Strictly speaking, faith alone was enough for the apostles to respond to Christ's command and fulfill their destiny by being completely absorbed in their deeds. Had it not been for these deeds, they would not have fulfilled their destiny and would have remained fishermen or publicans, as they were before the meeting with Christ, after which their former occupations lost all meaning. From now on, their life acquired a different meaning, revealed and predestined to them by Christ. Along the path illuminated by this meaning, they walked — with an undivided consciousness and without being tempted by the choice or... or... — to the very end, and the martyrdom of most of them cannot be regarded as a defeat of them or their cause: it was so planned from the very beginning that even this death in the "greater" plan of God could not but become a triumph — both for them and for their work. Constantine's situation was different, and it is so easy to imagine him only as a philosopher who from early childhood loved wisdom and craved it, a knight of wisdom and a faithful slave of it, who had never been either to the steppes of Khazaria or to the far northern Moravia, although it is with these missions that his main exploits are associated. Learning of the possibility of meeting wisdom, which for Constantine was rather beloved Wisdom, he, the boy, "with joy of the way, and on the way make a prayer, saying: God our Father, and Lord, merciful, Who didst create all things by word, and by Thy wisdom created man, that he may possess the creatures which thou hast created, that thou mayest give me the wisdom that is in the midst of thy throne, that thou mayest understand, I will be saved by whatever pleases thee. For I am thy servant, and thy son's maidservant. And to this rest she said a prayer to Solomon, and arose, saying, Amen." [It is in this context that the figure of Solomon, which appears more than once in the JC, was especially noted for Constantine, an admirer of parables and "the wisdom of Solomon." To learn the rules of prudence, justice, judgment and righteousness; To give intelligence to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the youth; The wise will listen, and increase knowledge, and the prudent will find wise counsel. To understand the parable and the intricate speech, the words of the wise men and their riddles" (The Book of Proverbs of Solomon 1:2-6). It seems that this book was one of the first mentors of the boy Konstantin in wisdom lessons. When he later wrote or spoke about wisdom, behind what he wrote and said were always the lessons of the Book of Proverbs: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; fools only despise wisdom and instruction. Listen, my son, to the admonition" [...] (1:7-8) or "Wisdom cries out in the streets, lifts up her voice in the squares, [...]: 'How long will you love ignorance, you ignorant? How long will you delight in rioting? How long will fools hate knowledge?'" […] (1:20-22), or "My son! if thou wilt receive my words, and keep my commandments unto thee, that thou shalt make thy ear attentive to wisdom, and incline thy heart to meditation; If thou shalt call upon knowledge, and call upon understanding, thou shalt understand the fear of the Lord, and thou shalt find knowledge in God. For the Lord giveth wisdom; from His mouth is knowledge and understanding" [...] (2, 1-6), etc., up to the famous 8th and 9th chapters quoted above.]

It is possible that the compiler of the JC, when he begins to work, to the sequential exposition of the biography, at the beginning of which the most vivid image, of course, Sophia the Wisdom, as it were, hastens to warn of these possible doubts, and at the end of the introductory part somewhat covertly outlines a thought that in an explicit form contains the idea of imitation of the holiness of Constantine, correlated with the idea of the same imitation of the apostles (and, presumably, the Equal-to-the-Apostles Philosopher) of Christ; At the same time, the imitation of Constantine has in mind first of all his labor, cheerfulness, and the rejection of laziness: "And his life is revealed, and little by little it is said as if it were the same, yes, whoever wills, then hears, will be like him, accepting cheerfulness, and sweeping away laziness, as the Apostle said, are you like Christ." By the way, the GC itself, its factual part, which speaks of Constantine's parents, strongly emphasizes their devotion to God's commandments, their life in God, features that, in theory, should be even more inherent in their son ("Be faithful and righteous, keeping all the commandments of God"..., about Constantine's father; "And this was according to God's providence", about the intention of a mother to feed her son with her milk; "but so he lived in the Lord, as brother and sister", about the life of his parents after the birth of Constantine; "I believe in them, woman, I hope for God"..., the words of the father before his death).

