ABSTRACT
The views and convictions of the early Slavophils on the Western confessions, and on nineteenth-century Western rationalism and materialism, make it amply clear that their ideology could not rest upon either Western religion or Western philosophy. The criticism to which the Slavophils subjected Western religion and philosophy carried with it the clear and inevitable implication that they would also subject to close scrutiny the moral, social, and economic values that derive from them. No less striking is the distinction that the Slavophils drew between their highly idealized Orthodox church and the historical Roman Catholic institution. Attributing the eleventh-century schism in the Christian church to the thought and behavior of the Western church, the Slavophils found it easy to censor the papacy for those lapses in its long historical existence during which it was both a state and a church.
