The Reception of Byzantine Culture in Mediaeval Russia

Variorum
Francis J. Thomson
ISBN: 0860786501
price: $122.95   hardcover

This book examines the nature of the Russian reception of Byzantine culture and its importance for a correct understanding of Russia's subsequent historical development. It is true that Russian culture is based upon the reception of Byzantine culture. However, the question of what was in fact received is the task that Professor Thomson has set in these studies, by means of a detailed examination of the corpus of translations.
Down to the 17th century this corpus was essentially made up of works required for the liturgy and the monastic life. Few works of dogmatic theology and virtually no classical or philosophical works were translated, neither was a knowledge of Greek, which would have provided access to the originals, widespread. The result was an unreasoning adherence to ritual forms. Western ideas which began to penetrate into Muscovy in the 17th century were not absorbed by Russian culture but fundamentally reshaped it, and the result led to a schism within the Church. Russia today is Orthodox by religion, but Byzantine culture disappeared with Byzantium. A major section of addenda takes into account the advances in scholarship since the articles were first published.
Contents: Preface; Acknowledgements; The intellectual silence of early Russia; The nature of the reception of Christian Byzantine culture in Russia in the tenth to thirteenth centuries and its implications for Russian culture; Quotations of patristic and Byzantine works by early Russian authors as an indication of the cultural level of Kievan Russia; The implications of the absence of quotations of untranslated Greek works in original early Russian literature, together with a critique of a distorted picture of early Bulgarian culture; The Bulgarian contribution to the reception of Byzantine culture in Kievan Rus': the myths and the enigma; "Made in Russia". A survey of the translations allegedly made in Kievan Russia; The corpus of Slavonic translations available in Muscovy. The cause of old Russia's intellectual silence and a contributory factor to Muscovite cultural autarky; The distorted mediaeval Russian perception of classical antiquity: the causes and consequences; Addenda; Index.