Russian saints and the struggle against Latinism in the 15th–16th centuries: Byzantium or the Baltic?

Abstract

The schism between the Western and Eastern churches, which formally took place in Constantinople, gave rise to a rich polemical literary tradition, but anti-Latin theme entered relatively late into hagiography as a special literary genre. This did not happen in Byzantium until the 30s of the 13th century. There is not a single hagiography completely devoted to the denunciation of the Latins in the Greek circle of writing (in Byzantium, Cyprus and Crete, Palestine and Mount Athos) of the 13th–16th centuries. This topic is associated exclusively with biographical details and is mentioned episodically in the hagiographies. None of the monuments of late Greek-Byzantine hagiography with anti-Latin fragments entered the Old Russian literature. On the contrary, there is not only an increase in interest in this topic in ancient Russian literature, but there is even a life written purposefully as an anti-Latin pamphlet — the life of the holy martyr Isidore of Yuryev. The dynamics of the emergence of anti-Latin theme in Old Russian hagiography is asynchronous with Byzantine hagiography — it became relevant in Old Russia only in the second half of the 15th century. Almost all Russian saints whose lives contain anti-Latin themes are associated with the Baltic region. This is the legendary origin of the holy fools Isidor Tverdislov of Rostov and Procopius of Ustyug, the monks Anthony the Roman and Serapion of Pskov, the military-political activity of the prince Alexander Nevsky and the holy martyr Isidor’s of Yuryev death at the hands of the Latins. The article concludes that Byzantine hagiography did not play a role in the formation of anti-Latin theme in ancient Russian hagiography.