Sylvester Medvedev

Sylvester (Russian: Сильвестр, romanized: Silvestr; secular name: Simeon Agafonovich Medvedev; 6 February 1641 – 21 February 1691) was a Russian writer, poet, and theologian.[1] He was a student of Simeon of Polotsk.[2]

Life

Sylvester was born in Kursk;[2] he was first a podyachy in Kursk and then Moscow.[3][4]

In 1665, he entered the newly established Slavic Greek Latin Academy of Simeon of Polotsk (1629–1680) in the Zaikonospassky Monastery, where he learnt Latin, poetics and rhetoric.[1] After Simeon's death, Sylvester re-established the school. In 1687, the school and the printing press schools were merged to form the Slavic Greek Latin Academy.[5]

Sylvester supported Sophia (r. 1682–1689) during her regency and promoted the Roman Catholic understanding of the Eucharist,[6] which led to theological disputes during the 1680s.[7] In 1690, a sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church condemned the views of the Westernizing party.[6] After Sophia's overthrow, Sylvester was executed for high treason against Tsar Peter I. He was buried at the Zaikonospassky Monastery.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Johnston, William M. (4 December 2013). Encyclopedia of Monasticism. Routledge. p. 888. ISBN 978-1-136-78716-4.
  2. ^ a b Likhachev, Dmitri Sergeevich; Dmitriev, Lev Aleksandrovich (1989). A History of Russian Literature, 11th-17th Centuries: A Textbook. Raduga Publishers. pp. 531–355. ISBN 978-5-05-001715-4.
  3. ^ Florovsky, Georges (2001). Les voies de la théologie russe (in French). L'Âge d'Homme. ISBN 978-2-8251-1570-1.
  4. ^ University of California Publications in History. University of California Press. 1952. p. 48.
  5. ^ Charipova, Liudmila V. (19 September 2006). Latin Books and the Eastern Orthodox Clerical Elite in Kiev, 1632-1780. Manchester University Press. p. 170. ISBN 978-0-7190-7296-3.
  6. ^ a b Zernov, Nicolas (1978). The Russians and Their Church. St Vladimir's Seminary Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-913836-36-1.
  7. ^ Nichols, Aidan (1989). Theology in the Russian Diaspora: Church, Fathers, Eucharist in Nikolai Afanas'ev (1893-1966). Cambridge University Press. p. 10. ISBN 978-0-521-36543-7.

Sources