The bio-bibliographic dictionary of Orthodox spiritual writers of Eastern Siberia of the second half of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th centuries as a theoretical and methodological problem

The history of Orthodox Church in Siberia comprises more than four centuries. A large number of written works of religious and historical content were created during this time; many representatives of the Siberian clergy can be called spiritual writers. However, the creative heritage of the majority of them has not been reflected in academic research yet. It is particularly relevant for Orthodox literature of Eastern Siberia as the least studied. The need to create a bio-bibliographic dictionary which has to identify and generalize information about spiritual writers of Eastern Siberia is proved in the article, and the concept of the edition is discussed. The key problem is to define the concepts "spiritual literature" and "spiritual writing" concerning which there is no consensus in science. The article claims that spiritual literature is not merely a humanistic literature, but certainly "churched", reproducing Christian Orthodox dogma in all completeness and closely connected with the traditional system of genres of church writing. A spiritual writer is not a writer in the conventional sense, but a religious teacher, a theologian, a preacher, a historian of church, a canonist, a philologist, a spiritual poet. However, the churched nature of literature does not exclude a possibility to include secular persons in the circle of spiritual writers. The bibliography of domestic spiritual literature has a rich tradition. The first dictionaries of Russian spiritual writers and reviews of spiritual literature appeared in the 19th century (works of metropolitan Evgeniy (Bolkhovitinov), archbishop Filaret (Gumilevsky)). In the Soviet period the study of spiritual literature was banned, and information about spiritual writers could only be included in bibliographies of a general character. The revival of spiritual historiography and bibliography in secular literature begins only in the 1990s. The analysis of these editions allows formulating the theoretical and methodological principles of the authors' own research. Special attention is paid to the bibliography of Eastern Siberia. The authors hope that the preparation of the dictionary will actualize forgotten or unknown names of the educated Siberian clergy, and that earlier unknown written works will be introduced for scientific use. The article contains a large number of names (spiritual writers and their bibliographers) and bibliographic references. The publication purpose is to offer the idea of the dictionary for discussion and, perhaps, to receive a response in academic community.

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