Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Old Testament in the last will of a service nobleman: To the problem of literary parallels

Abstract

The article examines the last will of the Russian service nobleman of the end of the 16th century Ivan Golova Solovtsov. The subject of the article is requests of blessing for children, which Ivan Golova addresses to God. These requests included lists of patriarchs and matriarchs of the Old Testament: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job, Sarah, Rebecca, Anne, Elizabeth, and Susanna. Comparative textological analysis allowed to identify a possible corpus of sources, which could have been used by Ivan Golova when compiling his last will. It also allowed to find out close, in terms of language and contents, literary parallels, the most important of which come from the wedding service and services of the two last Sundays before Christmas (Sunday of Saint Fathers and Sunday of Saint Patriarchs). Analysis of the identified sources, conducted with the use of the epitaph preserved on the tombstone of Ivan Golova and with the use of his biography, made it possible to interpret the blessing requests not only in the context of repentance discourse, but also gave base for comparing Golova’s “theology” with some aspects of the Protestantism theology. Thus, Solovtsov’s last will requests of blessing, addressed to God and asking for his children those earthly riches, which were granted to patriarchs and matriarchs of the Old Testament, are treated as both evidence of Solovtsov’s wide readership and as possible reflection of influence of another culture and confession.