Francysk Skaryna (c. 1490 - c. 1541) was born in Polotsk, into an Orthodox merchant family. Upon baptism, he received the name George. As for the name Francis, V.V. Agievich, convincingly, in our opinion, proved in his publications that it is his literary pseudonym, which Skaryna received when he joined the guild of printers 1 .
Skaryna received his initial education in a Bernardine monastery. Then, like many young people of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, thirsty for knowledge, he studied at the University of Krakow at the Faculty of Liberal Arts (as the philosophical faculties were then called), where professors were such well-known philosophers in Poland as Michael Vratislavsky (1488-1512) and John Glogovsky ( 1487 - 1506). The university course lasted two years, during which the works of Aristotle, whose teaching was preferred in medieval universities, were studied. In the first year, students, having studied his "Physics", "On the Soul" and "First Analytics", passed exams and received a bachelor's degree in liberal arts. The second year was devoted to the study of "Metaphysics", "Politics" and "Nicomachean Ethics". Taking into account F. Skorina's deep knowledge in the field of law, it can be assumed that he attended lectures at the university and at the Faculty of Law - at that time one of the most famous in Europe. At the Faculty of Law of Krakow University, after F. Skorina, one of the famous theorists of law in Europe in the 16th century studied. Andrey Frich Morzhevsky.
In 1506, after graduating from the university, F. Skorina traveled around Europe. Accurate information about the nature of his occupation during this period is not available. It can be assumed that these were years of intense study, since in 1512 F. Skorina at the University of Padua takes an exam for the degree of doctor of medicine. The University of Padua was in the XV-XVI centuries. popular
1 See: Arieei4 W.W. 1st i on the right Skaryny: Whose hands have spadchyna. Mn., 2002.
educational institution in Europe. In Padua in different years such famous scientists as Galileo Galilei, Donapomo Menokio, Darezzo Guido, Tiberio Deciano, Francesco Curcio taught. Erasmus of Rotterdam, Nicolaus Copernicus, Tommaso Campanella were also associated with the university.
The university was also famous for its graduates, among them the Renaissance philosophers Pico della Mirandola and Nicholas of Cusa, kings Jan Sobieski, Stefan Batory, Gustav of Sweden, Pope Sistine IV, and others. University, where the famous anatomist G. Zerbi taught, professor of practical medicine J. de Aquila, the authors of the well-known treatises on medicine at that time B. Montagnana the Younger and A. Gazzi. F. Skorina by this time has a thorough philosophical and medical training. Therefore, it is no coincidence that he chooses Padua for his doctorate in medicine.
This significant event took place on November 9, 1512. The records of the University of Padua say: “... The outstanding doctor of arts, Mr. Francis, the son of the late Mr. Luka Skorina from Polotsk, Rusyn, was subjected to an exam in a particularly strict order on the questions proposed to him in the morning of this day . He performed so commendably and admirably during this rigorous test of his, in answering the questions put to him and refuting the evidence brought against him, that he received the unanimous approval of all the scientists present without exception and was recognized as possessing sufficient knowledge in the field of medicine. That same dayF. Skaryna was awarded the dignity of a doctor of medicine (usually a square hat, a ring and the book of Hippocrates "Aphorisms").
There is no information about the life of F. Skaryna over the next five years. Most likely, during these years he lived in Prague, where he studied typography, translated the Bible into Old Belarusian, and prepared it for printing. On August 6, 1517, the first book, the Psalter, was published. In 1517-1519. F. Skorina publishes 22
books of the Old Testament under the general title: "Bivlia Ruska, laid out by Dr. Francis Skorina from the glorious city of Polotsk, to honor God and the people of the Commonwealth for good teaching."
The language of the Skaryna Bible arose as a result of establishing a correspondence between the Church Slavonic language and folk speech. Having preserved the Church Slavonic base of the text, he introduced a living, folk language into the Bible. One of the first Belarusian philologists, E. Karsky, calls this literary language Old Belarusian.
So F. Skorina laid the foundation for East Slavic book printing. He is also the first East Slavic translator of the Bible into his native language (Hebrew, Greek and Latin were traditionally considered the languages of the Bible). In addition, F. Skorina commented on the Bible (he wrote 25 prefaces and 24 afterwords to the books of the Old Testament). The translation of the Bible into the native language made it more accessible to the “common people” (in the sense of the simple, to everyone), which led to a significant expansion of the circle of its readers.
In 1520, F. Skorina arrived in Vilna, and then in 1522, with the help of Yakub Babich, he published the Small Travel Book, and in 1525, The Apostle, the last of his books.
In 1525, Francysk Skaryna was about 40 years old, i.e. he was at the height of his talent. Why did his publishing activity stop? Researchers attribute this to the vicissitudes of his personal life. In 1529, his brother Ivan Skorina, a major merchant of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, dies and leaves behind numerous debts. The brother's companion was F. Skaryna's wife Margarita. A lengthy legal battle began, as a result of which all his property was described and sold. F. Skorina goes to Koenigsberg, works there as a court physician. Then he returns to his homeland, but in 1530 adversity awaits him again - a big fire finally undermines his financial situation and he leaves for Prague, which he knew, and establishes a botanical garden there.
Period Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russian and Samogitian
The views of F. Skaryna can be judged by his prefaces and afterwords to the books of the Bible - he sought to introduce his compatriots with the help of a language they understand into the simple and at the same time complex world of the Word of God, to introduce ordinary people to literacy and knowledge. It shows that only by taking the path of following Christian moral virtues can a person gain and strengthen his spirituality.
Ontology and epistemology. In his views on the origin of the world, F. Skorina, as a deeply believing Christian, adhered to the theological concept of creationism, i.e. believed that the world and man were created by God "out of nothing". He did not consider the problem of being in detail. Questions of knowledge of God occupied F. Skaryna to a greater extent. This circumstance is connected with his interpretation of the Bible. The problem of being for Skotrina acquires not an ontological, but rather an epistemological aspect. In the "Legend to the first books of Moses, recommended by Being" F. Skorina argues that of all the books of the Old Testament, the books of Genesis are the most difficult to understand. Their knowledge is available only to a select few, for all other people the questions of the creation of the world are the subject of faith: “We, as Christians, for the full faith of the imams of the almighty in the trinity of one God, who in six days created heaven and earth and everything that is in them” .
The greater part of the Bible, however, can be learned both logically and by the applied method, knowledge "beyond speech."
F. Skorina is a follower of Cyril of Turov and Kliment Smolyatich, who asserted the human right to a thorough understanding of the meaning of biblical texts.
F. Skorina in every possible way distinguished between faith and knowledge. In particular, he singled out biblical wisdom and philosophical wisdom, which he understood as knowledge of things. In this, he appears as a successor to the ideas of the supporters of "dual truth" (a philosophical doctrine that distinguishes between faith and reason, divine truth and scientific truth).
The idea of Holy Scripture as a universal work received a new humanistic interpretation from Skaryna.
