The work involves the analysis of one of many similar examples of such Russian-Italian meetings, which in the general chronological context of relations between these two ethno-cultural elements should be classified as undoubtedly early. If the first example refers to the situation of the "Italian in Russia", then the second, which will be considered elsewhere, will deal with the opposite situation: the Russians in Italy (based on materials relating to the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-1439). on the above-mentioned effect of the reproduction of the "extended order of human cooperation"; thirdly, on the pre-eminent value of such meetings as the grace of those who are sent down and on their role in culture and, above all, in the consolidation of the fabric of human existence, but also on those cases where prejudice and lack of good will lead to that "hateful separateness of the world" which gives rise to fear, sows the seeds of mutual distrust, ill-will, hatred that freezes the eyes and makes one forget about God's providence for people, about the common work of God on earth.

Needless to say, these aspects do not exhaust all the value that can be provided by the sources testifying to such meetings.

ANTHONY ROMAN — a Novgorod saint in his "life"

When a text appears as the only or not the only, but the main source of what is communicated in it, its reality is self-sufficient: moreover, it is "stronger" than the completely unclear and divinatory reality behind this text, and it is possible to break through to the latter only if the reality of the text is accepted as the first and necessary step, because it is in the text that its author, skillfully or unskillfully, communicates this and usually in this way. what and how he wanted. Only after the recognition of the sovereignty of the text and its choice as a kind of guiding thread by which it is possible to find a different "extra-textual" reality, it becomes possible to restore the fragments and/or the very scheme of this event reality subject to the text, from the point of view of which alone it is possible to judge the degree of correspondence between the reality of the text and the reality of the events described. Strictly speaking, this "order" of realities, their hierarchy, their cognitive-informational values cannot be otherwise. Ontologically, the text is primary. A "pure" event (if it exists and if it is necessary in this form) is usually too abstract and "unweighed" and, consequently, "elusive" in the space of meaning, attitude, orientation, evaluation). In practice, it is often more important for the consumer of the text to know the "impure" truth of the text, mixed with evaluation, "interpreted", that is, the point of view of the author of the text, his position; but even for the historian, who considers the text as the source of something "main" for him and lying behind the text, it is first of all necessary to criticize the text, which involves clarifying how the consumer of the text, contemporary with him or placing himself in the same time as the text, understands the text, what he sees or even wants to see in it. Neither the intention of the consumer of the text can be ignored, if only the researcher and/or the reader is interested in both the text itself and the reality behind it.

