Том 84, № 1 (2023)

Члену-корреспонденту РАН Борису Николаевичу Флоре – 85 лет!

In the article, the authors raise the question of the formation and evolution of the hierarchical order of the clergy and, in particular, of the so-called minor orders in Rome in the fourth and fifth centuries. They examine their institutional evolution on the basis of the papal epistles. The authors conclude that the papal decretals of Siricius (384–399), Innocent I (401–417), and Zosimus (417–418) reflect a transition from a system of independent offices to a hierarchy resembling the imperial cursus honorum or military hierarchy. However, this process appeared to be incomplete. In turn, the emerging hierarchy of minor orders serves as a barrier separating sacramental clergy from the laity as well as allowing for the vetting and selection of worthy candidates for deacons, presbyters, and bishops.

In the account books of Caffa’s Massaria throughout 1374–1426 there were recorded certain expenses on the organization of celebrations and rituals binding together city communities, secular and spiritual authorities. The oblation of candles to Latin churches on saints’ commemoration days was a duty of the city’s Genoese rulers, i.e. a consul, a vicar and two massarii. The custom meets its analogies in the statutes of cities and corporations of Northern Italy where it originated from the saint patron’s cult and devote gift to the church. Everyday masses in the consul’s palace, traditions of celebrating Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Pentecost, Saint George’s day and Saint John the Baptist’s day didn’t change throughout at least 70 years, remaining not recorded in regulatory documents till 1449. The purposes of payouts from the treasury stayed constant, and in the case of the Commission of Charity even nominal sums stayed unaltered. Religious rituals reproduced common lifestyle of immigrants, scheduled days and years, determined positions of laic power, church and city communities through symbolic duties.

The article is devoted to the French sources, containing information about two missions (embassies) of representatives of Tsar Ivan IV to Rome in 1581 and 1582. Until now they have not been collected, not translated into Russian and not studied. The present work solves these problems by systematizing the revealed documents, which are conventionally divided into three components. The first consists of diplomatic correspondence of 1581–1582, which mentions the circumstances of the arrival and mission of two Russian envoys, Istoma Shevrigin and Yakov Molvyaninov. The second is a printed “flyleaf” of 1581, published in Lyon by a follower of the Catholic League, Jean Patrasson, and apparently written by a clergyman. Finally, the 1611 French Mercure, the first official periodical moderate in matters of faith, also devoted special attention to the arrival in Rome of Russian representatives, thirty years after the event. A common theme of all the sources is the project for an anti-Ottoman league, in which an important place was given to the Russian state and its conversion “to obedience” to the Roman Catholic Church. It is concluded that the royal power, represented by Henry III, guided by his own interests, feared the implementation of such a scenario. A new great European war, a possible crusade to the East and difficulties in the Mediterranean trade could have hurt the state of France, exhausted by years of civil wars. For the representatives of the Catholic League, opposed to the king, by contrast, the possibility of the Russian state’s imminent conversion to the Catholic faith and its participation in the struggle against the Ottoman Empire represented a vivid triumph of the Catholic faith and the swift defeat of “heretics” and “infidels”. It is also stated that the original information about Chevrigin’s embassy, printed in the French Mercury in 1611, belongs to the Jesuit A. Possevino, but in the French interpretation it is given as an example of the possibility of inter-confessional accord.

The article analyzes and publishes five letters of Elector Augustus I of Saxony (1526–1586) to King Charles IX de Valois of France and his mother Catherine de Medicis from the collection of manuscripts and autographs of the Russian diplomat Peter Dubrovsky (1754–1816), which is conserved in the Manuscripts Department of the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg. These letters are important fragments of the extensive diplomatic correspondence between the leader of the Protestant princes of Germany and the French royal court, trying to achieve a long-term political and military alliance with the German principalities, in the conditions of the Second Huguenot War that began in France after a three-year peace. The figure of Augustus I was attractive to French addressees due to his long-term friendship with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II, with whom the Valois sought an alliance in contrast to the Spanish Habsburgs. The letters dated 1567–1568 mention such significant events as the siege and capture of Gotha, the execution of the imperial knight Wilhelm von Grumbach, the capture of the Saxon Duke Johann Friedrich II, the attempt of the Huguenots to capture Charles IX and Catherine de Medicis in Meaux, the battle of Saint-Denis, etc., as well as their assessment by the Elector of Saxony, with subsequent mediation proposals for a way out of the militarypolitical conflict in France.

The adventure of the Hanseatic collection of library and archival materials from the cities of Lübeck, Hamburg and Bremen transported to the Soviet Union which included, among other things, medieval manuscripts and charters, is an issue which has been described at least in a general way both by Russian and German historians. However, usually only displacements of the whole collection or its parts by ‘official’ channels are in the focus of attention. At the same time, there are some medieval manuscripts currently preserved in Russian libraries which ended up there not by ‘official’ channels, but being sold by private people. Such cases demonstrate clearly that at some time, in Germany and/or in the Soviet Union, some thefts of manuscripts took place. Usually, we do not know circumstances of that: we know only the name of the person who sold the manuscript to the state. However, one case was found, where we can try to make some assumptions. This case is what this article is mostly devoted to. There are also some explanations of why such thefts were possible: during the most part of the Soviet era the main part of the looted handwritten materials, which finally ended up in Moscow in the Central Archive of Ancient Acts, had no inventories at all.