The Deeds of “Ages Long Gone By”
Some dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) have resumed the medieval practice of burning books deemed unacceptable by clergy. In most cases these are works by progressive Russian Orthodox theologians criticizing certain aspects of modern church life and offering ways to overcome such shortcomings. It should be noted, however, that ROC has not officially condemned any such books as heretical or damaging to the Church.
Everything happening in a modern society, anywhere in the world, is often deeply rooted in history. It is a repetition, only in a new form, of what happened in “ages long gone by”.
In 1650, the ambassadors of Russian Tsar Alexis I came to the Polish King Jan II Kazimierz in Warsaw. Although the 1964 Polyanov Peace agreement proclaimed a “final end” to the war between Russia and Poland, and the relationships between the two countries seemed friendly, the Moscow envoys arrived at the Polish court with serious claims. Among other things, Moscow protested what would be described now as an inadequate coverage of life in Russia by the Polish media, particularly the events of the Time of Trouble in Russia. This visit was described by Russian historian Sergey Solovyov in his 29-volume History of Russia from Ancient Times, which was based on archival documents and published in 1851-79.
The Moscow envoys complained that books published under Jan II Kazimierz smeared the image of the late Tsar Michael, the current Tsar Alexis I, Russian boyars, and other people of rank; this could no longer be tolerated. Those books used inadmissibly humiliating and offensive expressions, such as “miserable Moscow” and “Muscovites only pretend to be Christians but are worse than heathens with their deeds and traditions”. The envoys demanded compensation. Jan II Kazimierz was to surrender the cities given to Poland by Tsar Michael (under the 1634 Polyanov Peace), execute Hetman Wiszniowecki and all those responsible for publishing the books. As a financial compensation, Poland was to pay Moscow 500,000 gold coins. The books were to be burned, lest people from Moscow should be described as miserable beggars. Failing to comply with these requirements, the Russian envoys threatened to sever the peace treaty and declare war on Poland.
Polish diplomats were taken by surprise and tried to prove that it was not Moscow’s business to pass judgment on what was published in Warsaw or Krakow, and that the king and the Sejm had never ordered or forbidden anyone to publish any books. If good books appeared in print their publishers were praised; if foolish books with falsehood and slander appeared, they just laughed at them. If no books were published, posterity would learn nothing about their history, they insisted. Besides, when some books slandering Poland and Lithuania were published, the King and the Szlachta nobility never tried to claim damages. It was the Russian Tsar’s privilege to allow any kinds of books published about Poland in Russia. In addition, the Peace treaty did not specify what books could or could not be published. Therefore, it was outrageous to demand cities as compensation or threaten to break the Peace treaty.
The Polish retort left the Moscow envoys unimpressed. They turned out to be stubborn diplomats, who were ready to repeat the same thing a hundred times. Their Polish counterparts were at a loss for arguments. They said they were surprised the Russian envoys did not know Polish or Latin — as did no one else in the Moscow empire for that matter. Someone told them there were some bad books, and they believed them. The Moscow envoys responded to the accusation with an air of dignity, saying that the Poles themselves were saying unscholarly and impolite things; that the Russians did not consider learning Polish and Latin necessary and could do well without it; that they were firm in adhering to their Slavonic, given them by the Grace of God; and finally, that the Poles, despite their scholarly ways, were the dumb ones.
The book-and-compensation dispute lasted for quite a while, threatening to become yet another Russo-Polish conflict. The Polish side insisted that arguing over books could be endless; if one were to be punished by death for something printed or written, it would mean continuous bloodshed. After the Poles refused to discuss the capital punishment for the publishers and authors after all, the Moscow envoys backed down a little. Now they wanted all those “slanderous” books publicly burned. The Polish king refused at first and then proposed to burn the books secretly, lest Poland should lose face before the neighboring countries. The Moscow envoys adamantly rejected the idea.
At last, it was agreed that the pages containing passages damaging to Moscow rulers and other people of rank would be torn out and burned in public. This was done at a marketplace, in the presence of “some people from Moscow”. After the auto-da-fe, a Moscow nobleman by the name of Fustov, a witness to the public incineration, informed the Moscow envoys that some people in the crowd said that the Polish king and the Moscow Tsar ought to have torn the world into pieces or surrendered the cities at issue, rather than allow the Polish Crown and the Grand Lithuanian Duchy to suffer such humiliation, because among the pages burned in the marketplace there were written accounts of the great accomplishments of the kings Wladyslaw and Sigismund. So, the mission of the Moscow diplomats ended successfully with a “cleansing fire”. After all, what does not exist in print does not exist at all. We know this better than anyone else!
P.S.: Several decades before those events, a brotherhood school was founded in Kyiv (1615) whose students were taught not only Ukrainian, but also Slavonic, Polish, Greek, and Latin.
