“… Imprimi sicut nationi russicae decori & utilitati foret …”: The role of German Pietists’ educational activities in the early eighteenth-century Russia and their contribution to the formation of Russian professional terminology

Abstract

The movement of Pietism, which emerged in Germany in the progressive Protestant milieu in the late 17th century, called for a reform of the Reformation. In order to make the idea of “true Christianity” and “true piety” accessible and understandable to every ordinary believer, it set as its primary goal the universal enlightenment of the nations necessary for every Christian to read and understand the full text of the Holy Scriptures. The realization of this goal included the translation of the full text of the Bible into the national languages and its distribution in the form of printed editions. The quote in the title of this article is from the preface to the very first grammar of the Russian language (LUDOLF 1696, see [3 (A)]), showing that the “printing” of “good books” in Russian was not only envisioned by the Pietists, but should, in their opinion, serve “for the beauty and benefit of the Russian nation”. In addition to the creation of the first grammars of the Russian language, which had not existed until then, the enlightenment activities of the Pietists in Russia encompassed the production of translations of Western European literature into Russian from various fields of knowledge - pedagogy, history, theology, etc., which led to the creation of a new vocabulary in Russian, including the field of naming professions and specialized terminology. In the proposed article these processes are shown, on the one hand, on the example of a brief analysis of the first grammars of the Russian language, created by German Pietists; on the other hand, on the example of translation of the statutes of Lutheran churches and schools in Russia, the formation of a special Russian ecclesiastical terminology in the field of religious life of Lutherans is considered.

Keywords

• german pietism
• 18th century
• first russian grammars
• first translations into russian
• formation of russian lutheran ecclesiastical terminology.