Authors

Marta Łukaszewicz¹;  ¹ University of Warsaw, Poland

Discussion

In the 1860s, Russian literature was flooded by literary texts portraying clergymen, and the majority of these representations were harshly critical. The most renowned of them are "Seminary sketches" by N. Pomyalovsky, but there were many more literary works in this vein, describing the life of seminarians as well as that of the ordained clergy. This negativity was mentioned by N. Leskov in the first version of "The Cathedral Clergy", with a reproof to the authors for being ungrateful. And that was because the majority of them were of clerical origin themselves. 

Although L. Manchester in her work "Holy Fathers, Secular Sons" rightly underlined that raznotchintsy with a clerical background had much more in common with their fathers than it is usually estimated, yet still in their literary texts the clerical milieu was described with criticism. Moreover, this criticism was also present in the works of priests, such as "Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia" by Rev. Ioann Belliustin, or "Livanov" by Rev. Mikhail Osokin. 

In the paper, I examine selected literary works containing critical representations of clergymen, written in the 1860s and 1870s, and juxtapose them with contemporary journalistic discussions about the Church. At the same time, I ponder the question whether the social origin of the authors influenced the way they depicted clergymen and, specifically, what they chose as the main object of their criticism.