He argued that "the biblical books are analogous" to the seven sciences redeemed (the Seven Liberal Arts):
1) grammar - “hedgehogs of good honor and movement” - is taught by the Psalter;
2) logic or dialectics, “3 by reason to know the truth from falsehood” - the book of Job and the Epistle of the Apostle Paul;
3) rhetoric, “hedgehogs eat redness”, - the creations of Solomon;
4) music - biblical chants;
5) arithmetic - "Numbers";
6) geometry - the book of Joshua;
7) astronomy - "Genesis" and other sacred texts.
The Bible for F. Skorina is not only the unconditional authority of faith, but also a deep source of morality, an invaluable object of knowledge, a kind of storehouse of natural science, historical, legal, philosophical knowledge. But the Bible is not an absolute source of knowledge. They are given by God in "many and varied ways". This is the natural conclusion of a doctor of medical sciences and a doctor-practitioner. In order to heal a person at the beginning of the 16th century, a certified doctor had to have truly encyclopedic scientific knowledge in the field of medicine, the structure and functioning of the human body.
In the "Small road book" F. Skorina appears as an astronomer. He introduces amendments to the Julian calendar, determines the time of entry of the Sun into each constellation of the zodiac, reports six lunar and one solar eclipses.
Having made the remark that the issues of biblical ontology are difficult to understand, agreeing with the creationist formulation of the emergence of the world, F. Skorina, distinguishing between faith and knowledge, comes to the conclusion that it is necessary for the “common” person to master wisdom and sciences.
Period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russian and Samogitian
Teaching about man. The philosophical positions of F. Skaryna are clearly anthropocentric in nature and generally coincide with the tradition of the Renaissance. The scientist considered man as a rational, moral and social being. Claiming that every person from birth has equal rights, F. Skorina focused on the issues of his moral perfection, the meaning of life and dignity, freedom, civic engagement, common and individual good. He revised the medieval Christian doctrine of the meaning of human existence, where earthly life does not represent a value in itself, but is only a stage to eternal life. Arguing about the meaning of life, he emphasized the multivariance of life positions and value orientations of a person. He wrote that people are “united in kingdoms and in panovania, friends in wealth and belongings, others in wisdom and science, and others in health, beauty and bodily strength, nations in a multitude of estates and a statue, and nations in luxurious eating and drinking and fornication, and also in children, in friends, in servants, and in many other various speeches.
Being sympathetic to the real morality of a person, F. Skorina opposed the Christian commandments to it as a sphere of due, directed the "commonwealth" person to an active socially useful life. He believed that people from birth are endowed with the same inclinations. Human dignity must be judged not by origin, but by moral and intellectual qualities, by what benefit this or that person has brought to his “homeland”.
The moral ideal of F. Skorina is a Christian humanistic concept of life, in the center of which is the concept of good. According to F. Skaryna, a reasonable, moral and socially useful life of a person is the highest good. Skaryna has a priority in national social thought, in posing and solving the problem of "man - society". Exploring the question of the relationship between the common good (the "commonwealth" good) and the individual, he strongly preferred the first. Man is a social being, and only in general
he can realize himself. In this regard, a person is simply obliged to learn to “live together” (together, in society). Only the idea of the common good can unite people.
On the other hand, F. Skorina constantly talks about the need for continuous improvement of human nature, which will contribute to the harmonization of social life. Following Socrates and Plato, Skorina argued that a virtuous person is equivalent to a knowledgeable person, i.e. believed that Christian moral virtues can be taught, that the moral ideal is really achievable with the corresponding individual spiritual efforts of a person.
Giving unconditional priority to spiritual values, Skaryna, as a Christian thinker of the Renaissance, did not oppose them to the values of carnal, earthly joys, he advocated the need for harmony between the spiritual and the earthly.
F. Skorina considered philanthropy to be the highest principle of relations between people. It is noteworthy that he extends this norm of human relations not only to Christians, but also to representatives of other faiths. In this regard, philanthropy acquires in him a universal universal character.
He is also the founder of the national-patriotic tradition in the history of social thought. F. Skorina is a patriot of his homeland. He proved this by his Christian ascetic activity for the good of the fatherland. Medieval thinking was known to be cosmopolitan. For Skaryna, the interests of her people are higher than religious ones. Love for the motherland is elegantly expressed by F. Skorina in literary form: birds flying through the air know their nests; fish swimming in the sea and in the rivers smell their own vira; bees and the like harrow their hives; so are people, and where they were born and nourished, they are according to the Bose, who has a great place to have a great caress.
Thus, F. Skorina considered a person mainly from the moral side. He believed that the main appointment
Perio e Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russian and Samogitian
Man's mission is to do good deeds for his neighbor, to serve the common good. Only in this case a person realizes himself as a member of society.
Political and legal views. F. Skorina stood at the origins of the so-called bourgeois legal worldview. He understood that religion is a powerful regulator of social life. However, in the conditions of the formation of new social relations, it was clearly no longer able to cope with the role of an unconditional social regulator, which it was in the Middle Ages. New socio-economic conditions required new mechanisms for managing society. According to F. Skorina, the right should be such a mechanism.
The scientist distinguished the laws unwritten and written. At first, people lived unwritten the laws of mutual trust and justice. Only with the complication of social relations do laws arise written. From the foregoing, we can conclude that F. Skorina is a supporter of the theory of "natural law", which was understood as a set of eternal and unchanging principles, rules, values arising from human nature itself. These natural, unwritten laws figure in him under the name "natural law." According to F. Skaryna, “natural law” should be the fundamental basis of written law, which, being a human institution, is not formed among peoples simultaneously and primarily depends on the level of development of forms of state life. He considers law itself in interconnection and unity with morality, since they have a single basis - a “born” law, written by God “in the heart of a single person” and imprinted in his mind.
Following the tradition of ancient philosophy: for a sage, the right is superfluous because he does, out of his own conviction, what others do under fear of the law, F. Skorina argued that a moral person can do without legal prescriptions. He writes: “The law is not for the righteous to eat,” since he lives according to the eternal “natural” law. Real life, however,
requires legal intervention: “And they were imputed to the essence of law, or law, for evil people, anyhow fearing execution, they pacified their courage and had no other ushkoditi, and anyhow a good boundary and evil could live in the chambers ...” .
F. Skorina put forward a number of laws and law mandatory criteria, relevant for modern lawmaking. The law should be “honorable, just, possible, necessary, subsistence, near birth, servants of the customs of the earth, convenient to the hour and place, obvious, not having closeness in itself, not to the belongings of a single person, but to written to the commonwealth.” The law will be respected in society if it is fair. An unjust law embitters a person, allows him to be permanently (permanently) violated. Justice (from lat. justice), thus, with Skaryna, it acquires the status of a universal ethical and legal category.
The law must also be pragmatic and workable, correspond to the time and circumstances, open, aimed at achieving the common good. s
According to F. Skorina, one can build the following logical connection between the foundations of the law: reason - social necessity - time and place of action - justice - common good - pragmatism - openness for its study, and, as a result, normal functioning.
The main task of law is the harmonization of relations between all layers and classes of society. Law is not the will of the ruling class, but a special supra-social institution that takes into account the interests of all people: “The rights of the zemstvo, even every single people with their elders, praised the essence of the side, as if they saw life more blindly.”
Justice and the common good in F. Skaryna, therefore, are not only ethical concepts, but also fundamental legal categories. Here the author expresses a brilliant conjecture of the possible coincidence of law and law on the basis of justice (justice), the common good and reason.
