“Philhellenes” and “Latinists” in the XVII century: texts in the context

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the disputes on the enlightenment of Russia in the early 1680s. They emerged and continued due to the idea of Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich to open an Academy in Moscow: an autonomous university from the state and church authorities for preparing secular and religious personnel, which would teach in Polish, Greek, Latin and Russian languages. The article examines the positions of Russian and Greek Philhellenes. Some of them insisted on studying solely Greek language for preventing the distribution of knowledge in Latin and other languages. Others proved the advantage of Greek language in the educational system in all languages of science of that time. The author notes that the initiator of the Academy Sylvester Medvedev, who was later declared a “Latinist heretic”, took the second approach as the basis. The article refutes the modern attempts to change the perspective on dating, content and meaning of the primary sources, beginning with the Privilege of the Academy. The author substantiates that the Privilege was not a figment of Medvedev's imagination, but a Charter approved by the Tsar, which established the basic principles of the new university, namely the functions of faith protection were delegated by the tsar to the academic council. The implementation of measures against heresies, sorcery, etc., which were sternly formulated in the legislation,  since now on required the scholars’ examination. The objections of colleagues to the “harshness” of these measures, allegedly invented by Medvedev, were associated with legal ignorance. A substantial part of the article is aimed at familiarization of the colleagues with the legal, political, cultural and literary context, which contributes to the analysis of the sources.