Symeon of Polotsk
Encyclopedia
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
) was an academically-trained Baroque Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
ian-Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n poet, dramatist, churchman, and enlightener who laid the groundwork for the development of modern Russian literature
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
.
Life
A native of Polotsk, Symeon studied at the Kiev Ecclesiastical Academy and probably continued on to the Jesuit college of Wilno: the influence of Jesuit theology and school dramas was very pronounced in his mature work. He became an Greek-CatholicOrder of Saint Basil the Great
The Order of St. Basil the Great also known as the Basilian Order of Saint Josaphat is an monastic religious order of the Greek Catholic Churches that is present in many countries and that has its Mother House in Rome. The order received approbation on August 20, 1631...
monk (he described himself as "Simeonis Piotrowskj Sitnianowicz hieromonachi
Hieromonk
Hieromonk , also called a Priestmonk, is a monk who is also a priest in the Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholicism....
Polocens.[is] Ord.[inis] S.[ancti] Bas.[ilii] M.[agni]
Basilian monk
Basilian monks are monks who follow the "Rule" of Saint Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea. The chief importance of the monastic rules and institutes of St. Basil lies in the fact that to this day his reconstruction of the monastic life is the basis of most of the monasticism practiced in the...
") in 1656.
His name became known later that year, when he presented to Tsar Alexis, then visiting his native Polotsk during the war, several panegyric
Panegyric
A panegyric is a formal public speech, or written verse, delivered in high praise of a person or thing, a generally highly studied and discriminating eulogy, not expected to be critical. It is derived from the Greek πανηγυρικός meaning "a speech fit for a general assembly"...
s in verse. The monarch was pleased to discover what looked like propaganda of the Third Rome
Third Rome
The term Third Rome describes the idea that some European city, state, or country is the successor to the legacy of the Roman Empire and its successor state, the Byzantine Empire ....
doctrine in the modern Western style that would appeal to Ruthenian and Polish intellectuals alike. Symeon was recognized as an invaluable asset to Moscow's campaign to cast the Tsar as a champion of Eastern Rite
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
in the region.
The Tsar invited Symeon to relocate to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, where at the request of Tsar Alexis he opened the first school aimed at educating Russian clerks in Latin, then the language of diplomacy in 1664. By 1668, the school no longer was in operation. Apart from Latin, Symeon was the first to teach grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
, poetics
Poetics
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...
, and rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
to the Russians. He revived the long-forgotten art of preaching, and his sermon
Sermon
A sermon is an oration by a prophet or member of the clergy. Sermons address a Biblical, theological, religious, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law or behavior within both past and present contexts...
s proved quite popular with the Muscovite courtiers, such as Fyodor Rtishchev
Fyodor Rtishchev
Feodor Alekseyevich Rtishchev was a boyar and an intimate friend of Alexis I of Russia who was renowned for his piety and alms-deeds....
and Bogdan Khitrovo
Bogdan Khitrovo
Bogdan Matveyevich Khitrovo was a high-placed Russian statesman, or boyar, who served Tsar Alexis and his son Fyodor III, supporting the party of Maria Miloslavskaya...
. His erudition made him famous in other Orthodox countries. At the request of the Oriental patriarchs, he delivered an address urging the promotion of Greek learning in the country.
Unsurprisingly, given his background, Symeon of Polotsk took a profound stand against clerical and literary conservatives, or the Old Believers
Old Believers
In the context of Russian Orthodox church history, the Old Believers separated after 1666 from the official Russian Orthodox Church as a protest against church reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon between 1652–66...
. At the outset of the Great Schism
Raskol
Raskol |schism]]') was the event of splitting of the Russian Orthodox Church into an official church and the Old Believers movement in mid-17th century, triggered by the reforms of Patriarch Nikon in 1653, aiming to establish uniformity between the Greek and Russian church practices.-The Raskol:...
of the Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
, he was called upon to elaborate refutation of their tenets. It was he who drafted decisions of the church council that deposed Patriarch Nikon
Patriarch Nikon
Nikon , born Nikita Minin , was the seventh patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church...
and anathemized his opponents.
In recognition of his wisdom and erudition, Symeon was charged with the task of educating the Tsar's children: the future Fyodor III, Regent Sophia, and Peter I
Peter I of Russia
Peter the Great, Peter I or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov Dates indicated by the letters "O.S." are Old Style. All other dates in this article are New Style. ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his half-brother, Ivan V...
. In 1679 he prepared the decree to establish the Slavic Greek Latin Academy
Slavic Greek Latin Academy
Slavic Greek Latin Academy was the first higher education establishment in Moscow, Russia.-Beginnings:...
but before it opened, he died at the age of 50. He was buried in the Zaikonospassky Monastery
Zaikonospassky monastery
The Zaikonospassky monastery was a monastery in Kitai-gorod, Moscow, just one block away from the Kremlin.It was founded in 1600 by Boris Godunov...
, where the Academy would be opened two years later.
Works
From the standpoint of literary history, Symeon Polotsky marks a watershed in the Russian literature. He is frequently cited as the first poet in the language, although the bulk of his work is either in Church Slavonic or PolishPolish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
. As a poet, he clung to the principles of syllabic Polish versification which he learned as a youth. By adopting syllabic verse
Syllabic verse
Syllabic verse is a poetic form having a fixed number of syllables per line regardless of the number of stresses that are present. It is common in languages that are syllable-timed, such as Japanese or modern French or Finnish — as opposed to stress-timed languages such as English, in which...
, he is said to have stultified Russian verse for over a century.
His poetry is primarily panegyric and didactic, and either celebrates some important court and political event or exposes some shortcoming of contemporary life. Polotsky tried to bring to the Russians the pattern and motives of Western—better to say, Polish—literature. His language is heavy and cumbersome but his choice of new topics and rather skillful command of syllabic versification won him the admiration of the tsar and the court...
During his years in Moscow, Symeon continued to develop an imperial style of panegyrical verse, rife with protracted tirades, which were enlivened by occasional allusions to classical mythology. "With Simeon, a whole museum of ancient gods, muses, heroes, authors, and philosophers entered Russian literature". His extensive collection of poetry, The Garden of Many Flowers, was not printed in his lifetime, but he did publish a verse translation of the Psalter
Psalter
A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the later medieval emergence of the book of hours, psalters were the books most widely owned by wealthy lay persons and were...
, which was set to music within several years after his death.
As a theologian, Symeon frequently quoted the Vulgate
Vulgate
The Vulgate is a late 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It was largely the work of St. Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations...
, St. Jerome, St. Augustine
Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...
, and other Latin authorities, which was perceived by his detractors as a deliberate attempt to westernize Orthodox religious thought. In fact, his faithful disciple Sylvester Medvedev was later condemned for having succumbed to Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
. Symeon was also a dramatist; the comedy Action of the Prodigal Son and the tragedy On Nebuchadnezzar
Nebuchadnezzar
Nebuchadnezzar was the name of several kings of Babylonia.* Nebuchadnezzar I, who ruled the Babylonian Empire in the 12th century BC* Nebuchadnezzar II , the Babylonian ruler mentioned in the biblical Book of Daniel...
the King rank among the first dramatic works in the Russian language.
Further reading
- Anthony Hippisley. "The Poetic Style of Simeon Polotsky", Slavic ReviewSlavic ReviewSlavic Review is a leading international peer-reviewed academic journal publishing scholarly studies and book reviews in all disciplines concerned with Russia, Central Eurasia, and Eastern and Central Europe...
, vol. 48, no. 2 - Online library of Symeon's works