Period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russian and Samogitian
From a practical point of view, such a formulation of the issue is focused on humane legal proceedings, which, according to F. Skorina, are based on the same justice. Judges must judge “people with a fair court, and let them not deviate to the greedy side, and let them not see faces, and not accept gifts, since gifts blind the eyes of wise people and change the words of the just. It is fair that you repair the just, if only you were alive and owned the land ... ".F. Skaryna, apparently, knowingly cites such a long quotation from Deuteronomy, where, in essence, a kind of code of honor for a judge is formulated.
The thinker argued that a judge needs to be not only a highly moral and impartial professional, but also an adviser. Judges conduct business not as “kings or rulers on high, having power over them, but like equals and comrades, giving them joy and justice between them.”
Long before the emergence of detailed legal theories in Europe, F. Skorina declares law and law to be the basis for the harmonious development of society. Lawlessness, imperfect justice destroy the public peace. It is the greatest social vice and is comparable only to the concept of sin, therefore it is God's punishment. Law is the greatest public good.
Skorinin's classification of law is also of interest. As already mentioned, he distinguishes between unwritten and written law. The latter is subdivided into divine, ecclesiastical and zemstvo law. divine right stated in the Bible ecclesiastical- in the documents of the cathedrals, zemstvo, or secular,- the most enlightened people and sovereigns. The idea is also expressed of the great role of the people both in law-making and in public life: “On the right of every assembly of people and every city, if by faith, by the union of kindness and by goodness, the Commonwealth is multiplied by the good.”
F. Skorina presents the following classification of zemstvo law. First, he speaks of "common law", which “from all the peoples of the Commonwealth eats observantly, like a husband and wife
an honorable occasion, sawy sighing of children, similarities living closely, speech poignant obscenity, violence by force from debate, even freedom for all, common property for all ... ". “Polish law”, as we see, fixes the general principles of the life of society.
The well-known researcher of F. Skorina's creativity S. Podokshin rightly notes the coincidence of the content of the "natural human law" of Thomas Aquinas and the "common law" of F. Skorina. Both affirm the need to continue the human race, the upbringing and education of children, and other areas of popular law based on the equality of all people. It is noteworthy that Skaryna speaks of the human right to respond with force to any violence.
F. Skaryna is followed by pagan law, which “is praised from many ubo tongues, like reaching foreign lands with a sword, cities and places of affirmation, ambassadors without reprimanding absolution, fulfillment to the world until the hour, the announcement of war by the enemy” . Pagan law refers to the rules for conducting hostilities between states. As a man of his time, Skaryna witnessed numerous wars and believed that they should be conducted in accordance with legal norms - notify the enemy in advance of the start of hostilities, fulfill the conditions of the peace (truce) concluded, respect the institution of negotiations, etc.
Immediately after pagan law comes chivalric, or military. It, in modern terms, is a kind of army charter, since it regulates the combat formation of troops, tactics of conducting combat operations, and behavior on the battlefield.
This classification testifies to F. Skorina's deep understanding of the need for legal regulation of the most important spheres of life and society, which can make it more
P period of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Russian and Samogitian
stable and harmonious. F. Skorina, like the creators of the first detailed political theories of antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, prefers an enlightened, humane and strong monarchy to other forms of government. As ideal rulers, he singled out the ancient Eastern monarchs Solomon and Ptolemy Philadelphus, the ancient Greek and Roman kings and legislators Solon, Lycurgus, Numa Pompilius, who ruled on the basis of wisdom, reason, justice, deep knowledge of state affairs, not shying away from good advice. The sovereign must rule the country in accordance with the laws, control the execution of justice. Its main task is to ensure a peaceful course of life. As a positive example, Skorina mentions the reign of Solomon, when "there was peace and tranquility at all times of his kingdom." However, when circumstances so require, the sovereign, for the good of the motherland, must be bold, strong and formidable.
Noting the class-estate contradictions in society, Skaryna orients the “rich” and “poor” to overcome them through “brotherly love”, “friendliness”, “kindness”, adheres to the early Christian slogan “equal freedom for all, common property for all ...”.
And now the words of Skaryna that the life of society should be based on "badness" are still relevant: "Bad luck destroys even the largest kingdoms."
Although Skaryna is a representative of his time in his views on society as a whole, some of his ideas are modern today. This is especially true of his methodology for creating laws, the need to build relations between social groups and classes on the basis of public consent and mutual concessions.
Worldview thought of the Renaissance. F. Skorina A turning point in the development of the Belarusian national spirituality and culture was the deployment of on the Belarusian lands of the pan-European processes of the Renaissance. The direct representatives of the Renaissance culture were scientists, philosophers, writers, artists, book publishers, teachers, doctors. It is in their midst that a new, humanistic worldview is affirmed and developed, the basis of which is “the teachings about freedom, or about the great possibilities of man in relation to the world, himself, knowledge, creativity, the idea of the inherent value of human life, or revivalist anthropocentrism, where the main thing is not a problem of reward beyond the grave, but the earthly destiny of a person; naturalism as a predominant way of interpreting natural and social reality and man”1. Francysk Skaryna (c. 1490-1541) is the most prominent figure of the Belarusian Renaissance. He owns an important worldview idea about the inseparable unity of universal human values, which in this era took the form of Christian-humanistic values, with the values of the national life of Belarusians. 1Padokshyn, S.A. Belarusian Dumka at the Kantex Pstorp i Culture / S.A. Padokshyn. Mshsk, 2003. S. 70. Rethinking such philosophical and religious and moral concepts as faith, love, justice, the common good, individual and social duty, moral and legal law, theory and practice, Skaryna, according to the famous Belarusian philosopher S .BUT. Podokshina, not only humanizes them, but also ensures their national concretization, interpretation in accordance with the special conditions of life of Belarusians. It was Skorina who affirmed in the minds of our compatriots the humanistic meaning of national-patriotic values expressed by a person's love for his homeland, his language, and the cultural traditions of his people. Having deeply analyzed the work of Skaryna, S.A. Podokshin notes that this outstanding son of the Belarusian people significantly developed and enriched the Byzantine-Orthodox idea of catholicity, substantiated the personalistic concept of man in a new way.
Expanding the boundaries of south-dividual spiritual freedom, he affirmed the human right to knowledge and creativity, coupled with personal moral responsibility for the actions performed. This personalistic attitude was already inherent in the upper strata of Belarusian society, whose rights were secured by grand ducal and royal charters, and then by the Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Orthodox brotherhoods in the Belarusian lands had a significant impact on religious life, independently interpreting the Holy Scriptures. The personalistic tendency is partly connected with the influence of the Reformation, but mainly due to the fact that for a long time religious tolerance was the norm of life in Belarus. In the texts of Skaryna, as the researchers note, there are no terms "Orthodoxy" and "Catholicism"; they are talking about Christianity in general, i.e. about the common thing that unites and reconciles representatives of various branches of Christianity. The idea of religious tolerance was then legally enshrined in the Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and dominated until the Catholicization of Belarusians and their forced transfer to Uniatism began. Skaryna made important conclusions about the rule of law and the need to strengthen the legal foundations of state life. In affirming the natural origin of law, he first of all compares it with morality. Skaryna's worldview as a whole is characterized by a clearly expressed ethical dominant, which also affects his decision on the attitude of Belarusians to the cultural values of the Orthodox East and the Catholic West. Skorina sees the solution of a significant issue for the fate of the Belarusian people in the ways of implementing a cultural synthesis that excludes any kind of coercion. The assimilation of the achievements of Western science and the education system, he believes, should be connected with the Christian value system.
