Sylvester (Russian: Сильвестр, romanized: Silvestr; secular name: Simeon Agafonovich Medvedev; 6 February 1641 – 21 February 1691) was a Russian writer, poet and theologian.[1] He was a student of Simeon of Polotsk.[2]

Life

Sylvester was born in Kursk;[2] he was first a podyachy in Kursk and then Moscow.[3][4]

In 1665, he entered the newly established school of Simeon of Polotsk (1629–1680) in the Zaikonospassky Monastery, where he learnt Latin, poetics and rhetoric.[1] After Simeon's death, Sylvester re-established the school. In 1687, the school and the printing press schools were merged to form the Slavic Greek Latin Academy.[5]

Sylvester supported Sophia (r.1682–1689) during her regency and promoted the Roman Catholic understanding of the Eucharist,[6] which led to theological disputes during the 1680s.[7] In 1690, a sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church condemned the views of the Westernizing party.[6] After Sophia's downfall, Sylvester was executed for treason. He was buried at the Zaikonospassky Monastery.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Johnston, William M. (4 December 2013). Encyclopedia of Monasticism. Routledge. p. 888. ISBN 978-1-136-78716-4.
  2. 1 2 Likhachev, Dmitri Sergeevich; Dmitriev, Lev Aleksandrovich (1989). A History of Russian Literature, 11th-17th Centuries: A Textbook. Raduga Publishers. pp. 531–355. ISBN 978-5-05-001715-4.
  3. Florovsky, Georges (2001). Les voies de la théologie russe (in French). L'Âge d'Homme. ISBN 978-2-8251-1570-1.
  4. University of California Publications in History. University of California Press. 1952. p. 48.
  5. Charipova, Liudmila V. (19 September 2006). Latin Books and the Eastern Orthodox Clerical Elite in Kiev, 1632-1780. Manchester University Press. p. 170. ISBN 978-0-7190-7296-3.
  6. 1 2 Zernov, Nicolas (1978). The Russians and Their Church. St Vladimir's Seminary Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-913836-36-1.
  7. Nichols, Aidan (1989). Theology in the Russian Diaspora: Church, Fathers, Eucharist in Nikolai Afanas'ev (1893-1966). Cambridge University Press. p. 10. ISBN 978-0-521-36543-7.

Sources

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.