It must be thought that the opinion about the hypertrophy of the image of Wisdom, perhaps even about its partial eclipse of the image of God, is still erroneous, despite the fact that in the historical life of Christianity (and not only it) Sophian and specifically Gnostic-Sophian temptations did take place. In the case of Constantine, everything seems to be different. Wisdom for him, standing between him and God, did not separate them or separate them from each other, but united them and in any case reminded them of God, thereby leading them to Him, and for Constantine knowledge was always not by itself, not from any other sources, but from God: so it was in his own experience — "and from God we came understanding"...  "And the only thing that was required to perceive it was receptivity. But it would also be a mistake to interpret the image of Wisdom as something auxiliary, auxiliary, almost instrumental. There is no doubt that this personified image of the virgin Wisdom, the Queen of Wisdom (cf. Vasilisa the Wise [var. – Beautiful] of Russian fairy tales, i.e. the Queen of the Wise), which so irresistibly struck the seven-year-old boy and so completely captured him, was the most vivid impression of childhood, which gave food for further religious reflection and did not exhaust itself completely at the first meeting with him. Rather, in the image of Wisdom in this particular case, one should see a purely individual and rather original and organic version of the knowledge of God, or rather, the approach to God through the hypostasis of one of its aspects, divine wisdom (it can be recalled that in the Holy Scriptures the word wisdom is heterogeneous in its applications and interpretations; in this context, it is essential that it could refer specifically to God, "meaning His highest knowledge, His Divine teaching, His Revelation, and sometimes the pre-eternal, everlasting Word itself, Christ, God's power and God's wisdom. 1 Cor. 1, 24", see Bible Encyclopedia. Moscow, 1891, 578). It is difficult to judge with certainty why God revealed Himself to the boy in this particular aspect, but there is no doubt that many of Constantine's own features were reflected in this choice: the "fascinative" power of his imagination, his sense of beauty, his delicate taste, his artistic giftedness, the fusion of the intellectual, the "cognitive" with the sensual, the aesthetic: for Constantine, knowledge was not limited exclusively to the intellectual sphere, it captured as before our eyes the unfolding artistic reality (cf. Constantine's knowledge). the image of Wisdom as an "artist" in "Proverbs of Solomon"), in which the Artist-creator and the art-creation, the subject and the object, and that in which both dissolve without a trace – creativity – manifested themselves.

It was mentioned above about the role played in the LC by the beginning and the end, the frame formed by them and marking the boundaries of the whole, within which only one can look for true meaning in its integrity and completeness. Therefore, it is appropriate to recall here only two visions of Konstantin, which the compiler of the ZhK considered it necessary to report. The first, at the very beginning, is connected with the manifestation of Wisdom. It is described so unusually, vividly, and contagiously that it is difficult to get rid of the impression that behind the words of the Life there are no impressions of the vision, set forth in the words of Constantine himself. This first vision is preceded by several phrases about parents, in which, in addition to the individual-specific (Constantine's father, Drungarius Leo, a rich and kind man who served under a strategist; living with his wife, he gave birth to seven children, the youngest of whom was Constantine, the "seventh" [behind the individual-concrete here one can already feel the breath of the "general", paradigmatic, which is confirmed by the composition of the "numerical" indices in the text of the ZhK all of them are multiples of three (a stable and largely independent "constellation" is formed by nine-3x3) or seven; cf. three — the months during which Constantine mastered grammar; the hypostases of God, the Trinity; months, the term of drinking from a wooden bowl to the one who killed a person; the stones with which David defeated Goliath; languages in which it is permitted to glorify God (Hebrew, Greek, Latin), cf. the "trilingual" heresy; the threefold explanation adopted by the Romans from Constantine; 909 is the number of years from the twelfth (3x4) year of the reign of Solomon to the coming of the kingdom of Christ, written on the cup of Solomon, discovered by Constantine and prophesying about Christ; 9 is the number of absolved sins for killing a snake; 900 is the number of prisoners whom Constantine begged from Prince Kocel and set free; 24 (3x8) is the number of years when Constantine was called by the Caesar to service, entering the missionary path; 42 (3x14 (7x2)) is the number of years of Constantine's life; seven of the children of Constantine's parents; the order of its appearance ("be mezinets 7", var. — "mezinyi sedmy"); the number of days that Constantine lay in the reliquary; 14 (actually, more than 14: "for 14 years") is the number of years that Constantine's parents lived (after his birth) "as brother and sister"; the date in February, when Constantine died; 42 (3x14); 6377 (3x2 &3 &7 &7) is the year of the repose of Constantine-Cyril; cf., finally, the noted number 40 — the number of months spent by Constantine in Moravia]) also contains patterns of a general hagiographic nature (the termination of marital relations, the decision to feed the child with his own milk, etc.). The last phrase of the fragment about Constantine's parents aptly sums up the story about them (brief, but to the point) and opens the door to the context of Constantine's first steps in the space of his calling, emphasizing him, as well as his parents, his devotion to God's commandments and God's non-abandonment of his care for him — "I believe in them, woman, I hope God, that God will give him a father and builder of such, Who will build all the Christians. And it will come true."