Translating the Bible into his native language, accompanying this translation with numerous prefaces and comments, Skaryna emphasizes the educational and patriotic orientation of all her activities, dictated by the desire to accustom all Belarusians to the spiritual and moral richness of the texts of Holy Scripture. Commenting on these texts and simultaneously expounding her own socio-philosophical views, Skorina, as it were, revives the Aristotelian concept of the common good, associated with the recognition of the need to achieve social agreement regarding the basic values of social life. Skorina's personalism is not identical to individualism; he sees the vocation of the individual in the conscious service to the "good commonwealth", i.e. the common good of the people.
Introduction
Rancisk Skaryna belongs to the glorious cohort of outstanding people, through whose efforts the national spiritual culture was created.
The study of cultural and educational activities and the creative heritage of the thinker has been going on for two centuries now. There is an extensive literature about Skaryna, created by several generations of domestic and foreign scientists. Soviet researchers made a particularly large contribution to scoriniana.
Trying to evaluate his activities, Skaryna characterized it as a service to "people of the Commonwealth of the Russian language." In his time, this concept included three fraternal peoples - Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. The role of Skaryna in the history of the spiritual culture of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus cannot be overestimated. Skaryna is the founder of East Slavic book printing and printing business in Lithuania. The successors and continuers of his publishing tradition in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian lands were Ivan Fedorov, Petr Timofeevich Mstislavets, Simon Budny, Vasily Tyapinsky, Kozma and Luka Mamonichi and many others.
Skaryna is the first East Slavic translator of the Bible into a language close to the vernacular, its commentator and publisher. It should be considered as a forerunner of the reform movement in the Western Russian (i.e., Belarusian and Ukrainian) and Lithuanian lands. Long before the beginning of the reformation and humanist movement in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (which at that time included Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania), in his prefaces to the Bible, Skaryna tried to justify the need to update the dominant religion, morality, some public institutions, in particular law and legal proceedings. Coming up with the idea of the Reformation, Skaryna did not receive wide support in his homeland. Skaryna's influence on the process of reformation in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which began in the second half of the 16th century, was only indirect. It manifested itself mainly thanks to the Skorina Bible, which became widespread and popular on the territory of Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania and Russia in the 16th-17th centuries (see 9, 122-144, 12, 263-276), in the reformation-renovation, cultural - educational and socio-political movement. To Skaryna, to some extent, the judgment regarding Erasmus of Rotterdam is applicable: he laid "eggs", which were then "hatched" by the reformers (see 106. 39). This is how, for example, the subsequent conservative-Orthodox, Uniate and counter-Reformation tradition looked at Skaryna, calling him a “Hussite heretic” and not without reason believing that Skorina’s Bible is the source of many heresies that arose in Western Orthodoxy (see 16, 717). The related nature of the activities of Skaryna and Luther was noted, in particular, by Andrey Kurbsky.
Skaryna is an outstanding East Slavic humanist thinker of the Renaissance. He mastered the ancient Russian philosophical and ethical tradition, which is characterized by a view of nature and society through the ideal of moral beauty (see 52, 15-21), and attempted to synthesize this tradition with Western European philosophical culture and social thought. He was the founder of the Renaissance-humanistic direction in the domestic philosophical and socio-political thought, the national tradition in the history of Belarusian culture.
Skaryna, as a humanist thinker of the Renaissance, addresses the problems of man and society and tries to give them a solution that differs from the traditional Christian one. The ethical moment dominates in the worldview of the Belarusian humanist. The main question for Francis Skaryna, as well as almost four centuries later for the great Russian writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy, is the question of how a person should live, what moral and ethical values and ideals he should profess so that his private and public life does not conflict with his conscience? With his work, Skorina reflected a rather mature level of development of national culture at the beginning of the 16th century.
As you know, a very common way of philosophizing in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was commenting on the Bible. Skaryna, as a thinker, is characterized by an attempt at a humanistic interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. In his prefaces, he sought, with the help of biblical texts, to justify and substantiate the humanistic ideas of the Renaissance about the religious and moral autonomy of a person, his dignity, which is determined not so much by origin or social status, but by intellectual and moral virtues, personal merits; the advantage of an active-practical life compared to a contemplative one; about citizenship and patriotism as the most important social characteristics of a person, etc. In general, Skaryna's worldview is an attempt to revise the official Christian teaching, and above all ethics, bourgeois in its tendency.
The Skorinin Bible played a huge role in the formation and development of social consciousness and self-awareness of the East Slavic peoples. The translation of the Bible into a language close to the vernacular (Belarusian) made it accessible to a wider circle of readers, in fact meant a call for its study and, to some extent, for free research. Thus, voluntarily or involuntarily, the mediation of the official church and theology in relation to man to "divine revelation" was eliminated, faith became the prerogative of individual consciousness. The study of the Bible has tended to lead one to doubt its "divine inspiration" and ultimately to unbelief. By democratizing the Holy Scripture, i.e. making it the subject of study of the “people of the Commonwealth” (this was categorically forbidden by the ruling church), Skaryna affirmed the principle of a person’s personal relationship to faith, prepared a turning point in the consciousness and nature of thinking of his compatriots, opened up the possibility for individual religious philosophizing, free from official ecclesiastical theological authorities. Skaryna himself demonstrated this in his numerous commentaries on biblical books. Thus, he introduced into East Slavic social thought one of the characteristic philosophical and humanistic methods of interpreting Holy Scripture, developed by the humanists of the Renaissance. After Skaryna, attempts at independent interpretation of the Bible, its individual reading and philosophical and humanistic comprehension were repeatedly made in the history of East Slavic culture from Simon Budny to Grigory Skovoroda.
Skaryna is an educator of the Renaissance. He considered one of the main tasks of his ascetic activity to introduce, through the Bible, a “simple and common man” to education, knowledge, to the seven “free sciences” - grammar, logic, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy. Skorina attached no less importance to educating a person through “good-natured philosophy”, and in this matter, in his opinion, the Bible in the native language should have played a very significant role. In the view of Skaryna, the Bible was also an effective means of aesthetic education of a person.
Of course, as a son of his era, Skaryna was a religious person. Without faith, he could not imagine an intellectually and morally perfect person. However, the nature of his faith is far from orthodox. His faith is personal, it is driven by an individual moral duty, it does not need external incentive sources, and in particular the mediation of the church. A person independently, Skorina believed, without church consecration, is able to comprehend the religious and moral essence of "divine revelation" as a result of direct intimate personal contact with the Holy Scriptures. The writings of the fathers and teachers of the church, the resolutions of church councils and theological works of church hierarchs, that is, everything that belongs to the field of church tradition, in Skaryna's view, does not have the authority that official - both Catholic and Orthodox - tradition gives it. Although Skaryna has a certain reverence towards the Bible, it is a special kind of reverence. The Bible for Skaryna is not so much a religious work as an intellectually motivating, morally edifying and civic educational work. Proceeding from such an attitude to the Holy Scriptures, Skaryna, through comments, sought to place appropriate accents in it, to introduce a new meaning into biblical narratives, parables, allegories, to focus on those social and moral and philosophical problems that were ignored or remained in the shadows of orthodox Christian philosophers. and climbed onto the shield by humanist thinkers of the Renaissance.
