Evfimiy Chudovskiy: intellectual search in Russian traditionalism in the last third of XVII century

Abstract

The paper examines the main ideas of Evfimiy Chudovskiy, who was one of the most conspicuous Graecophiles in the last third of the 17th century. Russian Graecophiles, whose ideas were a trend of Russian traditionalism, followed the East Orthodox examples and were opposed to both Europeanists, who preferred the Latin ones, and to zealots of antiquity, who declared national experience as the basis. The author describes main problems, which made Evfimiy to write his texts and to prove the advantages of Greek traditions, and analyses his arguments. In his work “Minei” devoted to the correction of books, Evfimiy formulated the foundations of his translation from Greek to Slavic. He took part in the discussion on the problem of whether higher education in Russia should be based on Latin or on Greek traditions and tried to prove the superiority of Greek ones, as well as the harm of Latin traditions. He also wrote some texts on the translation of the Bible and took part in the debate on liturgical details, where he stated that the Greek sources were more suitable than the Latin and the Polish ones.