The Heresy of the Judaizers in Russia of the 15th-16th Centuries

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Abstract:

This article studies the peculiarities of shaping the idea of a religious movement that arose in Novgorod in the second half of the 15^th century, known as the “heresy of the Judaizers”. The dominant version proposed by the Russian scholars was the theory that the heresy was a class movement struggling with the influence of Moscow in Novgorod. Using the hermeneutic analysis as the foundation of the research, this article examines how the authors of the historic sources referred to the events, what meaning they put into them, and most importantly, whether there was such a thing as the “heresy of the Judaizers” in the sources of the 15^th-16^th centuries, or this term was the result of researchers’ speculation.

The analysis of sources showed that the authors of the annals of the 15^th century practically did not provide any information about the heresy. In contrast, the chroniclers of the 16^th century described in detail the origin of the heresy and the heretics’ trials. Some chroniclers commented on these events. Perhaps, this is due to the emergence and dissemination of the “Enlightener” by Joseph Volotsky — a fundamental work describing the heresy referred to by the chroniclers of the 16^th century. Volotsky called the heresy by the name of its founder, “the Jew of Sharia”, whose existence we can neither prove nor deny. Everything that can be learnt about this heresy is known from the work of Joseph Volotsky, whose ideas were used by the chroniclers of the 16^th century and later researchers studying this subject.

The existing sources do not allow us to state unequivocally that there was a single heretical movement. Most likely, the first and second trials of heretics condemn the representatives of different areas of heresy.

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