And as a guarantee of this "realization-fulfillment" and the first step on this path is a prophetic dream, the description of which begins with the sign-marked sacred number seven:

"Seven years old, the lad saw a dream and told his father and mother [which means that the primary source of this information, which eventually reached the compiler of the Housing Code, was most likely the parents of Constantine, almost verbatim, in the first person, who passed on what was told to them by their child-son – V. T.], and he said, as a strategist, having gathered all the maidens of our city, and said to me, 'Choose for yourself from them, if you want to make friends for help and for yourself. And when I looked and looked at them all, I saw one blushing face of all, and adorned with great monists of gold and beads, and all with beauty, and her name was Sophia, that is the wisdom of the Lord."

The boy's imagination is captured by the female image of Sophia the Wisdom he has seen and is especially shining, but what is the meaning of what he has seen and what lessons should be drawn from all this, it is not yet clear to him. And then the parents come to the boy's aid. It is in their words that the luminous theme first arises (before only in a more abstract mode – "enlighten our tongue" and "walk in the light of God's commandments") in which the ideas of the creator, the creature, the creation-creativity are combined:

"And when he heard the words of his parent, he said to him, 'Son, keep your father's law, and do not deny your mother's chastisement.' For the lamp is the commandment to the zakun and the light. And the wisdom of wisdom: be my sister, and make wisdom for yourself: for wisdom is more than a fool, and if you bring me to have a friend, then you will be delivered from much evil by it.

[Both of these parts are not entirely original, but they form a skilful montage from earlier sources that were known not only to the compiler of the JC, but also to Konstantin himself. It remains, of course, unclear whether the seven-year-old boy knew these sources, at least in any free arrangements, or not, but this episode itself is not presented in the language of the boy and most likely not in the language of his parents. but in the way that Constantine himself, who had already passed the course of study, could have said or written. It has already been pointed out more than once that in the vision of Constantine, which appeared to him in a dream, there are undoubtedly echoes of the images of the works of Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzus), first of all his poem-lamentation "Θρήνος περι των τής αυτού ψυχής παθών", in which the author sees two beautiful virgins, Chastity and Wisdom, who opened the way to spiritual life for him. Common in the JK and in Gregory is the motif of wisdom as "my sister", which goes back to the "Proverbs of Solomon", cf.: Say to wisdom: "You are my sister!" (and call your mind your own) (7, 4, cf. — without reference to wisdom, my sister, my bride! Song of Songs 4, 9; 4, 12; 5, 1 and simply my sister. 5, 2). However, differences were also pointed out between this episode in the JC and the comparable one in the poem by Gregory of Nazianzus: the latter does not have the motif of choosing a bride, while in the JC, on the contrary, it is introduced into a certain everyday context of Greek life in the ninth century with the usual "beauty contests" for that time (cf. H. Hunger, Die Schönheitskonkurenz in Beltandros und Chryzanta und die ßrautschau am byzantinischen Kaiserhof. — Byzantion 1965, № 1). The speech of Constantine's parents is edited according to the mosaic principle from quotations from the Proverbs of Solomon (6, 20; 6, 23; 7, 4; 7, 29); cm. Dvornik 1933, 21; Vavrinek 1962, 104–105; Florya 1981, 107].

The episodes and reports that follow this vision in the dream are important for their psychological persuasiveness, because even in spite of the presence of hagiographic clichés (successful book studies), they provide valuable and undoubtedly reliable information about the boy's state of mind, about the change in his moods, which could hardly be used for the glory of Constantine, but (apparently unwittingly) adds much to his human appearance.