The message of Metropolitan Daniel to the starets Dionysius of Zvenigorod

The messages as a literary genre contributed to the flourishing of Russian publicism in the 16th century. There are 45 epistolary texts of arch-flamen in the literary heritage of Moscow metropolitan Daniel, which have almost never been studied and half of them was not published. The study of the messages that refer to particular addressees allows us to define some orienting points in the development of Daniel’s work. The subject of this paper is the history of messages sent to the starets of Joseph-Volokolamsk Monastery, Dionysius of Zvenigorod, the icon-painter and penman, who was in friendly relations with Daniel. The peculiarities of the manuscript and literary tradition of the messages revealed during the study made it possible to determine the principles of codification of the writer’s epistolary code. Three messages of Metropolitan Daniel to Dionysius are known. They all represent Daniel’s answers to the letters written by starets that contain claims and reproaches. The essays were included in the epistolary code that was preserved in the manuscript collection of the National Library of Russia, Q.I.1439, the 60s of the 16th century. The author’s code of Daniel begins with the Message to Dionysius of 1528 concerning the enduring of sorrows. Having a strong position of the beginning of a collection, the essay played a modeling role in the formation of the thematic cycle of texts, following the Message to Dionysius. The pastoral homilies were the central part of the message saying that everyone who took the vows should endure any sorrows, misadventures and afflictions, because that is the way one sanctifies. The message is preserved in three notitiae. The paper presents the results of textological analysis, providing a unique chance to present the history of the author’s text of Metropolitan for the manuscript tradition of other messages and especially of «Sobornik» is rather poor. Two other messages to Dionysius have survived to nowadays in the only notitia, in the collection of the National Library of Russia, Q.I.1439. They were included by the author into the thematic set dedicated to friendship and enmity. The answer-message («To the Starets Dionysius. The answer to his message») has the following features: friendly tone, eloquence, emotional expressiveness although the content is a reproach to the addressee for the improper actions and pastoral homilies that implicitly reflect the unattractive image of everyday life in the monastery. The main advice of the bishop is to love enemies and forgive those who do evil. The content of the third short message «On the like-mindedness and consensus» was a justification of Daniel before Dionysius for the letter that caused a quarrel between the starets and monastery fraternity. Daniel tries to resolve the conflict by explaining his position that is based on the belief that everyone should live in peace and harmony. The last two messages were probably written in the early period of Daniel’s archpastoral. They can be qualified as amicable messages that reflect the life experience of a person and represent the literary letters in the book culture of the Russian Middle Ages.

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