The Refraction of Byzantine and Ancient Russian Ideas in the Ethical and Political Writings of John IV the Terrible

Abstract

The research is devoted to the study of the ethical origins and foundations of patriotism in the letters of the first Russian tsar John the Terrible to Prince Andrei Kurbsky. The epistolary legacy of the Russian sovereign, directed primarily to domestic and foreign policy opponents, reveals a synthesis of ethical and ideological-political overtones. John's argumentation system is based on the focus of consideration of the problem of evil and responsibility for it and is based on the Eastern Christian tradition, according to which the concepts of evil and sin are identical, and the most terrible sin is betrayal of God. It is shown that in addition to Byzantine sources, the paradigm of the ethical and political constructions of John the Terrible also includes Russian ones (“Teaching” of Vladimir Monomakh, “Enlightener” and the Epistles of Joseph Volotsky, “The Tale of the Princes of Vladimir”), which allows us to conclude that the concept of evil of the Russian Tsar acquires a patriotic sound due to inclusion of new components in the Byzantine scheme of ideas about true evil. According to John the Terrible, the most terrible sin is treason to God, the Motherland and the tsar. The study analyzes John the Terrible's philosophical understanding of the concepts of Homeland and sovereign, acting as microcosmic and macrocosmic models, often identified with each other. The concept of the Motherland in John IV's worldview is a combination of such images as the macrocosm (a living organism), the state (empire), the Orthodox island (“third Rome” and “Holy Russia”). The sovereign of all Russia, according to the medieval thinker, combines the signs of a human and a superpersonal (the vicar of God, responsible for all his people). The mission of the Russian tsar as one of the main forms of service and protection of the Motherland is seen by John in the fight against true evil.

Keywords

• byzantine patristics
• philosophy of medieval russia
• john the terrible
• ethics
• homeland
• responsibility for evil