Oratio by Presenting to Princess Sophia Alekseevna a Book of Augustine, Titled “Bogovidnaya Lubov” by Karion Istomin: The Text and its Context

Author analyzes in detail a text of the “Oratio...”, paying attention to composition, concepts, and rhetorical devices used by Karion Istomin in his panegyric reference to Princess Sophia Alekseevna with a gift of books, now known as Pseudo-Augustine’s Bogovidnaya Lubov’. Obviously, this event can be considered as the fi rst acquaintance with the “doctrine” of Saint Augustine at the Moscow court. The article reconstructs some contexts that are relevant to the choice of this particular book, made by Karion for Sophia Alekseevna. Love of God, creation of the City of God, the Good in Bogovidnaya Lubov’ are central, tightening concepts for understanding of mind, soul, and human senses. Russian intellectuals of that time including Karion Istomin, hoped that emphasis in “Oratio...” on these concepts could help strengthen human relationship with God, a necessity of wisdom, enlightenment, the light God-given mind, educational innovations within the faith, that they wished their state and its «citizenship» would have. The author draws attention to the presentation by Karion of five human senses, as physical and spiritual ones. Among them Karion prefers “hearing” that in a certain way contradicts with the main idea, represented in his book Bogovidnaya Lubov’. The article also focuses on the poetic preface to Bogovidnaya Lubov’, based on the rules of the baroque rhetorical poetics of the end of the 17th century, and addressed to Princess Sophia Alekseevna.