Religious publicism of “Tobolsk diocesan gazette” in the end of XIX - beginning of XX century: problems of source study

The purpose of this article is to identify and characterize the problems of the source study of religious publicism. The specific sources for this study were the publications of the Informal part of the journal “Tobolsk Diocesan Gazette” of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The relevance of study is motivated by the absence of clear definition of publicism as metagenre and as kind of sources, as well as by necessity of introduction of text complexes with a wide informative potential into scientific circulation. On the pages of the indicated journal religious journalism is presented in different forms - conversations, teachings, obituaries-epitaphs, speeches, words and others. In spite of all these it is possible to specify such of its features as religious worldview of the author (in most cases - his inclusion into a certain social group); the aim of the publications at preservation and reproduction of society order, system of values and manners, and at maintenance of believers’ integration on the basis of representation of concrete models of experience and worldview; at address to the actual questions for a religious person (the understanding of “sin”, “virtue”, “evil”, “good”, life, death, love, belief, duty); authoritarian style of appeal to the audience, “edification” in combination with the confession; approaches to fact interpretation and style of writing given by religious tradition (quotations from sacred texts, references to religious authorities, allusions, symbols), special circumstances of origin (under censorship of church representatives, with a focus on Orthodox audience). Identified peculiarities of the study of publicism texts of “Tobolsk Diocesan Gazette” - genre, functional, content-related - in the combination with circumstances of their origin and existence determine the problems of the study of religious publicism. The authors of the article single out among these there is a complexity of interpretation: researcher should soak himself into the space of hidden meanings, “decipher” irrational religious arguments, which are very emotional, metaphoric, symbolic, polysemic, should establish connection between fragments of ancient sacral texts and the problem of the article. The problem of authorship is aligned with interpretation, in particular the separation of author’s own individual contribution and that ideological foundation on which the publicist based on. The authors conclude that while characterizing the source under consideration, we should consider that the direction and subject matter of the articles have been defined by the program of the issue of the bulletin, all the materials underwent censorship control and were chosen by editorial office, which practically excluded the appearance of opinions opposed to official ones.

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