CC BY
10
2017
ВЕСТНИК САНКТ-ПЕТЕРБУРГСКОГО УНИВЕРСИТЕТА ФИЛОСОФИЯ И КОНФЛИКТОЛОГИЯ
Т. 33. Вып. 2
ФИЛОСОФИЯ И КУЛЬТУРОЛОГИЯ
UDC 22.04 22.05 22.07 D. A. Bratkin
WHY HIEROMONK ALEXEI VINOGRADOV WAS (NOT) A SCHOLAR? A LATE 19th CENTURY EXAMPLE OF TRANSLATIO STUDII
The main subject if this article deals with the scholarly value of the works published by Alexander Nikolaevich (Hieromonk Alexei) Vinogradov (1845-1919/20). The author provides a list of Vinogradov's principal published works and explains what made them different in comparison with the Russian literature of his time. Analysis shows that Vinogradov, who had received no systematical higher education on ecclesiastical subjects, was able to assess his subject matter freely and widely. His desire to do scholarly research in any form available at the time, his enchantment with China, and official assignment to supervise Bible translations from Church Slavonic into Chinese brought him to notice the difference between the Slavonic and the English Bible. So he produced a three-volume work on the history of biblical translations into English. It is the only treatment of this subject that has ever been written by a Russian scholar. The work is based mainly on the English treatises of the time, and open (i.e., not hindered by any confessional Orthodox anti-Western or anti-critical attitude) reception of the English literature made this work special. So far as Vinogradov was mainly translating, copying and pasting the English sources into his Russian text, he worked along the medieval fashion of 'translatio studii'. Yet, as he is slavishly copying the critical literature of the 19th century, the outcome of his work stimulates and encourages the reception of critical scholarship. Refs 7.
Keywords: hieromonk Alexei Vinogradov, Bible, Bible translations, history of scholarship.
Д. А. Браткин
ПОЧЕМУ ИЕРОМОНАХ АЛЕКСИЙ ВИНОГРАДОВ (НЕ) БЫЛ УЧЕНЫМ? ПРИМЕР TRANSLATIO STUDII В КОНЦЕ XIX ВЕКА
В статье обсуждается вопрос о характере научного творчества Александра Николаевича Виноградова (иеромонаха Алексия, 1845-1919/20). Автор показывает, чем Виноградов отличался от своих современников и почему, несмотря на специфический, реферирующий характер его работ, Виноградова все же нельзя назвать имитатором. По мнению автора, вся деятельность Виноградова укладывается в схему средневековой translatio studii («перенесение учения»), архаичной для XIX века, но продуктивной для условий, когда позитивная рецепция
Bratkin Dimitri Aleksandrovich — PhD, Associate Professor, St Petersburg State University, 7-9, Universitetskaya nab., St. Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation; d.bratkin@spbu.ru
Браткин Дмитрий Александрович — кандидат исторических наук, доцент, Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет, Российская Федерация, 199034, Санкт-Петербург, Университетская наб., 7-9; d.bratkin@spbu.ru
* This article was done for the project 16-18-10083 of Russian Science Foundation — "The Study of Religion in Social and Cultural Context of the Epoch: the History of Religious Studies and Intellectual History of Russia in19th — first half of 20th century".
© Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет, 2017
критической науки (прежде всего ее этоса и аксиологии) была затруднена или невозможна. Обзор основных опубликованных трудов Виноградова сопровождается из анализом. Автор приходит к выводу, что Виноградов, который не получил систематического высшего духовного образования, был способен к более широкому восприятию своего предмета. Желание заниматься наукой (в том виде, какой был ему доступен на разных этапах его биографии) и очарование Китаем вкупе с занятиями библейским переводом на китайский язык открыли Виноградову новую для него и почти неизвестную русскому читателю того времени область — историю библейских переводов, а несовпадение разных китайских версий Библии, объяснявшееся расхождением между славянским текстом, с которого переводили русские миссионеры, и английской Библией короля Иакова, на которую опирались миссионеры-американцы, привело к тому, что единственным полностью изданным систематическим трудом Виноградова стала его «История английско-американской Библии» (Ч. 1-3. СПб., 1889-1891), поныне остающаяся единственным подробным введением в историю англоязычных библейских переводов вплоть до конца XIX века. Библиогр. 7 назв.