Therefore, the first necessity and the first step dictated by it is to trust the text and only the text completely, to surrender to its logic, to feel and assimilate it as one's own. But first of all, a few reminders of the text of the life of Anthony the Roman. The content of the life is evident from the title of the text: "The Legend of the Life of Our Venerable and God-bearing Father Anthony the Roman and of the Coming from the City of Rome to Novgorod the Great." The "Tale" was compiled, as it is now assumed, in the 70-80s of the XVI century (Slov. knizhn. Dr. Rusi, vol. 2, ch. 1, 1988, 246; it is considered possible to attribute to Niphon, a monk of the Novgorod Anthony Monastery, the author of a cycle of unpublished works about Anthony the Roman, the compilation or redaction of the "Life of Anthony" itself, but "this attribution is not unconditional", see ibid., vol. 2, part 2, 1989, 141), but other opinions cannot be completely ruled out, such as the very end of the 16th century (Golubinsky, Valk – 1598), not earlier than the 30s of the same century, or even the end of the 15th – the beginning of the 16th century (Tikhomirov 1945). It can be thought that some parts of the "Tale" refer to different dates. In the formation of the "final" version of the text, authentic fragments of very different epochs, starting from the twelfth century, were taken into account and included in one form or another; in the sixteenth century, when the problem arose of creating a canonical text of the "official" life, the rapidly changing situation required corrections and additions in accordance with the burning issues of the day. The idea of a gradual (until the end of the 16th century) formation of the text of the "Tale" is plausible. And in fact, it presupposes much earlier authentic texts, in one way or another connected with the name of Anthony: his spiritual and his deed of sale, reflected in the text of the Tale and traditionally related to the time not later than 1147, the year of Anthony's death (cf. Gram. Vel. Novg. and Psk. 1949, 159-161, NoNo 102-103) and a legend, which arose, of course, long before the sixteenth century and, apparently, continuing a certain folk tradition ("rumor"), which could arise immediately after the death of the monk and over the course of three and a half centuries either fade away, or flare up, responding to the changing situation [in resolving the question of the authenticity of the spiritual and deed of sale of Anthony in the works of the 40-70s, significant progress was achieved: the hypercritical tendency in relation to these documents was "interrupted", developing along an increasing line (Golubinsky 1904, 590–595 and Klyuchevsky 1871, 307–308: the spiritual one is authentic, but renewed, the bill of sale is forged; Valk 1937, 295–300: both charters are forged and fabricated at the end of the 16th century in connection with the litigation of the posad people with the Antoniev Monastery); as a result of the insightful studies of Tikhomirov 1945, 233–241 and Yanin 1966, 69–80; 1977, 40-59, the situation in the most probable version is depicted as follows: the spiritual deed is authentic and was written before 1131, the deed of sale is also authentic, but it was written in 1354-1357 and, therefore, could not have belonged to Anthony; attributing it to the monk is not a falsification, but a mistake that arose due to the fact that both charters (spiritual and deed) in the sixteenth century were combined into a kind of convolute, generally attributed to Anthony and used in his life]. In accordance with the chronological heterogeneity of the Tale, strictly speaking, there cannot be a single author of the text. In connection with the problem of authorship, two figures deserve special attention: Anthony's successor and disciple Andrei (cf. In the same summer [6664] the abbess Andreevi after Ontone. 1st New Year, 28; The same year [6665] Andrew, the abbot of the Holy Mother of God, and others), who is mentioned more than once, in particular and in person, in the "Legend" (cf. To me, the hieromonk Andrew, God vouchsafed to perceive this angelic image; he was in obedience and instruction to the monk; — and led my accursed the monk his coming from Rome [...] and commanded me to write all this after my repose, and to give it to the church of God, to those who read and listen to the crawling of the soul...; — and commanded the hieromonk Andrew to himself the censer and the departing singing; "And with the blessing of the monk, Archbishop Niphon ordained the Monk Hieromonk Andrew as hegumen. And these Andrews gave occasion to Archbishop Niphon and the prince of that city, and to all the people, when they heard from the monk and about these people [...] And Archbishop Niphon commanded that this life of the monk be set forth, and written, and that the churches of God be given over to the confirmation of the Christian faith and the salvation of our souls...), and Archbishop Niphon of Novogorod, who had known Anthony for many years of his life, loved him (for he loved the monk for his great virtue), he took part in it (And ordained the monk to the deaconate, then to the priesthood, and the same abbot), was present at the burial of Anthony, ordered the compilation of the Life of Anthony and did much for his canonization in 1597 (Niphon is mentioned many times in the 1st New Year. up to 1156: In the summer of 6664 [...] In the same spring Archbishop Niphon reposed, April 21). In any case, Andrei and Niphon are the extreme figures in the history of the creation of the "Life" of Anthony: Andrew is the initiator (unless Tikhomirov is right in admitting that the author of the "Life" could also be the abbot of the Antoniev monastery in 1499, Andrei, with whom another Andrew, a disciple of the monk, was confused, which, however, for a number of reasons raises doubts) and Niphon is the finalizer. It remains to say that the copies of the Tale preserved in manuscripts of the late sixteenth and eighteenth centuries are very monotonous (although additions continued later); cf. Barsukov 1882, 48–51, Popov 1875, 435–438. The manuscript of the former. Blush. Muses. No 154 (Pam–ki Star. Russk. lit. 1860, issue 1, 263–270) and a manuscript from the Solovetsky library. monasteries. No 834 (Pravosl. Sobes. 1858, No 5–6, 157–171, 310–324). The text is quoted from ed. 1860. Although Buslaev wrote about the "Tale" 1861, vol. 2, 110–155; Klyuchevsky 1871, 306–311; Golubinsky 1904, 590–595; Tikhomirov 1945, 233–241 and others, nevertheless it remains an unappreciated monument and needs further textual and research work (the one proposed below is no more than a brief version of some aspects of the Tale related to the topic of early Russian-Italian relations).