When reading Skaryna, one must remember the advice that F. Engels gave to K. Schmidt regarding the study of Hegel, namely: not to strive to concentrate attention in the thinker’s works on what served him as “leverage for constructions”, but “to find under an irregular form and in artificial connection "historically true and progressive (1, 38, 177). At the same time, it should be noted that although the desire to make the Bible an authoritative source of education and upbringing of a person has a historical justification, it also testifies to the historical limitations of Skaryna as a thinker.
Skaryna is a great patriot, a faithful and devoted son of his people. Despite the fact that, as a personality, Skorin developed mainly in the atmosphere of Western European culture, he did not “Latinize”, as often happened with his compatriots, did not break ties with his homeland, did not lose his national identity, but gave all his strength and knowledge, all his energy to serving "People of the Commonwealth of the Russian language", drew for the benefit of his people. It is not surprising, therefore, that he elevated patriotism to the level of the highest civic-ethical virtues.
K. Marx considered activities similar to Skorinin’s as evidence of the “awakening of nationalities” in the Renaissance and Reformation eras (see ibid., 29, eighteen). Indeed, Skaryna's Bible played a significant role in the development of the Belarusian literary language and the Belarusian national culture in general. In language, Hegel noted, the creative nature of man is manifested, everything that he represents is presented to them as a spoken word. Outside the native language, a person's thoughts are alien, not integral, and therefore the subjective freedom of a person cannot be fully realized (see 38, 198-199). It is characteristic that the same idea was expressed at the end of the 16th century. one of the founders of the East Slavic philological science - Lavrenty Zizaniy, who believed that the native language is the key, "opening the mind to knowledge for everyone" (49, 2). Skaryna’s appeal to her native language in the process of translating the Bible contributed to the spiritual emancipation of the people, acted as an essential element in the formation of national identity, the democratization of culture, the transformation of the latter from the privilege of the ruling class of feudal lords into the property of broader social strata of society.
In the context of the most severe feudal Catholic reaction and counter-reformation, Skaryna's ideas had a fruitful influence on the national liberation movement of the Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples of the second half of the 16th-17th centuries, on the struggle of public figures and thinkers for the preservation of the national national culture and native language. At the same time, the ideological heritage of Skaryna served as one of the theoretical sources of the concept of convergence of East Slavic culture with the secular culture of the West.
The problem of Skaryna's worldview and the direction of his activity is, in fact, part of the global problem of the formation and development of the Belarusian people as a conscious subject of history, the formation of their culture, class and national identity; this is the problem of the centuries-old struggle of the Belarusian people for their social liberation, national existence and state independence.
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Fonts and engraved headpieces from the Vilna printing house Skaryna were used by book publishers for another hundred years.
views
The views of Francysk Skaryna testify to him as an educator, patriot, humanist. In the texts of the Bible, the educator Skaryna appears as a person who contributes to the expansion of writing and knowledge. This is evidenced by his call to reading: “And every person needs honor, because he eats the mirror of our life, the medicine of the soul, the fun of all troubled ones, they are in troubles and in weaknesses, true hope ... ". Francysk Skaryna is the initiator of a new understanding of patriotism: as love and respect for one's Fatherland. From a patriotic position, the following words of his are perceived: “Because from birth, animals walking in the desert know their own pits, birds flying through the air know their nests; the fish swimming in the sea and in the rivers can smell their own vira; bees and the like to harrow their hives - so are people, and where they were born and nourished, according to the Bose, to that place they have a great affection.
The humanist Skaryna left his moral testament in the following lines, which contain the wisdom of human life and human relationships: have from others ... This law, born, eats in the heart of every single person.
The prefaces and afterwords in the Bible of Francysk Skaryna, where he reveals the deep meaning of biblical ideas, are saturated with concern for the rational ordering of society, the education of a person, and the establishment of a worthy life on earth.
Religion
Catholicism
Skaryna could have been a Catholic, since among the books he published during the Prague period (1517-1519), there were those that were not included in the Orthodox biblical canon (“Parables about the Wise King Solomon” (1517), “Song of Songs” (1518) ). The language of the Prague publications is close to the old Belarusian (contemporaries called it "Russian", hence the "Russian Bible"). In the Grand Duchy of Moscow, Skaryna's books were burned as heretical and written on the territory subject to the Roman Church, and Skaryna himself was expelled precisely as a Catholic. The publishing activity of Skaryna was criticized by the Orthodox prince Andrei Kurbsky, moreover, after his emigration from the Moscow principality. There is also another curious document - a letter of recommendation from the Roman Cardinal Iosaph to the Archbishop of Polotsk about a certain John Chrysansom Skorin, written in Rome. It says that the most illustrious and most venerable brother Ioann Chryzansom Skorina, who is to deliver the message to His Eminence the Archbishop of Polotsk, has been trained in “this city collegium”, elevated to the rank of priest and “returning” to the diocese. Possibly, this Ioann Khrizansom Skaryna was from Polotsk and was a relative of Francysk Skaryna. It can be assumed that the Skorin clan was still Catholic. And then it looks quite logical that the first printer Skaryna bore the Catholic name Francis. However, it is worth noting that, although the document was originally published in 1558, later the researcher G. Galenchenko found that the date was reported with an error and the document should be attributed to the 18th century. This is consistent with the realities mentioned in the document, in particular the existence of the Catholic diocese of Polotsk.
Orthodoxy
Skaryna could be Orthodox. Facts and arguments in favor of the Orthodox faith of Skaryna are just as numerous and just as indirect. Firstly, there is evidence that in Polotsk until 1498, when the Bernardine monastery was founded, there was simply no Catholic mission, so Skaryna's baby baptism was unlikely to have passed according to the Catholic rite.
Books of the Vilna period (1522-1525) were printed in the Old Belorussian version of the Church Slavonic language (for Skaryna's contemporaries and even centuries later, it was the "Slovenian" language - see "Gramma? tіki Slavensky pravilnoe Cv? ntaґma"). This can explain their compliance with Orthodox canons. In his publications, the biblical translator Skorina divided the Psalter into 20 kathismas according to the Orthodox tradition, which is not the case in Western Christianity. In the "Saints" from the "Small Road Book", where Skorina adheres to the Orthodox calendar, he cited the days of memory of Orthodox saints - East Slavic Boris, Gleb, Theodosius and Anthony of the Caves, some South Slavic (Sawa Serbian). However, there are no Catholic saints, including the expected Saint Francis. Some of the names of the saints are given in folk adaptation: "Larion", "Olena", "Hope". Such materials are most thoroughly presented by M. Ulyakhin, who emphasized the absence of saints from the Western Church among those called the Enlightener; introduction of Psalm 151 into the text of the translation of the Psalter, which corresponds to the Orthodox canon; the absence in the Creed of the filioque recognized by Catholics and Protestants; adherence to the Jerusalem (and Studian) statutes, which were used by Orthodoxy; finally, direct statements: “Affirm, O God, the holy Orthodox faith of Orthodox Christians forever and ever” and so on in prayer phrases placed in the “Small Road Book”. It should be remembered, on the other hand, that it was precisely for Orthodox services that Schweipolt Fiol, himself an undeniably Catholic, published books; so the "from the audience" argument is not absolute.