Ключевые слова: иеромонах Алексий (Виноградов), Библия, библейский перевод, история науки.
Academic itinerary and fortunes of Fr Alexei Vinogradov may seem highly unconventional. An Orthodox monk and missionary, he was perhaps the most unorthodox Biblical writer of his generation. His life and works provide an interesting mixture of insight and insanity, common values and commonplaces, poor days and poor composition, and a miserable end. In his lifetime he was next to a nonperson for the Academy and to the reading public. He slipped into oblivion almost immediately after his death. Not without reason, though, for it takes much time and effort to scramble through his bulky volumes in order to grasp their value. It is equally unfair to ignore him entirely as a dull second-hand scribe, or, yielding to his pitiful fate, to acquit him of his obvious professional failures and to take pains in order to justify what his colleagues and critics would have hardly indulge themselves in, let alone to praise him as a 'forgotten writer of encyclopedic interests', All three opinions still are easily found in the bibliography, and all three are substantially erroneous. Scholarship is indeed a harsh mistress that cannot be pleased with good intentions and excuses. Whichever circumstantial obstacle might have hindered a scholar's way, no compassion of ours would compensate for their incompetence or ignorance. Indeed, it is a platitude indeed to say that fruits of labour only are to be evaluated, and that modern reviewers should be no less critical about their predecessors than about their contemporaries and colleagues.
Vinogradov has published lengthy 'History of the Anglo-American Bible' [1], the only work in this field to be written by a Russian scholar up until the present time, yet this treatise is as forgotten now as it was neglected then. This fact would make an appropriate subject for a presentation. But the issue of Vinogradov's opera et dies is even more relevant.
Our ultimate subject here is the essence of the scholarship. What makes a scholar? How can one distinguish between a true scholar and an imitator? Does a trained researcher have any superiority over an autodidact, and if not, isn't standard training a limitation imposed upon an inquiring personality? Would the talent and intuition not compensate for the lack of the formal schooling? Vinogradov is the very figure whose life story and progress give us a perfect opportunity to discuss these questions.
Alexandr Nikolaevich Vinogradov, later hieromonk Alexei, was born in 1845 in a village near Vesyegonsk in Tver government. His father was a village priest, who strove to give his children the proper education: for instance, Vinogradov's younger brother Konstantin became professor of medicine, and the youngest Nikolai was a civil servant.
Unlike his brothers, who attended the seminary in Tver, Alexander went to St Petersburg and studied in the seminary there at the family's expense. He was a bright student, and took extra classes in iconography and art. He worked as an assistant teacher of these subjects before his formal graduation in 1867. In the same year he entered St. Petersburg Theological Academy (again, at his own or rather his family's expense), but withdrew from it in the spring of 1868, later explaining this by poor health conditions, although financial pressure was the main reason. In any case, even if he attended the lectures in the year 1867/68, he did not take any exams. Immediately upon withdrawal from the Academy Vinogradov was assigned to teach drawing and iconography in the seminary of Yaroslavl, the position he was holding till 1873. Meanwhile, he attended Demidov school of Law on part-time basis and graduated from it in 1874. Then the life of a former divinity art teacher changed drastically. As a degreed lawyer, he was employed by the main military courts' authority and in December 1875 was appointed to be the court secretary and prosecutor in the 5th Kiev Grenadier Regiment, but remained in detached service in the main authority's headquarters in St Petersburg. In a year's time he was dismissed from the regiment, yet remained in service at the headquarters for the next two years. In this period he concentrated on the various issues which had little to do with military justice. He collected materials on Tver local lore and history, and Church antiquities. He wrote down Russian and Karelian folk songs, described the collection of a late local numismatician, and the library of a distinguished local landowner. Much work was done in order to take measures and make sketches of medieval wooden churches, which were being destroyed before his very eyes by fires, neglect and clerics' ignorance. One may consider him a freelance intellectual, who undertook any available scholarly assignment within his home region. Although these assignments were as petty as miscellaneous, he seemed to be in position to be doing this particular kind of ground, or better to say salvation, work. He was highly enthusiastic about what he was doing, and no wonder his labours were warmly welcomed by the public and by the scholarly bodies. Some of his activities were sponsored by the Russian Archeological Society, which funded his trips around Tver, Novgorod and Yaroslavl. It was in these years that he achieved the most of his formal recognition. He was elected first associated subsidized, then full member of the Archeological Society. In return for ethnographic materials donated to the Russian Geographical Society he was granted honorary membership of this learned body as well. Even now he is warmly remembered by the local historians for the quality and quantity of materials he managed to collect and to describe. Last but not least, in 1878 he entered the Archeological Institute, founded just a year before by the famous legal historian Nikolai Kalachov as a Russian adaptation of École des chartes in order to prepare competent archive workers. Later Vinogradov became the grant-holder of this private college and formally graduated from it in 18811.
Still there was nothing unique about his work, and if he remained in this field, Vinogradov would have been remembered among many others, who did the same in various parts of the country. De jure he remained a staff member of the military justice authority, unsalaried. His superiors would approve of his scholarly engagements, since in January 1878 for
1 Main published source on his life and work up to 1889 is Curriculum vitae published as appendix to История английско-американской Библии. Ч. 2. СПб.: Тип. бр. Пантелеевых, 1890-1891. Istoriya angliysko-amerikanskoy Biblii [History of the Anglo-American Bible]. Part 2. St Petersburg: The Panteleyev Brothers, 1890-1891. P. 1-11 separate pagination. Further events are described in the references by Mikhail Chigrinsky (М. Ф. Чигринский) on pp. 464-466 in: [2]
his service record Vinogradov was promoted to the rank of titular councilor. This was the lowest rank of a civil servant, which granted non-hereditary ennoblement for a person of ignoble birth and thus for many it was the pinnacle of decades in service. Its acquisition was eased for those who obtained University degrees, which Vinogradov had not. Nevertheless, this career did not obviously attract him, and when personnel retrenchment took place in 1879 Vinogradov opted to take discharge on the ground of poor health reasons.
His living conditions in this time are not clear. He received certain relief from the societies (which he applied for in the most humble manner), he might have been supported by benefactors, and by his family as well. Although there must have been certain natural disposition towards insanity, Vinogradov has clearly worked and starved himself into some form of mental disorder by intense labour and constant penury. More important, he was obsessed with the idea of his treasured work and collections lost or stolen. Thus in the second half of 1878 he suffered the first onset of insanity. It was instigated by an encounter with a Polish man whom Vinogradov suspected to be an insurgent, a thief and a regicide-to-be. In 1879 his condition deteriorated so that he was unable to do any systematic work, and but by the spring of 1881 he recovered. Then his life took a new course once again.
In mid-1880 to the Holy Synod had officially announced that, since a position in the orthodox mission in Peking was vacant, those willing to fill it were encouraged to apply. Since all three missionaries were to be hieromonks, lay candidate had to take monastic vows and to be ordained before he set off for China. Vinogradov applied in spring 1881. We do not know his reasons for this decision. In one of his letters of 1880 he mentioned his interest to the Oriental subjects, and the acquisitive mind of Vinogradov was certainly delighted with the prospects to see what he would otherwise have never have an opportunity to come close to. Yet there were clear mundane interests behind that. Vinogradov reached the age of 36 by this time and still remained single, he was of poor health and prosperity and even worse prospects in case of permanent disability. On the contrary, professed missionary received annual stipend of 1300 rubles and refunds for travel and other relevant costs, and a decade of service would bring him a decent pension.
In May 1881 he became first a monk under the name Alexei, and then was ordained. Like many of his predecessors, Vinogradov had never studied Chinese before he came to China, and when he eventually arrived in Peking in December 1881 he started taking lessons of this language from the local Orthodox Chinese staff (as was customary for the missionaries), using European sinologist periodicals as supplement. Although he received formal blessing from the Synod (which was a service decoration) for his participation in the translation of liturgical books into Chinese in 1884, for the whole of this year his command of the language was so limited that he could not even exercise control over the native translators, let alone be speaking Chinese. Undoubtedly he had to put forth all his capabilities in order to master the language and its characters, which contributed to the second relapse.
Ends are said to meet, and there is little wonder that it was in China that Vinogradov took interest in the Western Christian culture and literature. First, it was missionary practice, Catholic as well as Protestant, which became a very near concern for him, especially in those years before the Boxer Rebellion since both Jesuits and a number of Protestant denominations had their missions established in China and the number of converts was growing rapidly.
