An outline of a stereotype of a Catholic and Catholicism in a discourse of the radical Orthodox Church movement in modern Russia

Abstract

The paper is an attempt to compare a medieval stereotype of Catholics and Catholicism existing in Rus against a contemporary stereotype functioning in the radical Orthodox Church environment. The main source of the research material are publications available at the website Москва — Третий Рим (https://3rm.info/), which publishes and aggregates content generated by radical Orthodox Church circles. The starting point is an analysis of the image of Catholics presented in one of more important chronicles of medieval Rus, which was conducted by Marianna Andreitcheva. The text answers a question about the extent to which this image is preserved in a contemporary stereotype of Catholics and Catholicism found in a discourse of the contemporary ultra-radical Orthodox Church circles, based on a sense of confessional identity, similarly to the discourse of Ruthenian authors.