The content of the "Legend" briefly consists in how a certain righteous man, a native of Rome, miraculously came to Novgorod, how he gradually established relations with the Novgorodians – from the common people to the highest ecclesiastical authority (Archbishops Nikita and Niphon), how he lived righteously – in his labors and prayers – how he laid the foundation stone church of the Most Pure Mother of God (this is also reported by other sources, cf.: In the same summer [6625] the hegumen Anton laid the foundation stone church of the holy Mother of God monastery. 1st Novg. years, 20), how he further expanded the monastery, what kind of person he was and how he died and was buried. The purpose of the "Legend" is to bear witness to the locally venerated righteous man, inseparable from this place (this combination itself, with variations, is repeated more than ten times and always in conjunction with the "Novgorod" locus and already with the place where the monastery of the Mother of God arose; this place is indicated immediately upon arrival in Novgorod: ... there is nowhere to reach this place. And a stone was placed, on which the monk stood and prayed, at the bank of a great river, called Volkhov, on the place of seven... etc.), to glorify him and thereby prepare the already maturing canonization of Anthony. In other words, the purpose of the "Life" is not simply cognitive and informational, not connected with anything else, but purely practical, opening the way to the canonization of Anthony as a saint.

A more attentive reading makes it easy to notice that the emphasis on this place, in addition to the general statement about the connection of holiness with man and his locus (a holy place is a holy person), probably has another purpose – to prove the right to this place in the event of possible disputes in connection with the identification of possessory rights. In fact, both the Spiritual Anthony of Rome and the Bill of Sale associated with him (both of these charters are reflected in the "Legend") confirm what has been said. In the very first sentence of the Bill of Sale, its compiler declares: Behold the labor, my Most Pure Mother of God, and they have labored in the place seven. Further, reporting on the purchase of this place from the posadniks' children Smekhna and Prokhna (I bought the land of the most pure for the house from Smekhna, and from Prokhna from Ivanov's children from the posadniks, cf. in the "Legend": And St. Nikita sends the posadniks after John and Prokofiy (= Prokhna. — V. T.) after Ivan's children of the posadniks, who, having listened to the saint with love and measured out for the church and under the monastery the land for all countries at fifty sazhens), the compiler of the charter describes in detail the boundaries of this place – the purchased land and warns: And whoever will step on this land, or the mother of God will rule. Attributing this charter to Anthony, they proceeded from the fact that these are the words of Anthony himself, which is confirmed by the Spiritual Anthony, undoubtedly belonging to Anthony. All of it is about this place, cf. the dotted line: Behold, the tongue of Anthony, who was in the midst of it, went out to this place, and did not accept any possessions from the prince or from the bishop [...] Yes, the mother of God is to govern everything, that I have accepted misfortunes about this place. And behold, I entrust [...] this place to the abbess [...] And whom the brethren shall choose, but from the brothers, and whosoever endures in this place. And if our brother begins to become hegumen from this place, either by bribe or by force, let him be accursed; Either the bishop begins to appoint someone for reward, or he begins to do violence in this place, let him be accursed. And behold, I declare: when I sit in this place, I am far away on earth, and seventy hryvnias on the ground... All these explanations, precautions and curses to those who would ignore Anthony's warnings turned out to be useful precisely when the canonization of Anthony was being prepared (the charter of Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich of 1591 testifies that in 1559-1560 there was indeed a lawsuit between the monastery and the posad people over land, which ended in the victory of the posadskys).

This place is a well-chosen place, and Saint Nicetas, seeing that Anthony "was vouchsafed a great gift... from God", strenuously persuades him to "choose for himself the place he needs", this place. However, the monk could not do this, and having answered, he said: For the Lord's sake, more holy than God, do not bother me; For in that place I must endure, where God commanded me! Now Anthony has his own place, the stone on which he sailed to Novgorod, praying to the Lord and the Mother of God, and apparently believing that this was their will regarding his place. But this conviction of Anthony was only relatively true, true only during his salvific journey by sea. Having arrived in Novgorod and having turned from a chuzhenin into one of his own, he was no longer worthy of that place, but of this place, and in this he finally succeeded in convincing Saint Nikita (to the chronology, cf. In the summer of 6616, Archbishop of Novgorod Nikita reposed in the month of Genvar in 30, New Year, 19), who found the necessary argument and the right words: God and the Most-Pure Mother of God willed, and having chosen this place, he desires that by thy reverence a church of the Most-Pure Mother of God of her honorable and glorious nativity may be erected, and that there shall be a great monastery for the salvation of me; Wherefore on the eve of the feast of that feast God hath set thee in this place. And only then did Anthony agree – the will of the Lord, be it!

This agreement of Anthony is evidence that now he himself understands that his past, and with it his "foreignness", has been overcome; isolation and isolation (standing on a rock), the awareness of one's unworthiness as a manifestation of underestimation of oneself against the background of very high demands on oneself must now give way to openness, connection with the work, and through it with people, to work in Christ. From that moment on, Anthony was not only open to people and the cause, but he was one of his own: the otherness that tormented him, the discontinuity with the people of this place disappeared. What is the reason for this complex of one's own "chudness" and what are its real foundations? And here we need a temporary digression.

