feelings are combined in the hero’s soul: grief due to the premonition of death and the joy that an ideal martyr hero should experience in anticipation of a martyr’s end.

The living spontaneity of the manifestation of feelings constantly collides with intimacy. So, Gleb, seeing the ships at the mouth of Smyadynya, sailing towards him, with youthful gullibility, “his soul rejoiced”, “and hope to receive kisses from them.” When the evil killers with naked swords sparkling like water began to jump into Gleb’s boat, “eight oars fell from his hand, and all died from fear.” And now, having understood their evil intention, Gleb with tears, “wiping away” his body, begs the killers: “Don’t do this to me, my dear and dear brothers! Don’t do this to me, you have done nothing evil! Do not neglect (touch) me, brothers and Lord, do not neglect me!” Here we have before us the truth of life, which is then combined with an etiquette dying prayer befitting a saint.

Boris and Gleb are surrounded in the “Tale” with an aura of holiness. This goal is served not only by the exaltation and glorification of Christian character traits, but also by the widespread use of religious fiction in the description of posthumous miracles. The author of “The Tale” uses this typical technique of hagiographic literature in the final part of the story. The praise with which the “Tale” ends serves the same purpose. In praise, the author uses traditional biblical comparisons, prayer appeals, and resorts to quotations from books of “holy scripture.”

The author also tries to give a generalized description of the hero’s appearance. It is built on the principle of a mechanical connection of various positive moral qualities. This is the description of Boris: “The body is beautiful, tall, the face is round, the shoulders are large, the face is large, the eyes are kind, the face is cheerful, the beard is small and mustache, he is still young, shining like a prince, the body is strong, decorated in every possible way, like a flower in his wisdom, brave in the army, wise in the world, and understanding in all things, and the grace of God is upon him.”

The heroes of Christian virtue, the ideal martyred princes in the “Tale” are contrasted with a negative character - the “cursed” Svyatopolk. He is obsessed with envy, pride, lust for power and fierce hatred for his brothers. The author of the “Tale” sees the reason for these negative qualities of Svyatopolk in his origin: his mother was a blueberry, then she was cut off and taken as a wife by Yaropolk; after the murder of Yaropolk by Vladimir, she became the latter’s wife, and Svyatopolk was descended from two fathers.

The characterization of Svyatopolk is given according to the principle of antithesis with the characteristics of Boris and Gleb. He is the bearer of all negative human qualities. When depicting him, the author does not spare black paints. Svyatopolk is “cursed”, “damned”, “the second Cain”, whose thoughts are captured by the devil, he has “filthy lips”, “an evil voice”. For the crime committed, Svyatopolk bears a worthy punishment. Defeated by Yaroslav, in panic he flees from the battlefield, “... his bones weakened, as if he had no strength on a gray horse. And not bury it on the bearers.” He constantly hears the tramp of horses of Yaroslav pursuing him: “Let's run away! Still to get married! Oh me! and you can’t suffer in one place.” So succinctly, but very expressively, the author managed to reveal the psychological state of the negative hero. Svyatopolk suffers legal retribution: in the desert “between the Czechs and the Poles” he “ruined his stomach.” And if the brothers killed by him “live for centuries”, being the Russian land “visor” and “affirmation”, and their bodies turn out to be incorruptible and emit a fragrance, then from the grave of Svyatopolk, which exists “to this day”, “emanate... an evil stench for a person's testimony."

Svyatopolk is contrasted not only with the “earthly angels” and “heavenly men” Boris and Gleb, but also with the ideal earthly ruler Yaroslav, who avenged the death of his brothers. The author of the “Tale” emphasizes Yaroslav’s piety by putting into his mouth a prayer allegedly said by the prince before the battle with Svyatopolk. In addition, the battle with Svyatopolk takes place in the very place, on the Alta River, where Boris was killed, and this fact takes on symbolic meaning.

The Legend associates the cessation of sedition with Yaroslav’s victory, which emphasized its political relevance.

The dramatic nature of the narrative, the emotional style of presentation, and the political topicality of the “Tale” made it very popular in ancient Russian writing (it has come down to us in 170 copies).

However, the lengthy presentation of the material while preserving all historical details made the “Tale” unsuitable for liturgical purposes.

Especially for church services in the 80s of the 11th century. Nestor created “Reading on the life and destruction of the blessed passion-bearer Boris and Gleb” in accordance with the requirements of the church canon. Based on Byzantine examples, he opens the “Reading” with an extensive rhetorical introduction, which acquires a journalistic character, echoing in this regard the “Sermon on Law and Grace” by Hilarion.

