Образ земного Рая у Ефросина Белозерского

Abstract

The spiritual quest of Efrosin Belozerskii was inspired by the dream about searching for the earthly Paradise and its achievement. He not only copied the writings of travelers, but also wrote down other people’s oral stories. Efrosin was interested in information about the areas where the earthly Paradise could have been located (according to the Bible, in the East). Efrosin’s autographs contain stories about the miracle of the resurrection of a young man who saw the earthly Paradise; and among the other texts there is an Epistle from Archbishop Vasilii Kalika of Novgorod to Bishop Fedor of Tver’ about Paradise. Vasilii proved his opinion that the earthly Paradise had not perished and gave examples of the righteous visiting or being near as well as the testimony of eyewitnesses, Novgorodian sea travelers who reached the borders of the earthly Paradise. Vasilii Kalika’s epistle is missing in all fifteenth century Novgorodian chronicles apart from Efrosin’s collection and the Sofia First chronicle, whose older copies come from the Kirillo-Belozerskii monastery. Additions to the original text resemble similar additions made by Efrosin in other texts; the indication of the place where certain ‘rachmans’ lived in the epistle reminds of the rachmans’ utopian country, where, according to Efrosin, there was no state, church, crimes, trade, industry, or conflicts among people. The manu-scripts of Efrosin represent his dream of justice on the Earth, about the life without oppres-sion and violence.