Socio-ethical views of F. Skaryna Brief biography
Francysk Skaryna is an outstanding figure of the Belarusian culture of the 16th century, the founder of the Belarusian and East Slavic book printing, whose versatile activities were of general Slavic significance. Scientist, writer, translator and artist, doctor of philosophy and medicine, humanist and educator Francysk Skaryna had a significant impact on the development of many areas of Belarusian culture. His publishing activities met the requirements of the time and the broad strata of the Belarusian population and, at the same time, expressed the deep organic unity of the entire East Slavic culture, which was an integral part of the spiritual treasury of all European peoples.
Francysk Skaryna was born in Polotsk. The exact date of his birth is unknown. He is believed to have been born around 1490. However, according to the representative of the Institute of Philosophy and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus Vl. Vl. Agnevich, the date of birth of F. Skaryna is April 23, 1476. This date of his birth has not been confirmed in other scientific sources. On the contrary, most of the writers point out that F. Skorina was indeed born in 1490. This assumption is based on the existence in those days of the custom to send boys to study at universities, as a rule, at the age of 14 - 15 years. But the leadership of the universities did not particularly pay attention to the age of the student; the year of birth was not recorded, because it obviously did not have significant significance. It is possible that F. Skorina was an overgrown student. Perhaps this is the origin of the exceptional seriousness with which he treated his studies, and later on cultural and scientific activities.
It is believed that F. Skorina received his initial education at his parents' house, where he learned to read from the Psalter and write in Cyrillic letters. From his parents, he adopted love and respect for his native Polotsk, the name, which he later always reinforced with the epithet "glorious", used to be proud of the people "commonwealth", the people of the "Russian language", and then came to the idea of giving his fellow tribesmen the light of knowledge, introducing them to cultural life Europe. To engage in science, F. Skaryna needed to master Latin - the then language of science. Therefore, there is reason to believe that he had to go to school for a certain time at one of the Catholic churches in Polotsk or Vilna. In 1504 an inquisitive and enterprising Polotsk citizen goes to Krakow, enters the university, where he studies the so-called free sciences, and after 2 years (in 1506) receives the first bachelor's degree. In order to continue her studies, F. Skorina also needed to receive a master's degree in arts. He could have done this in Krakow or in some other university (exact information has not been found). The degree of a master of free arts gave F. Skaryna the right to enter the most prestigious faculties of European universities, which were considered medical and theological.
This education already allowed him to get a position that provided him with a quiet life. It is believed that around 1508 F. Skorina temporarily served as a secretary to the Danish king. In 1512 he was already in the Italian city of Padua, whose university was famous not only for its medical faculty, but also as a school of humanist scientists. At a meeting of the medical board of the university in the church of St. Urban, a decision was made to admit the poor, but capable and educated Rusyn Francysk Skaryna to the exam for the degree of doctor of medical sciences. F. Skorina defended his scientific theses for two days in disputes with outstanding scientists, and on November 9, 1512 he was unanimously recognized as worthy of the high title of a medical scientist. Records of the examination protocol have been preserved, which, in particular, say: "He showed himself so commendably and excellently during the rigorous test, setting out the answers to the questions put to him and rejecting the evidence put forward against him, that he received the unanimous approval of all the scientists present without exception and was recognized with sufficient knowledge in the field of medicine. Later, he will always refer to himself: "in the sciences and medicine, a teacher", "in the medicinal sciences, Doctor", "scientist" or "chosen husband". This was a significant event in his life and in the history of the culture of Belarus - the merchant's son from Polotsk confirmed that abilities and vocation are more valuable than aristocratic origin. Although he is poor, he is capable, persistent and efficient, he is the one who, with his work, his will, overcame difficulties and rose to the heights of medieval education.
After the scientific triumph, information about F. Skaryna is again lost for as much as 5 years. Somewhere between 1512 and 1517, F. Skorina appears in Prague, where, since the time of the Hussite movement, there has been a tradition of using biblical books in shaping public consciousness, establishing a more just society and educating people in a patriotic spirit. It is hypothesized that F. Skaryna, even after completing his studies at the University of Krakow, could live and continue his studies in Prague. Indeed, in order to translate and publish the Bible, he needed to get acquainted not only with Czech biblical studies, but also thoroughly study the Czech language. Therefore, only those who knew its scientific and publishing environment could choose Prague as a place for organizing book printing. In Prague, F. Skorina orders printing equipment, starts translating and commenting on the books of the Bible. An educated and businesslike Polotsk resident laid the foundation for Belarusian and East Slavic book printing.
On August 6, 1517, the Psalter comes out, then almost every month a new book of the Bible is published. In two years he published 23 illustrated books. In the early days of printing (Gutenberg only invented typesetting in the middle of the 15th century), such a pace was impossible without prior preparation. Probably, Skaryna already had a manuscript of all the books of the Bible in his translation into his native language, which he did for several years after studying in Italy.
The Bible published by F. Skorina in its translation into the Old Belarusian language is a unique phenomenon. The prefaces and afterwords he wrote captured a developed sense of authorial self-awareness, patriotism, unusual for that era, complemented by a sense of historicism, unusual for the ancient world, but characteristic of a Christian, awareness of the uniqueness of each life event.
The design of Skaryna's books is also admirable. The publisher included almost fifty illustrations in the first Belarusian Bible. Numerous splash screens, other decorative elements in harmony with page layout, font and title pages. His Prague editions contain many ornamental decorations and about a thousand graphic initials. Later, in publications produced in his homeland, he used more than a thousand of these initials. The uniqueness of the first Belarusian Bible also lies in the fact that the publisher and commentator placed his portrait, complex in composition and symbolic meaning, in the books. According to some researchers, the guess about the heliocentric system is encrypted in symbolic engravings ... If you think about it, this is not very surprising. Francysk Skaryna has a lot in common with Nicolaus Copernicus. At about the same time, they studied not only in Poland, but also in Italy. Both studied medicine. Perhaps they met. But the main thing is different. F. Skorina and N. Copernicus are the founders of the new time, both of them were a product of the same spiritual and historical environment.
F. Skorina's books are a unique phenomenon of world culture: there is no complete collection of his original editions in any library in the world. Czech editions (23 books) became available to the public after their facsimile reproduction by the Belarusian Encyclopedia publishing house in the early 1990s. Last year, at the initiative of the German Slavist Hans Rote, a facsimile reprint with theoretical and textual comments of an even rarer edition of F. Skorina's "Apostle" was carried out.
