06 — Teaching and Writings

The body of writing attributed to St. Theodosius of the Kiev Caves (c. 1029–1074): a small corpus of short monastic instructions (poucheniya) to the brethren and two writings addressed to Prince Izyaslav Yaroslavich. Several of the instructions are generally accepted as genuinely his and rank among the earliest works of original prose in Rus; but the corpus also carries real authenticity questions — most sharply, the celebrated anti-Latin epistle to Izyaslav, whose ascription to this Theodosius (rather than to a later Theodosius the Greek) is genuinely disputed. This section describes the writings, weighs what is securely his against what is doubtful, and handles the contested epistle with named scholars on both sides.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Kievan; father of Russian cenobitic monasticism)

Theodosius is known chiefly as an organizer of the common life — the abbot who gave Rus its first true cenobium under the Studite rule. But he was also, on the judgment of his editors, among the first native authors of the young Russian Church to leave original prose, and this section gathers what survives under his name. The material falls into two groups: the instructions to the monks, generally trusted as a Theodosian core and prized as the earliest native Russian spiritual writing; and the writings to Prince Izyaslav, of which a pastoral reply on fasting is accepted as his while the famous anti-Latin Slovo is of contested authorship. Because a medieval corpus accumulates material under a famous name across centuries of copying, authenticity here must be argued from style, content, and manuscript context rather than assumed — and the section flags, throughout, what is secure and what is not. The contested anti-Latin epistle is handled per METHODOLOGY §4: both attributions named, neither asserted, the text’s polemical stance reported as the text’s own and set in its historical climate without polemic of our own.

Files in This Section

File Description
The Sermons and Instructions The short homilies and instructions (poucheniya) to the brethren — on obedience, humility, attending the services, fasting, patience, brotherly love, and the danger of leaving the monastery; their simple monastic and biblical tone; their value as the earliest native Russian spiritual writing; Fedotov’s reading of their kenotic humility; the distinction between securely Theodosian and doubtful pieces; and the manuscript tradition (the Paterik and Old Russian miscellanies).
The Letters to Izyaslav The two writings addressed to Prince Izyaslav Yaroslavich: the generally accepted reply on a question of fasting/observance, and the disputed anti-Latin epistle Slovo o vere khrest’yanskoi i o latinskoi, whose ascription to St. Theodosius of the Caves versus a later Theodosius the Greek is presented from both sides with named scholars (Fedotov, Podskalsky, Franklin), without resolution and without polemic.

See Also

References

  • Fedotov, G. P. The Russian Religious Mind, Vol. 1: Kievan Christianity, the Tenth to the Thirteenth Centuries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946.
  • Fedotov, G. P., ed. A Treasury of Russian Spirituality. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1948.
  • Heppell, Muriel, trans. The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery. Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature, English Translations vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.
  • Franklin, Simon. Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950–1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
  • Franklin, Simon, and Jonathan Shepard. The Emergence of Rus 750–1200. London: Longman, 1996.
  • Podskalsky, Gerhard. Christentum und theologische Literatur in der Kiever Rus’ (988–1237). Munich: C. H. Beck, 1982; 2nd ed. 2000.