Русское православие и superstitiones в сочинениях протестантов Раннего Нового Времени
Russian Orthodoxy and superstitiones in the writings of Early Modern Protestants

Summary/Abstract: In the 16th century, Protestants faced challenges of an expanding world, where geographical discoveries, interfaith contacts, and military conflicts (such as the Livonian War) required making sense of new cultural and religious realities. Their texts — reports, letters, polemical treatises — carry numerous traces of interpretation of this new environment. Among all concepts that reflect this process of adaptation, this article examined the term «superstitio» and practices of its usage. It is shown that disappointment following communication with Constantinople Patriarch Jeremiah II, the Livonian War, missionary activities in regions with Orthodox or pagan populations, brief meetings with Russian envoys — these situations discussed in the article changed the modality of using the concept «superstitio». The conclusion was drawn that whenconfronting the unknown and incomprehensible (culturally or confessionally), Protestants resorted to the concept «superstitio» not only to neutralize the threat to their identity but also to stylize the break with another culture or confession. After Russian Orthodoxy was marked with this concept, it ceased to have the subversive power of a potentially possible identity variant that could be adopted or that could cause doubt in one’s own faith. The concept «superstitio» has an instrumental character and serves to establish relations and distance that allowed Protestants to exist in a non-Protestant religious environment. By marking foreign practices as «superstitions», authors stylized a break with otherness, depicting it as the result of Catholic influence or local paganism.

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