Around 1521, Skorina returned to his homeland, founded the first East Slavic printing house in Vilna. The very next year, he publishes the "Small Road Book", where he combined the Psalter, the texts of church services and hymns, as well as the astronomical church calendar. In March 1525, he also published "Apostol" (Acts and Epistles of the Apostles) there. With this book, 40 years later, Russian book printing began in Moscow, Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Mstislavets, both natives of Belarus.
For almost ten years, Skaryna has been combining two positions - a secretary and a doctor - with the Bishop of Vilna - an illegitimate royal son. At the same time, he does not leave the publishing business, he is engaged in trade with his brother. F. Skorina does not stop traveling. He visits Wittenberg to the founder of German Protestantism, Martin Luther. Just at this time (1522-1542) the founder of Lutheranism was translating into German and publishing the Protestant Bible. In addition, he was a doctor of theology, and Skaryna was deeply interested in social, legal, philosophical and ethical problems in the context of biblical teaching. However, there was no rapprochement between them. Moreover, Luther suspected the Belarusian first printer of a Catholic missionary, and also remembered the prophecy that he was threatened with spells, and left the city.
In general, there are many similarities in these destinies. Martin Luther, having published the Protestant "Bible" in German, actually canonized him. The same can be said about the role of Francysk Skaryna in the formation of the Belarusian language. Moreover, the influence of his books on the Russian language is indisputable.
Around the same time when F. Skorina visited M. Luther, he visited Moscow with an educational mission. He probably offered his books and services as a publisher and translator. However, by order of the Moscow prince, he was expelled from the city, and the books he brought were publicly burned as "heretical", since they were published in a Catholic country. There is no doubt that some of them still survived. But the influence of the Belarusian F. Skorina on the formation of the Russian language to a greater extent occurred later - through the publication of books in Muscovy by I. Fedorov and P. Mstislavets, who used the works of their compatriot in their work.
Soon, F. Skorina, at the invitation of the last master of the Teutonic Order, the Prussian Duke Albrecht, visits Koenigsberg. However, at that time in Vilna, during a fire that destroyed two-thirds of the city, Skaryna's printing house burned down. I had, despite the anger of the duke, to return. The dramatic events did not end there. During the fire, his wife died. A year earlier, the elder brother, heir to his father's business, had died. His creditors, the Polish "bankers", made debt claims to Francis, and he ended up in prison. True, a few weeks later he was released by royal decree, taken under royal guardianship, legally equated with the gentry (noble) class. The monarch gave him a special privilege: “Let no one except us and our heirs have the right to bring him to court and judge, no matter how significant or insignificant the reason for his summons to court ...” (Note: again royal mercy).
Publishing and educational activities did not bring dividends to F. Skorina, rather they depleted his initial capital. The patron saint, the Bishop of Vilna, also dies. Francis goes to Prague, where he becomes a gardener for King Ferdinand 1 of Habsburg, who would later become Holy Roman Emperor. One might wonder: what is the unusual transformation of a doctor and publisher into a gardener? The explanation is simple: most likely F. Skorina was a botanist-gardener. In those days, medical education included knowledge in the field of botany. According to some archival data, Skorina in Prague specialized in the cultivation of citrus fruits and herbs for healing.
The correspondence of the Czech king with his secretary has been preserved, from which it turns out that the "Italian gardener Francis" (as F. Skaryna was called there) did not serve until the end of his days, but only until July 1539. It was then that the king honored him with a farewell audience.
13 years later, Ferdinand issued a letter stating that "Doctor Frantisek Rus Skorina from Polotsk, who once lived, our gardener, was a stranger in this Czech kingdom, descended to eternal rest and left behind his son Simeon Rus and certain property, papers, money and other things belonging to him. The king ordered all employees of the state to help the son of Skaryna in receiving the inheritance. The archives testify that Simeon also inherited his father's art: he was a practicing doctor and a gardener.
What "Francis from the glorious place of Polotsk" did before his death, whether he returned to the publishing business, history is silent.
All the same Vl. Vl. Agnevich establishes the exact date and place of F. Skaryna's death - June 21, 1551. in Padua.
Social and ethical views of F. Skaryna
The specific social existence of Belarusian townspeople in the system of the feudal system causes the emergence in their minds of new social and moral guidelines and values. In the urban environment, along with wealth, class privileges, more and more importance is being attached to the individual merits of a person, his energy, intelligence, and moral virtues. In this regard, the prestige of professional skills, education, and knowledge is growing. Some wealthy townspeople are beginning to act as patrons, showing some concern for domestic education, printing, and science. It is not surprising, therefore, that it was the urban environment that brought forward one of the most prominent figures of Belarusian culture and social thought of the 16th century. - Francis Skaryna. The appearance of such a person in the history of Belarusian culture in philosophical and social thought was possible only in the conditions of a developed city. It is also very symptomatic that Skaryna's publishing activities in Prague and Vilna were carried out with the financial assistance of wealthy Belarusian citizens of Vilna.
During the XIV-XVI centuries. the Belarusian nation is being formed. The formation of the Belarusian nationality was carried out on the basis of the western branch of the ancient Russian nationality, which during the period of the collapse of Kievan Rus retained many of its tribal, economic, household, linguistic and other differences. Based on a whole range of sources, modern Soviet researchers have come to the conclusion that "the Belarusian nationality, as well as the Russian and Ukrainian nationalities, originates from a single root - the Old Russian nationality, its western part. The Old Russian nationality was a common stage in the history of all three fraternal nationalities , and this is the peculiarity of the ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs, in contrast to other nationalities formed directly from the consolidation of primary tribes. The formation of the Belarusian nationality was carried out mainly as part of a new state formation - the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the socio-economic and political development of the Belarusian lands was of decisive importance in this process. The ethnic basis of the genesis of the Belarusians was the descendants of the Dregovichi, Dnieper-Dvina Krivichi and Radimichi. Together with them, part of the former northerners, Drevlyans and Volynians entered the Belarusian nationality. A certain Baltic substrate also participated in the ethnogenesis of Belarusians, but it did not play a significant role. During the period under review, the culture of the Belarusian people was formed, special features of the national language were formed, which was reflected in writing, including in the works of Skaryna. At the same time, the process of formation of the Belarusian nationality and its culture was carried out in close connection with the economic, socio-political and cultural life of the Russian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian and Polish peoples.
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was not only a multinational, but also a multi-religious state. The bulk of the population, Belarusians and Ukrainians, were Orthodox. The Lithuanians, at least until 1386, were pagans. After the Union of Kreva, the catholization of Lithuania begins. Catholicism, which is patronized by the grand ducal power, penetrates into the Belarusian-Ukrainian lands and gradually wins one position after another there, from the very beginning acting as a means of strengthening the power of the feudal lords over Belarusian, Ukrainian and Lithuanian peasants and townspeople, a means of realizing the socio-political claims of the Polish magnates and expansionist plans of the Vatican. From the middle of the 16th century, in connection with the reform movement, Protestantism in the form of Calvinism, partly Lutheranism and antitrinitarianism was established in Belarus and Ukraine. Its influence on Belarusian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian feudal lords, townspeople, and a small number of peasants is temporarily increasing. However, at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries, frightened by the intensified anti-feudal and national-religious movement, the radicalism of the Reformation, the majority of feudal lords broke with Protestantism and converted to Catholicism. It should also be noted here that due to the prevailing historical circumstances, some of the Belarusian and Ukrainian townspeople and peasants also belonged to the Catholic faith. In addition to the Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism that existed in Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine at the end of the 16th century. Uniatism is introduced. And finally, Jews and Tatars living within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania professed Judaism and Islam, respectively.
