Litigious, Pedagogical, Redemptive, Lethal: Iosif Volotskii's Calculated Insults

Abstract

Iosif Volotskii is renowned especially for the political and cultural significance of the monastery he founded and his successful campaign against the accused “Novgorod” or “Judazing” heretics of his day. It is well recognized that his massive influence was due in part to his sharp pen, but no one so far has examined the role of his insults, something no less a figure than Aristotle recognized as a potent rhetorical device. This essay shows how Iosif was masterful in treating rhetorical insults as reliable premises in his syllogistic arguments, whose subject matter ranged from simple scrapes over runaways—to or from his monastery—to sincere homiletics in the interest of his community and other believers, to doctrinal disputes with the imagined or real heretics of his discourses, to vicious quarrels over the survival of his cloister his own status as ordained priest‐abbot, and to campaigns in favor of imprisoning and executing alleged heretics. In turn, Iosif’s very successes in public life and against his opponents led to his likewise being the recipient of such insults against his confrontational tactics, monastery’s riches, and advocacy of the death penalty for dissidence. Late medieval Muscovy was no place for sissies.