Did the Scribes of the Metropolitanate of Kyiv Know the Spanish Scholasticism? Problem Statement

Abstract

The article is an attempt to discover the «Spanish trace» in the seventeenth-century theological thought of the Metropolitanate of Kyiv by using the instruction on the administration of the church sacraments (Russ. «Nauka o sedmi tainah cerkovnyh») published in Vilnius in 1617/18 as a part of an «Agenda» («Trebnik») und the first printed Orthodox manual on moral theology «Piece to man with God» (Russ. «Myr s Bogom cheloviku», Kyiv 1669). «Nauka» was a compilation from «Summa casuum conscientiae» composed by the Spanish Jesuit Francisco de Toledo (1534–1596). Vilna’s compilers resorted to both a literal translation of significant portions of the Toledo’s text and to a repetition of separate fragments close to the Latin original; but also supplemented the fragments borrowed from «Summa» with descriptions of church rituals, quotations from the Church Fathers, canons of the Ecumenical and Local Councils, from civil legal sources. Despite the fact that «Nauka» was created in Uniate circles, it was also widely spread among the adherents of the Orthodox Church. It was through this Vilna’s compilation that certain fragments of «Summa» came into «Myr s Bogom». But it is quite obvious that the compiler of «Myr s Bogo» also directly appealed to the work of de Toledo, especially in the interpretation of the seven deadly sins and in the arguments about alms. Both «Nauka» and «Myr s Bogom» served as a source for a hand-written compilation by Evfimi Chudovski on the church sacraments, which also contributed to the dissemination of de Toledo’s work in the Moscovite tradition.