Juraj Križanić’s Mission to Muscovy and Symeon Polotskii’s Educational Activities at the Tsar’s Court

Abstract

This article concerns the intellectual situation at the court of Alexei Mikhailovich and his heir Fyodor Alekseevich. Several factors (Nikon’s reforms and the opposition of the Old Believers, part of the court elite’s reliance on western educational models, the invitation of Kievan scribes who spoke Greek, Latin, and Polish to the Moscow Print Yard to supervise the creation of liturgical books and promote translation and publishing activity, and the experience of the first educational establishments) testify to the fact that the culture of the Muscovy faced for the first time the need to choose a strategy for its intellectual activity. The author compares the lives of Juraj Križanić (1618–1683) and Symeon of Polotsk (1629–1680). Križanić arrived in Moscow to realise a union between Moscow and Rome but failed. However, Symeon, a Belarusian who had no missionary objective, managed to carry out nearly all of Križanić’s planned intellectual innovations in the Muscovite state. This leads the author to conclude that the ruling elite was internally ready to discover the values of Christian education and enlightenment following western cultural models and that Symeon of Polotsk played a key role in their dissemination and realisation.