Contribution to the History of Relationship between Lev Karsavin and Georges Florovsky

Abstract

The article examines the relatively little-known relationship between two historians, philosophers, intellectuals and prominent representatives of the Silver age in the development of Russian spiritual culture: a medievalist Lev Karsavin and a historian and theologian Fr. Georges Florovsky. The material is based on unpublished correspondence between Georges Florovsky and his brother, Anthony Florovsky — a historian, Professor at Charles University in Prague, as well as on the basis of letters from the 1920s from Klaudia Florovskaia (sister of Georges and Anthony) to Georges Florovsky. The letters are kept in the archive of Anthony Vasilievich Florovsky, in the National Library of the Czech Republic in Prague (Slovanská knihovna). The correspondence shows the problems of Russian post-revolutionary emigration to Sofia (Bulgaria) and to Prague (Czechoslovakia). Three possible reasons for difficult, almost negative relationship between Georges Florovsky and Karsavin are analysed: rivalry in work as they both tried to obtain the position of patrology teacher at St. Sergius Theological Institute in Paris; their different opinions on the work of Vl. Solovev and his influence on the Russian thought, primarily on the development of the Russian religious renaissance; Karsavin’s critical opinion on research abilities of Florovsky’s sister — Klaudia Vasilievna, a historian, the first woman private docent of University in Novorossiysk, to whom Karsavin provided assistance with regard to issues of medieval Italy during her overseas internship in 1909. The article also characterizes some other contradictions in the work of two thinkers, and draws a conclusion about the subjective, personal nature of Florovsky’s attitude to the work of Karsavin.