At the turn of the 15th-16th centuries, as evidenced by sources and available literature on this issue, Western Orthodoxy was in a state close to crisis. The Orthodox clergy (especially its upper strata) directed all their energy to expanding their land holdings and increasing their privileges. It cared little not only about education, culture, but also about religion itself. Sources of the end of the XV - beginning of the XVI century. testify to the "great rudeness and non-balance" of Orthodox priests.
Skaryna began his career at a time when the contradictions between Orthodoxy and Catholicism and the social forces behind these two religions had not yet become sufficiently aggravated. Meanwhile, from the second half of the sixteenth century. the process of feudal-Catholic reaction intensifies. The activities of the Catholic Church and its vanguard, the Jesuit order, led and directed by the Vatican, are being activated. During the second half of the XVI-XVII century. the Catholic Church in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, with the support of kings and feudal lords, not only became a major landowner, but also made rather successful attempts to take all means of ideological influence into their own hands, acquire a monopoly on education, concentrate printing houses in their hands, establish strict censorship of the press, etc. .d.
Closely connected with his class environment, its ideological aspirations, Skorina is not an accidental figure in the history of culture, social and philosophical thought of the East Slavic peoples, he acts as an ideologist of the progressive strata of society, who managed to look into the historical perspective, outline some significant points in the subsequent development of society.
It was Skorina who first drew the educational program of the "seven free sciences" for national education, which was then adopted by fraternal schools, developed and improved by professors of the Kiev-Mohyla and Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy and played a significant role in the development of the East Slavic education system, philosophical thought rapprochement of national culture with the culture of the West.
F. Skorina stood at the origins of spiritual secularism and Europeanization.
Publisher of the famous “Russian Bible”, educator-scribe. For Skaryna, the Bible is a collection of divinely revealed knowledge and a source of “seven sciences rescued” - grammar, logic, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. Job and the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, rhetoric - Proverbs of Solomon, etc.
Skaryna's sociological and philosophical views are contained in the prefaces and afterwords, which he placed in all the biblical books he translated.
The prefaces and Tales of F. Skaryna to the books of the Holy Scriptures are of great interest and have no analogues (a common preface-interpretation to all biblical books appeared in the Elizabethan Bible in 1751).
In the preface to the book Job, Job at Skaryna does not appear as a grain of sand lost among the universal myriads, as in the cosmogony of J. Bruno, but is in direct dialogue with the Creator, who is promised salvation and adoption.
Skorina's exegesis, inheriting the best early Christian traditions, usually reveals in the text not an external eventual, literal, but a deeply antitypical, symbolic meaning.
The genre of prefaces, their rich connecting palette, their structural and syncretic diversity can be truly understood only on the basis of pedagogical, philosophical and exegetical ideas. Skaryn, finally, from the importance he attached to each of the books of Holy Scripture in the matter of spiritual enlightenment and correction of the morals of the “common people”.
Starting to translate into the "folk language" and print copies of the books of Holy Scripture, the Belarusian educator foresaw the onset of a new stage of acquaintance with the Bible - not from the preaching of experienced theologians, but from independent reading, fraught with the danger of a simplified understanding of the books of Holy Scripture. According to the idea of the Belarusian theologian, in order to prevent a simplified interpretation, the translation and edition of the biblical text should have been accompanied by an appropriate commentary and analytical apparatus. And, in essence, we see that Skaryna's preface from a service genre develops into a syncretic genre, where, along with information of a theological, historical, lexicographic nature, an important place is occupied by the interpretation of the antitypical-allegorical content of biblical books.
Afterwords as the final element in Skaryna's system also play a rich informative role. In them, despite the lapidary form, the interpretation of the biblical content, begun in the preface, often continues.
Laconic afterwords complete each of the Prague Old Testament editions. The set of information contained here is approximately the same: the title of the book, the name of the translator and publisher, the place and time of publication. According to the afterword scheme, they could also repeat each other, because only the titles of books and the time of publication changed in them. Skaryna, however, tries to avoid dull repetition, all his afterwords are different.
Conclusion
The worldviews of F. Skaryna are secular, social and ethical in nature, humanistic in nature. In the center are social and moral issues. He solved them, relying primarily on the Bible. In it, he singled out two types of laws - “innate”: divine, existing in the soul of a person from birth, thanks to him he distinguishes between good and evil, does good to his neighbor; and “written”: it arises out of necessity and reflects the change in people’s lives in different eras and in different countries. It equalized the laws of the worldly and divine, the Holy Scripture lost the aura of inviolable holiness, became available to every thinking person. There was no need for the mediation of the church, and the person himself "He turned out to be the creator of his own destiny. The essential virtue of a person for Skaryna is reason. He called for turning it for the benefit of his people, the state. He is a patriot, for him serving the fatherland is more important than church sacrifices, more important than faith itself. Patriotism, a sense of duty to the motherland give moral and national the nature of Skaryna's worldview, make him a herald of Renaissance ideals in East Slavic society.
Briefly, his ideas can be summarized as follows:
patriotism;
calls on people to faithfully serve their Motherland;
state - an organization of the population, which occupies a certain territory and is subject to the same authority;
the goal of the state is to achieve the common good, a better standard of living;
the relationship between the rich and the "wretched" must be built on the basis of "brotherly love";
society should be built on the principles of peace and harmony;
the law must be usable, useful to the population, conform to customs, time and place;
was a supporter of the concept of natural law;
did not recognize the harassment of the clergy on the leadership of lawmaking and judicial practice;
adhered to the idea of the supremacy of the people in lawmaking;
was a supporter of peace among peoples ("eternal peace").
Bibliography
1. Aprimene A.Yu. Language of the Apostle Francysk Skaryna 1525: Author. cand. diss. - Minsk., 1977.
2. Belarusian educator Francysk Skaryna and the beginning of book printing in Belarus and Lithuania. - M., 1979.
3. Bulyko A.N. West Slavic vocabulary in the editions of Francysk Skaryna. // Belarusian educator Francis Skorina and the beginning of book printing in Belarus and Lithuania. - M., 1979.
4. Golenchenko G.Ya. The time of birth and death of F. Skorina // Francysk Skorina and his time: Encycl. directory. - M., 1990.
5. Grinblat M.Ya. Belarusians. Essays on origin and ethnic history. - Minsk, 1968.
6. From the history of philosophical and socio-political thought of Belarus. - Minsk, 1962.
7. Mylnikov A.S. Francis Skorina and Prague // Belarusian educator Francisk Skorina and the beginning of book printing in Belarus and Lithuania. - M., 1979.
8. Nemirovsky E.L. Francysk Skaryna: Life and work of the Belarusian educator. - Minsk, 1990.
9. Francysk Skaryna and his time: Encikl. directory. - M., 1990.
10. Yaskevich E.A. Works of Francysk Skaryna: Structure, exegesis, imagery: Abstract of the thesis. cand. diss. - Minsk, 1994
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