ABSTRACT

Until the eighteenth century, Russian intellectual life was religious in character. It was largely confined to the monasteries and preempted by those ordained to serve God and Church, and under the political conditions in Russia, the vice-regent of God, the Tsar. The sacerdotal dominance over intellectual and cultural life in general was reflected in the closure-both  ideological and ritual-of the Muscovite society, with its isolation  from, and attendant distrust of, the West and all things foreign. Of some 142 writers in pre-Petrine Russia, no more than a dozen were laymen-boyars or princes-all others belonged to the clergy.1 This conspicuous dearth of secular writers and scholars led Shchapov to suggest that Muscovy was ill fit to produce such men of learning, but instead abounded with men of “strong muscles,” conquerors of other lands and people, and “rebels-demagogues.”2