The central part of the “Reading” is devoted to the hagiobiographies of Boris and Gleb. Unlike the “Tale,” Nestor omits specific historical details and gives his story a generalized character: the martyrdom of the brothers is the triumph of Christian humility over devilish pride, which leads to enmity and internecine struggle. Without any hesitation, Boris and Gleb “with joy” accept martyrdom.

The “Reading” ends with a description of numerous miracles testifying to the glory of the passion-bearers, praise and prayerful appeal to the saints. Nestor retained the main political tendency of the “Tale”: condemnation of fratricidal feuds and recognition of the need for younger princes to unquestioningly obey the elders in the clan.

3.2 “The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk”

A different type of hero is glorified by the “Life of Theodosius of Pechersk,” written by Nestor. Theodosius is a monk, one of the founders of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery, who devoted his life not only to the moral improvement of his soul, but also to the education of the monastic brethren and laity, including princes. The life has a characteristic three-part compositional structure: the author's introduction-preface, the central part - a narration about the hero's actions and a conclusion. The basis of the narrative part is an episode associated with the actions of not only the main character, but also his associates (Barlaam, Isaiah, Ephraim, Nikon the Great, Stephen).

Nestor draws facts from oral sources, stories of the “ancient fathers”, the cellarer of the monastery Fyodor, the monk Hilarion, the “carrier”, “a certain man”. Nestor has no doubt about the truth of these stories. By processing them literary, arranging them “in a row,” he subordinates the entire narrative to the single task of “praising” Theodosius, who “gives eighteen images of himself.” In the time sequence of the events presented, traces of the monastic oral chronicle are found. Most life episodes have a completed plot.

This is, for example, the description of Theodosius’s adolescence, associated with his conflict with his mother. The mother creates all sorts of obstacles for the boy to prevent him from realizing his intention - to become a monk. The ascetic Christian ideal that Theodosius strives for collides with the hostility of society and maternal love for her son. Nestor hyperbolically depicts the anger and rage of a loving mother, beating the rebellious youth to the point of exhaustion, putting iron on his legs. The clash with the mother ends with the victory of Theodosius, the triumph of heavenly love over earthly love. The mother resigns herself to her son’s act and becomes a nun just to see him.

The episode with the “carriage driver” testifies to the attitude of the working people towards the life of the monks, who believe that the monks spend their days in idleness. Nestor contrasts this idea with the image of the “works” of Theodosius and the monk people surrounding him. He pays a lot of attention to the economic activities of the abbot, his relationships with the brethren and the Grand Duke. Theodosius forces Izyaslav to take into account the monastery charter, denounces Svyatoslav, who seized the grand-ducal throne and expelled Izyaslav.

“The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk” contains rich material that allows one to judge the monastic life, economy, and the nature of the relationship between the abbot and the prince. Closely connected with monastic life are the monological motifs of life, reminiscent of folk tales.

Following the traditions of the Byzantine monastic life, Nestor consistently uses symbolic tropes in that work: Theodosius - “lamp”, “light”, “dawn”, “shepherd”, “shepherd of the verbal flock”.

“The Life of Theodosius of Pechersk” can be defined as a hagiographic story consisting of individual episodes united by the main character and the author-narrator into a single whole. It differs from Byzantine works in its historicism, patriotic pathos and reflection of the peculiarities of political and monastic life of the 11th century.

In the further development of ancient Russian hagiography, it served as a model in the creation of the lives of the venerable Abraham of Smolensk, Sergius of Radonezh, and others.

Conclusion

Thus, hagiographic literature is the lives of saints, biographies of clergy and secular persons canonized by the Christian Church, which were an important form of reading for medieval Russians.

Hagiographic literature came to Rus' from Byzantium along with Orthodoxy, where by the end of the 1st millennium the canons of this literature had been developed, the implementation of which was mandatory.

Lives are part of Church Tradition. Therefore, they must be theologically verified, since they have a doctrinal meaning. The inclusion of any episode from the available biographies of the saint in his life was considered in the light of the question: what does this act or this word teach? Halftones, nuances, and things that could confuse ordinary believing people were removed from the lives; what can be called “little things in life” that are not important for eternity.

Rus' was a reading country. Translated Byzantine literature could not satisfy the need for reading for a long time, so the introduction of Russian princes as characters led to the birth of a purely Russian hagiographic genre. Examples include Vladimir I, who baptized Rus' in the 10th century, or “The Tale of Boris and Gleb,” which is based on the historical fact of Svyatopolk’s murder of his younger brothers in the 40s of the 11th century. canonized by the Byzantine Church.

