THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCE OF BYZANTIUM AND SOUTHERN SLAVS ON THE FORMATION OF THE OLD RUSSIAN BOOK TRADITION IN THE 10TH - 12TH CENTURIES
The article considers the process of reception and creation of the old Russian spiritual tradition by referring to Byzantine and south Slavic literature in translation. The formation of the spiritual culture of ancient Russia is revealed through the concept “Slavia Orthodoxa” as a category reflecting the birth of the Slavic Christian world due to the unity of the spiritual and book environment.We can note the following basic features of theological and philosophical influence of Christian ideas on the formation of Russian spiritual culture. This is the lack of dichotomy of secular and religious intelligence. They tend to unite various Byzantine currents of thought into a single focus of Christian tradition. The next feature of the old Russian book tradition is compilation. The influence of Byzantine idea on Russian literature has two levels of compilation from domestic thinkers of the Middle Ages. Firstly, it’s the influence of church literature including liturgical books, sermons, hymnography, theology. Secondly, it’s socially oriented Christian literature (hagiographic, apologetic and ascetic types of Christian literature). Rare secular worksstand apart (historical annals and chronographs, novels and stories, treatises on medicine, etc.).The addition to the picture of influences on Russian spiritual culture by Byzantine scholarship is intellectual connections with Latin and Judaic intellectuality. It is established that Russia having made a Christianity choice under Prince Vladimir in its Byzantine version set a development vector of its spiritual culture and scholarship. Domestic thinkers received a wealth of Orthodox teaching. Almost immediately they borrowed the approaches to solving worldview, ethical and aesthetic problems. At the same time despite its dogmatic nature Christian teaching in Russia found its national reading.