Alexander Schmemann

6. Russian Orthodoxy (41 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 23

Finally there developed a simple fear of books and knowledge. The teachers themselves, according to Kurbsky, “would lure away boys who were diligent and wished to gain knowledge of the Scriptures, saying: ‘Do not read many books,’ and would point to one who has lost his mind, saying, he wandered astray in books and fell into heresy.” The printing press in Moscow was closed down and the first Russian printers, Ivan Fedorov and Peter Timofeev, were accused of heresy; then “because of the growing hatred of many leaders and priests and teachers,” they left for southern Russia. The tsar himself finally intervened on behalf of book publishing and reopened the printing press in 1568.

Only in the light of this break in the creative theological tradition can we understand all the fateful significance of the first “encounter with the West,” which coincided with the triumph of the Moscow kingdom. It was fateful because it was not a free encounter or argument; it was a case of either replacing Byzantinism by Western influence or indiscriminately rejecting everything Western, as the plague. Russia’s national self-assertion had been roused in opposition to Byzantium, but the latter’s universal Orthodox heritage had also been rejected.

 

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