“НОВЫЙ ИЗРАИЛЬ” И “СВЯТАЯ РУСЬ”: ЭТНОКОНФЕССИОНАЛЬНЫЕ И СОЦИОКУЛЬТУРНЫЕ АСПЕКТЫ СРЕДНЕВЕКОВОЙ РУССКОЙ ЕРЕСИ ЖИДОВСТВУЮЩИХ
SUMMARY: The article explores the history of the Judaizers’ heresy, situating it in the broader context of the religious tradition of medieval Rus’. The author maintains that the Judaizers movement was not just a Christian heresy fed by the anticipation of apocalypses, but also a fact of Judaic proselytism. In order to understand why such proselytism was possible in Rus’ and virtually impossible in other Christian countries, the author scrutinizes specific features of the Rus’ Christian tradition. He suggests the centrality of the Old Testament concepts and tropes for the medieval Russian religious tradition due to the specificity of the reception of Christianity, the relationship between Byzantium and Rus’, and the overlapping of confessional and political boundaries in the ancient Russian state. The impact of the Old Testament culture on Russian Orthodox Christianity and the closure of Russian culture in the XIV century laid the groundwork for the particular receptivity to the Judaic proselytism.
Moscow-The Third Rome or the New Israel?
ecent events in the former Soviet Union have stimulated the rethinking of many previously axiomatic notions about the past and present of Russia. This situation creates a propitious environment for the reexamination of received views of the Russian past, including the famous idea that sixteenth-century Russians thought of themselves as inhabitants of "The Third Rome." This idea, which sometimes seems like the only idea that the general public knows about Muscovite Russia apart from the imagined character and reign of Ivan the Terrible, has helped to create the impression that Muscovite Russia was exotic and expansionist, a worthy predecessor of the "evil empire" that occupied people's attention in the 1980s and before. This image of Muscovy, in turn, promotes the notion in the minds of Russians and foreigners alike that Russia is destined by her Muscovite past to behave in certain ways. Most specialists in the Muscovite period of Russian history are already aware that the conventional notion of the Third Rome theory as an early justification for Russian expansionism is badly flawed; the idea continues nevertheless to remain popular among nonspecialist writers. This article will point out briefly the relative scarcity of evidence for the Third Rome theme in Muscovite sources, especially in sources that originated before the 1590s. Most of our attention, however, will be devoted to exploring a complementary theme, a theme that is overwhelmingly better represented in the source base than the Third Rome idea, but that answers the same basic question about the self-image of the Muscovite state: the idea of Russia as a New Israel. Both themes were products of the Muscovite perception of history as a succession of chosen peoples: Israel to Roman Empire to Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) to Muscovy. (Other lists of chosen peoples were also available,
The Concept of the New or Second Rome in the Middle Ages
IN spite of the decline of the Roman Empire and the numerous reverses which had befallen Rome and its widespread territories, the hope for a restoration of the old glory and might continued to occupy the mind of the mediaeval man. For both the admirer of the past pagan culture and the Christian, the prediction of the future greatness of Rome which Anchises had made to Aeneas (Vergil, Aen. vi, 851-853) retained its practical and ideal significance: