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.

Meanwhile, the stone floated on the waves, contrary to human understanding. And yet, lower than the sorrow, nor the greed, nor the thirst, nor the sorrow, nor the thirst, did not come to the monk, but only prayed to God in his mind and rejoiced in his soul. The evil "Roman" remained behind him further and further, but what awaited Anthony ahead and where this "ahead" was, he, of course, could neither know nor guess. And his real path lay from the Roman country along the warm sea, from it to the Neva River, from the Neva to the Neva River, and from the Neva Ezer up the Volkhov River against the ineffable rapids, and even to this place there was no stone to come.

This route itself, where the warm sea is the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea and the Baltic Sea are missed, deserves special attention. In medieval dynastic genealogical legends, the Lithuanians (and apparently the Prussians) actually assume the same path, but to the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic: this is how Augustus' relative Palaemon or Prus from Italy ends up with the Balts, becoming the founder of the dynasty and power there. Since the Russian "historical" and "dynastic" traditions go back to the same source as the early Baltic, a whole range of texts reflects both this very scheme of historical succession and certain fragments of the path that make it possible to reconstruct the route described in the "Legend of the Life of Anthony". Characteristically, these texts belong to the same period from the end of the 15th century to the 16th century inclusive and are based on approximately the same historiosophical scheme. Wed. "The Legend of the Princes of Vladimir" (Augustus sends his brother Prus to the banks of the Vistula, from where Prussia comes; later Rurik, a descendant of Prus and, consequently, Augustus Caesar, comes to Novgorod). The same scheme formed the basis of the "Epistle of Spyridon-Savva", the corresponding articles "Genealogy of the Grand Dukes of Russia", "Chronograph", "Book of Degrees", later chronicles, especially "Western Russian". "Novgorod" literature intensively exploited the idea of such contacts, emphasizing the role of Novgorod. It is worth recalling that the above scheme from the "Legend of the Princes of Vladimir" follows from the advice of the Novgorod voivode Gostomysl to the men of the city to send a wise man to the Prussian land and summon "from the existing families of the owners for themselves", which is later carried out. But not only the succession of secular, state power is carried out by Novgorod. The same applies to the succession of religious tradition. The thesis put forward at one time that the Novgorod (and not the Muscovite) Church is the successor of the Byzantine Church does not, however, abolish the role of Rome, as, for example, it is attested to in the "Tale of the Novgorod White Klobuk", cf. its part entitled "From the History of Roman Behavior and the Rite of Episcopal Writing in Brief, Chudno Zelo", as well as the introductory epistle of Demetrius, the translator and collaborator of the Novgorod Archbishop Gennadius, who traveled from Novgorod to Rome on ambassadorial business and in connection with the compilation of the Paschalion. Finally, in connection with the route of Anthony the Roman, cf. the way back to him, described at the beginning of the "Tale of Bygone Years": ... from the same lake [Ylmer — V. T.] the Volkhov will flow and flow into the great Nevo lake [and] that lake will enter the mouth into the Varangian Sea, and along that sea go to Rome (Lavr. years, 7) and then again: Rome — Tsargrad — Ponot sea — Dnieper and further Ylmer lake, Volkhov, etc.

Anthony's strange movement across the seas and the Volkhov River on a rock is partly in the spirit of Novgorod literature and folklore texts thematically tied to Novgorod. The Novgorodians knew the waterways to the west (Anthony's way back), to the south and to the south-east. Using them (at least partially), they could have ended up in Rome, and in Constantinople, and in Jerusalem, the holy places of Christianity, but, as a rule, those parts of the route that lie within the range of geographical knowledge of the Novgorodians are well known: the distant parts of the route look unclear or simply strange. For example, Vaska Buslaev decided to go to Jerusalem to pray with his "retinue": Thin linen sails were raised, / They ran across the Caspian Sea. — / They will be in the Yerdan River, / They threw strong anchors, / They threw gangways on the steep bank; / Vasily Buslaevich walked here, / With his retinue, / To Jerusalem-city. Another Novgorodian rich guest Sadka needed to go to trade in the Golden Horde, and he went directly in the opposite direction — to the west: Sadka built thirty ships, / Thirty ships, thirty black / ... / Sadka went along the Volkhov, / From Volkhov to Ladoga, / And from Ladoga to the Neva River, / And from the Neva River to the blue sea. / As he rode across the blue sea, / He turned into the Golden Horde. On the way back in bad weather, in order to propitiate the sea king, he had to get off the ship on an "oak plank" (Not only am I afraid to die on the blue sea, Sadke reasoned). The ships continued their journey, and Sadke fell asleep on a plank and found himself at the bottom of the sea, only to eventually find himself in Novgorod before the ship with its companions arrived there (by the way, it may be recalled that Sadke's success began when Sadke went to Lake Ilmen, / He sat on a white-flammable stone, / And began to play with vernal gasp, after which a miraculous catch awaited him [cf. the same motif in the "Life" of Anthony the Roman in the scene with the fishermen]; to the white-combustible cf. the stone on which Anthony sailed to Novgorod). Also miraculous was the aerial journey to Jerusalem and back in one night by John of Novgorod with the help of a demon, described in the well-known story of the fifteenth century. When the demon slandered him before the Novgorodians, accusing him of fornication, they put him on a raft on the Volkhov as a punishment, and the raft went up to the river, and no one flogged him, on which the saint sat against the great rapids, and prayed to God. And when the devil saw it, he was ashamed and wept. The Novgorodians were ashamed and begged John to return, but he was swimming... against the great rapids [i.e., almost verbatim in the same way as Anthony the Roman. — V.T.], but as by some divine power we bear reverently and honestly, until we heed their prayer and sailed to the shore as if we were carrying them through the air, and descended to the land. — [When, according to the old Novgorod book legend about the Sorcerer, demons strangled him in the Volkhov, his body also floated upstream].

This "anti-Roman" beginning of the Tale, noted above, can hardly be reduced exclusively to the biographical layer of the text: the picture drawn from the words of Anthony is too gloomy, the situation depicted is too negative and exaggerated, the narrator is too ideological, and the tone of the narrative itself is too polemical and forced. This assumption about the non-accidental nature of the "anti-Roman" theme, about some special reasons that forced the compiler of the Life from the very first lines to emphasize this theme in its ecclesiastical-religious aspect, finds confirmation at the very end of the Tale. Already after the text of the prayer pronounced by Anthony just before his death (And having given the brethren forgiveness in Christ the last kiss, and standing at prayer, and praying for many hours [...] praying to God, this is the word [...]), and the last request to the hieromonk Andrew, there follows a brief enumeration of what had been done, and a summing up of some of the results (the burial of Anthony by Niphon "with the multitude of the people of that city", the position of the ashes in the church of the Most-Pure Mother of God, the consecration of Andrew as hegumen, who told Niphon and "the prince of that city and all the people" what he had heard from the monk and about "these people"; cf. also the citation of a certain "service" record of Anthony — 14 years before the hegumenship, 16 years as hegumen, and "all the years of living in the monastery for 30"), — after all this follows the command of Archbishop Niphon (it seems that the author of this entire part after the Anthony prayer) "to set forth and write this life of the monk," imperceptibly and as if not quite justifiably growing into a philippic against the Roman apostates,  — … and to deliver up to the churches of God [the future life. — V. T.] for the rejection of the faith of the Christians and the salvation of our souls, — and much more energetically, harshly, threateningly — but to the Romans, who departed from the Orthodox Greek faith and were converted to the Latin faith, to shame, and to reproach, and to curse [...]. In this "Nifont" part, it is precisely the curse of the "Romans" that occupies the central place: it sounds like the last word, unchangeable and irrevocable, as a kind of "rivet" of the black conspiracy, finally clarifying the entire ideological structure of the text, its "super-Antony" goal, so to speak, and, finally, the real historical context in which the life of the monk was included in the "ideological" framework that most clearly reveals itself within the framework of the composition of the text (beginning — end).

That from the very beginning the falling away of Rome from the Christian faith and the transposition into Latin are emphasized, that this falling away is final (the final fall away, the Tale says, not without a certain schadenfreude), that the name of Pope Formos, so frequent in the polemical literature of the time, and the "tradition of the holy fathers of the seven councils" are mentioned, (that the motif of the young Anthony studying "all the writings of the Greek language" is introduced), etc.,  All this undoubtedly refers to the time after the Council of Florence (Ferrara-Florence), which claimed to be the eighth Ecumenical Council, and which adopted a decision on the union of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, signed by Metropolitan Isidore, but indignantly rejected by the Russian Church and the Eastern Patriarchs (except for Constantinople), and, more specifically, to the period of the formation of the ideology of "Moscow as the Third Rome", formulated most clearly by the monk Eleazarov of the Pskov Monastery by Philotheus in his third epistle to the clerk Mikhail Grigorievich Munekhin (1523–1524?). But in the "Tale" in the center stands not Moscow as the successor of the former "Roman" glory and "Roman" power rights (it is not mentioned here at all), but Rome in its "final" fall, its present falsehood and abominability, but also the partially guessable, albeit rather hidden (sapienti sat!) claims of Novgorod to the heritage of old and good Rome, to succession, at least to long-standing ties with Rome (one can recall the "Latin" temptations in the history of Novgorod, about greater openness to the West in general and to the "Roman" in particular, about the enthusiastic reception by the population of Novgorod and Pskov of Metropolitan Isidore, who was on his way to the Council of Florence, the real ties between Novgorod and Italy, which at a certain period surpassed the Moscow-Italian ties).

Probably, Niphon, supervising the compilation of the Life of Anthony the Roman and, possibly, placing the final "anti-Roman" accents himself, considered this anti-Roman, anti-Catholic, anti-papal orientation to be the main ideological task and believed that the figure of Anthony the Roman, who suffered from the impious and abominable "Latins", but who found shelter and peace in Novgorod and, moreover, flourished here in his holiness, was very suitable for using it for these ecclesiastical and political purposes. Indeed, the designer of the final version of the Tale, who most likely had certain preliminary blocks of the written text, which had its source in tradition and rumor, and who is responsible for the chronologically late, last layer of the text, did a substantial, very subtle and, it seems, still unappreciated work of a synthetic nature. He tried to combine (and he did it very skillfully, although still not without visible seams, noticeable, however, not to the "natural" reader, but to the researcher, who has at his disposal historical data drawn from sources other than the "Legend") rather limited information about Anthony, the founder of the Monastery of the Most Pure Mother of God in Novgorod in the first half of the twelfth century, with the "topical issues of the day" of the sixteenth century On the one hand, there are authentic historical figures from a single spatio-temporal focus: Anthony, Nikita, Niphon, Andrei, Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich Monomakh, probably the "Ivan's children" John and Prokofiy, the anonymous "Greek-Gothfin", fishermen, and other Novgorod "people" — monastic brethren, orphans, widows, the poor, and the poor, on the other. From the XVI century, the compiler took the ideological situation of his time, "the topic of this day". The gap of four (and probably a little more) centuries is too great for the union of two epochs so remote to pass organically, naturally, easily by itself. The skill of the compiler, almost imperceptible at the first reading of the Tale, is manifested primarily in the sphere of motivations for the connections of what is happening. A description of the compiler's methods at this point would distract from the main line of presentation, but nevertheless we can name several of the most important motivational nodes: the situation itself — "a Roman in Novgorod" (a combination of the "distant" and the "disunited" in a common and single locus); the two-sided motivation for fleeing Italy (the persecution of heretics, which put Anthony in a hopeless situation, and the miracle of the "floating stone"); the motivation for choosing the site of the Monastery of the Most Pure Mother of God and the basis for naming the monastery (the monastery arises where the stone on which Anthony sailed to Novgorod stopped; during the voyage, a vision of the Mother of God appears before the intelligent eyes of Anthony); explanation of Anthony's refusal to stand on a stone (standing on a stone, as on a pillar), going out into the world, to people, mastering the Russian language, a new kind of activity (building a church); These motives, which are partly intended to explain the four-century shift in time, are made quite subtly, and the reader most likely does not notice (or does not notice immediately) that in the "Legend" all the main characters – Antony, Nikita, Niphon – play somewhat different roles, or rather, roles controlled by the situation of the sixteenth century. its ideological schemes. A careful attitude to the text was manifested precisely in the fact that in the "Tale" the connection between what comes from the twelfth century and what belongs to the sixteenth century turns out to be free (not forced), as if balanced, not insisting on anything with the rigidity that inevitably deforms each of the connected parts. That is why the impression of the "Tale" is justified: it embodies the principle of suum cuique, and everyone, in fact, finds his own, and "not his own" does not interfere with him.