“The Debate on Faith with the Greeks” by Arseny Sukhanov: complete author’s text

Abstract

The publication introduces the original text of one of the most famous Russian publicistic works of the 17th century. Everyone knew this outstanding literary monument only from a scribal copy, dazzling with errors and scarcely corrected by the author, with the publishers freely filling in the vast lacunae according to the latest and most inappropriate copies. The reconstruction of the author’s text has become possible when Sukhanov’s draft manuscript had been discovered. It contains two early versions of the text which allow to correct mistakes and fill in nearly all lacunae of the third, final version, as well as gives the key to select copies for filling in the remaining gaps in the final author's text. Less than 400 years after Arseny had put the manuscript into circulation, we may learn what he’d told to his readers in the lost protograph of the handwritten tradition.

Keywords

• arseny sukhanov
• “the debate on faith with the greeks”
• russia's place in world orthodoxy
• russian publicism of the 17th century
• raskol