There is hardly any doubt that Vinogradov became passionately in love with both China and mission. It was natural therefore that he would be interested in the work of his great Jesuit forerunners, Matteo Ricci in particular (1552-1610), one of the founding figures of the first Jesuit China mission as existed in the 17th and 18th centuries. Vinogra-dov produced a bibliographical compilation which consisted of the Ricci's missionary dialogues (translated into Russian, yet from a French translation of Aime-Martin, rather than from the Chinese original), a list of 26 Catholic writers who worked prior to 1876 and an annotated bibliography of some fifty their works. Two features, which later would govern every piece of Vinogradov's writing were already discernible in this book.
First, Vinogradov is more interested in assembling an extensive bibliography of secondary literature rather than examining primary sources. Second, he demonstrates a marked predilection for retelling his literary sources rather than analyzing them. This is aggravated with the habit of abridging those texts, which, as his Russian style was rather ponderous, made his books less than exciting reading.
He was obviously interested in the Western missionary activities not only ex officio, or better to say, even contrary to what his office was expected to be. His predecessors paid little to no attention to the work of their 'heterodox' colleagues and regarded them as neither a model nor a rival, partly on religious grounds and partly on those of the international politics. Since the Russian mission in Peking was an extension of the Imperial Foreign ministry in religious habit, the missionaries avoided (perhaps not entirely without reason), that to outreach their traditional religious and economic engagements and to sail off freely fishing men unlike the British and the Americans, whose congregations were private establishments and, although no less political institutions, had no explicit recourse to the state funds of the USA or the British Empire.
It was the matter of Vinogradov's personal inquiry and scholarly interest that in China he started to study the history and progress of the ministry accomplished by the English-speaking missionaries. This enquiry was not, however, done first-hand, by matter of direct observation or participation. What the hieromonk was doing was rather a careful and detailed survey of missionary activities, based on literary accounts and journals published by the missionaries in China. Of particular interest is the exposition of a number of introductory Biblical manuals compiled by Alexander Williamson and his fellow missionaries in Chinese, which were intended to instruct the newly-converted faithful into the knowledge and proper understanding of Christianity. "The work we have surveyed, he concludes, is a mature result and a compendium of the secondary subjects studied in the Protestant literature by many persons over many years ... Such works should be considered valuable and important not only for the Chinese, but for any other literature as well". It is in this article that Vinogradov has for the first time discovered his sympathetic interest towards the Western, mainly Anglo-American scholarship. One should bear in mind that, despite its substantial advance in the areas hardly explored at all beforehand, for the Russian mind Biblical scholarship done by the Anglo-Saxons was far eclipsed by the German tradition both by the English language less known in Russia and by the influence of the German learned literature.
His interest to the English Bible grew from the fact that the Russian missionaries were routinely using the Chinese biblical translation which had been made by the Americans, to collate it with that of their own translators. As the latter was made from Old Church Slavonic, while the former was translated from one of the English versions, the difference
between them could not evade the eyes of a curious hieromonk who was keen and alert enough to observe a new world behind the English biblical text.
His attitude to the British and American biblical study in general, and biblical study in particular, was highly sympathetic in his "History of the Anglo-American Bible", which he wrote while in China and published in St Petersburg in 1889-1891 in an edition of 1000 copies. In order to understand its value one has to look on the relevant literature in the Russian language. Two studies on biblical interpretation and translation should be mentioned here. One was written by Nikolai Astafiev, who since 1869 was in charge of the Society for promotion of the Holy Scriptures, a disguise of the Russian Bible Society. Astafiev's aim was to show how the Bible did encourage public progress in Russia and how beneficial was its influence upon public morality [3]. Yet his book was less than a success, and was rightly called "a poor and bad compilation" in the reviews.
