Article

Name: «The Life and Praise of Nicetas the Stylite»: hagiographic Canon and especially its implementation

Authors: T. E. Zinkevich

Russian state library, Moscow, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: The paper deals with the hagiographic work of the 16th century – Life and Praise of Reverend Nikita Stylites, Pereslavl Wonderworker. The list is stored in the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library (F. 7. No. 16. Collection of Words and Lives, 16th century Life and Praise of Nikita Stolpnik, 236–252). The purpose of this work is to acquaint the scientific community with one more handwritten hagiographic material and to carry out its textual analysis. The genre-compositional structure of the life of Reverend Nikita Stylite is considered. We study not only the structural scheme of the construction of the Life but also verify its correspondence to the hagiographic canon. The composition structure of the Life is not three-part, but two-part, and consists of the main part of the narrative, presented in the form of thematic blocks, and the conclusion in which there is no preface. The text omits such canonical motives of the life of the reverend ranks as the birth of pious parents, a pious childhood and the hero’s desire to go to the monastery from childhood. Nikita appears from the very beginning of his biography as an adult married man, who collects taxes in Pereslavl, oppressing the inhabitants of the city. In the Life there are motives uncharacteristic for the hagiographic canon of the reverend’s rank, such as the repentance and confession of the hero, showing the beginning of his spiritual transformation. The motive of pillar-dwelling, consecrated in the Life, is rare not only for Russian hagiography but also for the very reverend rite of holiness. The violent death of St. Nikita does not fit into the canonical scheme of the natural death of the reverend, which makes it possible to refer Nikita to another rank of holiness – martyrs. The research of the handwritten hagiographic source, which has not been put into scientific circulation, expands our possibilities in studying of the Life of St. Nikita Stylites. The revealed textual and hagiographical features of the Life of the Reverend Nikita Stylites, the Pereslavl Wonderworker, allow attributing it not only to the rare example of an original Russian hagiography but also to distinguish its originality among the hagiography texts of a rank of Reverends and Stylites.

Keywords: hagiography, canon, reverend, motif, pillar-dwelling, mykyta the stylite

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