Anthony was a stranger in Novgorod because he was a Roman, but he was also a stranger in Rome because he was a Christian, and the people with whom he was doomed to live, the Romans, and more broadly the Italians, were mired in the "abominable heresy." This incompatibility of Antony with Rome, in the consciousness of Rome's historical primacy in the sphere of power, secular and spiritual, now lost or irreparably distorted, explains the intolerability of his situation, his paradoxical "placelessness" and inappropriateness, it would seem, in his natural place, where he was born and where he was supposed to live.

Having reached this node in the semantic fabric of the Tale, the reader suddenly begins to feel some special deliberate nature of one of the lines of the narrative. This line begins with the very first phrase, marked by its length, and the "stuffing" of information, and a kind of artificially heated haste, the desire to speak in a single spirit about everything important, as if staking out everything that is possible at once. The Rome of Anthony is quite different from the Rome of Alexius the man of God: different times are different and Rome is different. This venerable and God-bearing Father Anthony, — thus begins the Tale — was born in the great city of Rome, which was from the western part and from the Italian land, from the Latin language, from the Christian parent, and from the faith of the Christians, and keeping his parent in secret, hiding in his houses; since Rome fell away from the Christian faith and changed into Latin, finally falling away, from Pope Formos even to the present day. Obviously, this is a paraphrase of the original words of the biographer Anthony ("and many others about the falling away of the Roman pretext and about their theometrical heresy, let us keep silent about this"). Further, the author reports that Anthony learned to read and write, studied all the writings of the Greek language, and diligently began to honor the books of the Old and New Testaments, and the tradition of the holy fathers of the seven councils, and expounded and explained the Christian faith. But it is not possible for people to carry all this, which has been perceived and assimilated, deeply experienced in personal experience, into the world, at least for Anthony: in his religious-psychological type, he is not a martyr-confessor, but a worker and a man of prayer. But there is no place for labor in the conditions of the "abominable heresy" and persecution, and there is no place for the young Anthony. For this reason he began to perceive the monastic image, and, distributing the property of his parents to the poor, and hiding the rest of what was dear to him in a delva, rexhe in a barrel, closed it tightly and providentially gave it over to the will of the sea waves. He himself went to the distant wilderness to seek out the monks who lived and toiled for God's sake. Hiding from the heretics in caves and crevices of the earth, Anthony finally finds the desert dwellers led by a man with the rank of presbyter, and asks them to include him in their God-chosen flock. And they, fearing heretics and persecutors, asked him many questions with a rebuke about Christianity and the heresy of the Romans. But even when he told them about Christianity, the desert dwellers told him approximately the same thing as Anthony of the Caves said to the youth Theodosius who came to him: "Child Anthony! Wherefore thou art young, thou canst not endure the life of the world and the labors of the monks. At that time he was 18 years old [...] He unceasingly bowed down to them and prayed for the reception of the monastic image, and as soon as he received his desire, he tonsured him into the monastic image. Anthony spent twenty years in this wilderness, working day and night, fasting, praying to God. But the desert did not become a reliable refuge either. The devil has raised a new persecution against Christians: the princes of that city [Rome – V.T.] and the pope have sent them into the deserts, and they have begun to give them over to torture. It so happened that on the morning of the very day of Christ's Resurrection, the persecutors appeared in the wilderness, and the hermits were forced to flee one by one. And the Monk Anthony began to live by the sea, not in passable places, only on a stone nights and days unceasingly, and praying to God, and having no shelter or hut. For a year and two months this standing continued, and Anthony labored only a little towards God, praying in fasting and in vigil and in prayer, as if he were like an angel. It is difficult to say what would have happened next, if on September 5, 6614 [1106] a miracle had not occurred: the great evil rose in the wind, and the sea shook, as it was, so did the waves of the sea rising to the stone, on which the Monk Anthony stood and sent up unceasing prayers to God. Suddenly, a wave picked up the stone and carried it across the sea as easily as if it were a ship. The monk with all his soul, with love, prayed to God: for sweetness and enlightenment and joy are ever to those who love him, and as they love and ever, so God dwells in him. The description of this ecstatic state, as if transformed into its opposite, into an intellectual sight turned inward, into a descent into one's heart, deserves to be reproduced:

The monk, having an image of him [of God — V. T.] in his heart, ever glorified the icon of God, not with a ball [paint. — V. T.

And it is not true, when the day is night, but with an inviolable light.