Old Russian literature of the lives of saints differs from Byzantine works in its historicism, patriotic pathos and reflection of the peculiarities of political or monastic life.

List of used literature

1. Kuskov V.V. History of Old Russian Literature. - M.: Higher school / V.V. Kuskov. – 2006. – 343 p.

2. Likhachev D.S. History of Russian literature X-XVII centuries. Textbook manual for pedagogical students. Institute / D.S. Likhachev. - St. Petersburg: Aletheya, 1997. - 508 p.

3. Picchio R. Old Russian literature / R. Picchio. - M.: Publishing house Languages ​​of Slavic Culture, 2002. – 352 p.

4. Rastyagaev A.V. The problem of the artistic canon of ancient Russian hagiography / A.V. Rastyagaev // Bulletin of SamSU. Literary studies. – Samara: Samara State University, 2006. - No. 5/1 (45) – P. 86-91.

5. Priest Oleg Mitrov. Experience in writing the lives of the holy new martyrs and confessors of Russia / ROF “Memory of the Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church.” - Moscow: Bulat Publishing House, 2004. - P. 24-27.

6. Speransky M.N. History of ancient Russian literature / M.N. Speransky. - St. Petersburg: Publishing House Lat, 2002. – 544 p.

Holiness is a purity of heart that seeks the uncreated divine energy manifested in the gifts of the Holy Spirit as many colored rays in the solar spectrum. Pious ascetics are the link between the earthly world and the heavenly Kingdom. Imbued with the light of divine grace, they, through God-contemplation and God-communication, learn the highest spiritual secrets. In earthly life, saints, performing the feat of self-denial for the sake of the Lord, receive the highest grace of divine Revelation. According to biblical teaching, holiness is the likening of a person to God, who is the only bearer of all-perfect life and its unique source.

The church procedure for canonizing a righteous person is called canonization. She encourages believers to honor a recognized saint in public worship. As a rule, ecclesiastical recognition of piety is preceded by popular glory and veneration, but it was the act of canonization that made it possible to glorify saints by creating icons, writing lives, and compiling prayers and church services. The reason for official canonization can be the feat of a righteous person, the incredible deeds he has performed, his entire life or martyrdom. And after death, a person can be recognized as a saint because of the incorruption of his relics, or miracles of healing occurring at his remains.

In the event that a saint is venerated within one church, city or monastery, they speak of diocesan, local canonization.

The official church also recognizes the existence of unknown saints, the confirmation of whose piety is not yet known to the entire Christian flock. They are called revered departed righteous people and requiem services are served for them, while prayer services are served for canonized saints.

That is why the names of Russian saints, who are revered in one diocese, may differ and be unknown to parishioners of another city.

Who was canonized in Rus'

Long-suffering Rus' gave birth to more than a thousand martyrs and martyrs. All the names of the holy people of the Russian land who were canonized are included in the calendar, or calendar. The right to solemnly canonize the righteous initially belonged to the Kyiv, and later Moscow, metropolitans. The first canonizations were preceded by the exhumation of the remains of the righteous so that they could perform a miracle. In the 11th-16th centuries, the burials of princes Boris and Gleb, Princess Olga, and Theodosius of Pechersk were discovered.

From the second half of the 16th century, under Metropolitan Macarius, the right to canonize saints passed to church councils under the high priest. The unquestioned authority of the Orthodox Church, which had existed in Rus' for 600 years by that time, was confirmed by numerous Russian saints. The list of names of the righteous glorified by the Macarius Councils was replenished with the naming of saints by 39 pious Christians.

Byzantine rules of canonization

In the 17th century, the Russian Orthodox Church succumbed to the influence of the ancient Byzantine rules for canonization. During this period, mainly clergy were canonized because they had church rank. Missionaries carrying the faith and associates in the construction of new churches and monasteries also deserved to be counted. And the need to create miracles has lost its relevance. Thus, 150 righteous people were canonized, mainly from among the monks and high clergy, and the Saints added new names to Russian Orthodox saints.

Weakening church influence

In the 18th and 19th centuries, only the Holy Synod had the right to canonize. This period is characterized by a decrease in the activity of the church and a weakening of its influence on social processes. Before Nicholas II ascended the throne, only four canonizations took place. During the short period of the reign of the Romanovs, seven more Christians were canonized, and the calendar added new names of Russian saints.

By the beginning of the 20th century, generally recognized and locally revered Russian saints were included in the month-speaking books, the list of whose names was supplemented by the list of deceased Orthodox Christians for whom memorial services were performed.

Modern canonizations

The beginning of the modern period in the history of canonizations carried out by the Russian Orthodox Church can be considered the Local Council held in 1917-18, by which the universally revered Russian saints Sophrony of Irkutsk and Joseph of Astrakhan were canonized. Then, in the 1970s, three more clergy were canonized - Herman of Alaska, Archbishop of Japan and Metropolitan Innocent of Moscow and Kolomna.

In the year of the millennium of the baptism of Rus', new canonizations took place, where Xenia of Petersburg, Dmitry Donskoy and other, no less famous, Orthodox Russian saints were recognized as pious.

In 2000, the anniversary Council of Bishops took place, at which Emperor Nicholas II and members of the Romanov royal family were canonized “as passion-bearers.”

First canonization of the Russian Orthodox Church

The names of the first Russian saints, who were canonized by Metropolitan John in the 11th century, became a kind of symbol of the true faith of the newly baptized people, their full acceptance of Orthodox norms. Princes Boris and Gleb, sons of Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich, after canonization became the first heavenly protectors of Russian Christians. Boris and Gleb were killed by their brother in the internecine struggle for the throne of Kyiv in 1015. Knowing about the impending assassination attempt, they accepted death with Christian humility for the sake of autocracy and peace of their people.

The veneration of princes was widespread even before their holiness was recognized by the official church. After canonization, the relics of the brothers were found incorrupt and showed miracles of healing to the ancient Russian people. And the new princes ascending the throne made pilgrimages to the holy relics in search of blessings for a just reign and help in military exploits. The Memorial Day of Saints Boris and Gleb is celebrated on July 24.

Formation of the Russian Holy Brotherhood

Next after princes Boris and Gleb, the Monk Theodosius of Pechersk was canonized. The second solemn canonization carried out by the Russian Church took place in 1108. The Monk Theodosius is considered the father of Russian monasticism and the founder, together with his mentor Anthony, of the Kiev Pechersk Monastery. The teacher and student showed two different paths of monastic obedience: one is severe asceticism, renunciation of everything worldly, the other is humility and creativity for the glory of God.

In the caves of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery, bearing the names of the founders, rest the relics of 118 novices of this monastery, who lived before and after the Tatar-Mongol yoke. They were all canonized in 1643, making up a common service, and in 1762 the names of Russian saints were included in the calendar.

Venerable Abraham of Smolensk

Very little is known about the righteous people of the pre-Mongol period. Abraham of Smolensk, one of the few saints of that time, about whom a detailed biography, compiled by his student, has been preserved. Abraham was revered for a long time in his hometown even before his canonization by the Makarievsky Cathedral in 1549. Having distributed to the needy all his property left after the death of his rich parents, the thirteenth child, the only son begged from the Lord after twelve daughters, Abraham lived in poverty, praying for salvation during the Last Judgment. Having become a monk, he copied church books and painted icons. The Monk Abraham is credited with saving Smolensk from a great drought.

The most famous names of saints of the Russian land

Along with the above-mentioned princes Boris and Gleb, unique symbols of Russian Orthodoxy, there are no less significant names of Russian saints who became intercessors of the entire people through their contribution to the participation of the church in public life.

After liberation from the Mongol-Tatar influence, Russian monasticism saw its goal as the enlightenment of pagan peoples, as well as the construction of new monasteries and temples in the uninhabited northeastern lands. The most prominent figure of this movement was St. Sergius of Radonezh. For godly solitude, he built a cell on Makovets Hill, where the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius was later erected. Gradually, the righteous began to join Sergius, inspired by his teaching, which led to the formation of a monastic monastery, living on the fruits of their hands, and not on the alms of believers. Sergius himself worked in the garden, setting an example for his brothers. The disciples of Sergius of Radonezh built about 40 monasteries throughout Rus'.

St. Sergius of Radonezh carried the idea of ​​godly humility not only to ordinary people, but also to the ruling elite. As a skilled politician, he contributed to the unification of the Russian principalities, convincing the rulers of the need to unite dynasties and disparate lands.

Dmitry Donskoy

Sergius of Radonezh was greatly revered by the Russian prince, canonized, Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy. It was St. Sergius who blessed the army for the Battle of Kulikovo, started by Dmitry Donskoy, and sent two of his novices for God’s support.

Having become a prince in early childhood, Dmitry in state affairs listened to the advice of Metropolitan Alexy, who cared for the unification of the Russian principalities around Moscow. This process did not always go smoothly. Sometimes by force, and sometimes by marriage (to a Suzdal princess), Dmitry Ivanovich annexed the surrounding lands to Moscow, where he built the first Kremlin.

It was Dmitry Donskoy who became the founder of a political movement that aimed to unite the Russian principalities around Moscow to create a powerful state with political (from the khans of the Golden Horde) and ideological (from the Byzantine Church) independence. In 2002, in memory of Grand Duke Dmitry Donskoy and St. Sergius of Radonezh, the Order “For Service to the Fatherland” was established, fully emphasizing the depth of influence of these historical figures on the formation of Russian statehood. These Russian holy people cared for the well-being, independence and tranquility of their great people.

Faces (ranks) of Russian saints

All the saints of the Universal Church are summarized into nine faces or ranks: prophets, apostles, saints, great martyrs, holy martyrs, venerable martyrs, confessors, unmercenaries, holy fools and blessed ones.

The Orthodox Church of Russia divides saints into faces differently. Russian holy people, due to historical circumstances, are divided into the following ranks:

Princes. The first righteous people recognized as saints by the Russian Church were princes Boris and Gleb. Their feat consisted of self-sacrifice for the sake of the peace of the Russian people. This behavior became an example for all rulers of the time of Yaroslav the Wise, when the power in whose name the prince made a sacrifice was recognized as true. This rank is divided into Equal-to-the-Apostles (spreaders of Christianity - Princess Olga, her grandson Vladimir, who baptized Rus'), monks (princes who became monks) and passion-bearers (victims of civil strife, assassination attempts, murders for the faith).

Reverends. This is the name given to saints who chose monastic obedience during their lifetime (Theodosius and Anthony of Pechersk, Sergius of Radonezh, Joseph of Volotsky, Seraphim of Sarov).

Saints- righteous people with church rank, who based their ministry on the defense of the purity of faith, the spread of Christian teaching, and the founding of churches (Niphon of Novgorod, Stefan of Perm).

Fools (blessed)- saints who wore the appearance of madness during their lives, rejecting worldly values. A very numerous rank of Russian righteous people, replenished mainly by monks who considered monastic obedience insufficient. They left the monastery, going out in rags onto the streets of cities and enduring all the hardships (St. Basil, St. Isaac the Recluse, Simeon of Palestine, Xenia of Petersburg).

Holy laymen and women. This rank unites murdered babies recognized as saints, laymen who renounced wealth, righteous people who were distinguished by their boundless love for people (Yuliania Lazarevskaya, Artemy Verkolsky).

Lives of Russian saints

The Lives of Saints is a literary work containing historical, biographical and everyday information about a righteous person canonized by the church. Lives are one of the oldest literary genres. Depending on the time and country of writing, these treatises were created in the form of biography, encomium (praise), martyrium (testimony), and patericon. The style of writing lives in the Byzantine, Roman and Western church cultures differed significantly. Back in the 4th century, the Church began to unite saints and their biographies into vaults that looked like a calendar indicating the day of remembrance of the pious.

In Rus', lives appear along with the adoption of Christianity from Byzantium in Bulgarian and Serbian translations, combined into collections for reading by month - monthly books and menaions.

Already in the 11th century, a laudatory biography of princes Boris and Gleb appeared, where the unknown author of the life was Russian. The names of saints are recognized by the church and added to the monthly calendar. In the 12th and 13th centuries, along with the monastic desire to enlighten the northeast of Rus', the number of biographical works also grew. Russian authors wrote the lives of Russian saints for reading during the Divine Liturgy. The names, the list of which was recognized by the church for glorification, now received a historical figure, and holy deeds and miracles were enshrined in a literary monument.

In the 15th century there was a change in the style of writing lives. The authors began to pay the main attention not to factual data, but to skillful mastery of artistic expression, the beauty of literary language, and the ability to select many impressive comparisons. Skillful scribes of that period became known. For example, Epiphanius the Wise, who wrote vivid lives of Russian saints, whose names were most famous among the people - Stephen of Perm and Sergius of Radonezh.

Many hagiographies are considered a source of information about important historical events. From the biography of Alexander Nevsky you can learn about political relations with the Horde. The lives of Boris and Gleb tell of princely civil strife before the unification of Rus'. The creation of a literary and church biographical work largely determined which names of Russian saints, their exploits and virtues, would become best known to a wide circle of believers.