Ilarion Chistovich published the history of the Modern Russian Biblical translation as a scholarly and ecclesiastical enterprise in its development, progress and cessation [4]. Chistovich provides a short (16 pages out of 347) introduction into Biblical textual criticism, in which he specifies textual traditions ancient versions and recensions, describes three codices (Alexandrinus, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus) and a number of printed editions. He does address the question which text, namely Masoretic or the Septuagint should be preferred as an original, and why. Still, his treasure was to study carefully all twists and turns of the 19th-century biblical translation project, or rather a sequence of projects, which were either upholded or undermined by the external forces of administration and prejudice. No wonder then that his heart is not with the history of the original biblical text or its witnesses. As a rule, he does not explain what printed editions of the original text were used by various translators and why those were chosen. He does not show much interest in the philological analysis of the translations. Thus, the book of Chistovich provides us with the external history of the Bible, not a history of its text.
Vinogradov's merit, on the contrary, is that he closely connects the story of the English biblical translation with that of the biblical textual criticism. The task of translation the Bible into English challenged the interpreters with the choice of the original text, which made it necessary to delve into the specifics of textual criticism. Vinogradov was neither the first to do this nor a professional of what was then called higher criticism and now textology. Whatever he did, he was making an abridgement of the work done by a different scholar (whose priority would be always shown by the reference). Yet Vinogradov was the first in Russia to show that textual criticism was a prerequisite of any translation project. To be just, we should remember that Vinogradov did not consider himself a biblical scholar at all, neither did he separate the biblical histories from the rest of his publications. In his eyes, all of them were the parts his 'Missionary report' was comprised of. This would play a bad trick on his 'History of the Bible in the Orient', as we shall see.
Vinogradov's 'History of the Anglo-American Bible' is a bulky three-volume edition of some 1300 pages. It is divided into three parts. First comes introduction into biblical textual criticism as discipline and its historiography. 'The story of the English Bible from the most ancient its versions to the last, present-day revision and edition, he wrote in the preface, is of deep interest not only for the expert theologians, patriots and missionaries, but indeed for any educated Christian, who would want to have the accurate idea of the text as it was worked out on the basis of the most reliable sources by the very many members of the Church and scholarship from the 7th to the 19th century'. Like any confessional
scholar, Vinogradov had to fill in the gap between critical scholarship and faith, between following the sacred tradition of the Church and analysing it impartially. Yet for Vinogradov there is hardly any compelling gap at all: the Church has never denied biblical scholarship in its progress, he says, but is careful and conservative when it comes up to the radical changes, which often are arbitrary and thus dubious. Bible as the word of God demands the reader not only to receive grace in order to understand the Book, but to keep in touch with the latest scholarly achievements. Criticism is not opposite to faith, on the contrary: since Bible is authoritative, its text is to be studied both by means of lower criticism, which would establish the standard text, and then by those of the higher criticism, which divides authentic tradition from the apocryphal.
In the textual section, which comprises volume I, Vinogradov describes in full (albeit in a somewhat confused way) different original versions and ancient translations of the Bible. He never gives the Septuagint any preference over the Hebrew scriptures, neither does he suspect the Jews of corrupting their biblical text. Contrary to what was common in his days, he praises "the learned Rabbis, by whose corporate energy the Synagogue was always vitally supported and [by whose care] the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament was preserved in the marvelous and untouched form till the beginning of the University growth in Europe". Not many other Orthodox biblical exegetes would perhaps dare to say this in his days!
Development of New Testament textual criticism is described sympathetically, again without any explicit or implicit invective against the critics. His own opinion is expressed in a somewhat clandestine way. When the logic of explanation requires it, he quotes an earlier and highly conservative Orthodox New Testament scholar , Fr Vasily Rozhdestvensky, whose said in 1878: "As to the critical editions of Tischendorf, and all those before and after, we should say that while they do have certain value to the learned interpreter, none of them should be regarded as an example of the truly ancient or absolutely reliable text. Nihil aliud probamus nisi quod Ecclesia! — that is the rule for an Orthodox exegete to be followed here as well as in every other case" [5]. To this Vinogradov adds his own remark: "The same opinion is shared by the British and American scholars, who both in translating of the Bible into English and in its later revision had never followed any particular MS or version, but rather applied, by the scholarly mind and the reason of interpretation, all the best results of the critic. The message of Rozhdestvensky is obvious: one should hold the authoritative Church opinion higher than the results of the critical investigation. Vinogradov, as if agreeing with it, does in fact twist it round the opposite way: no edition or opinion is conclusive, and it is the scholarship per se, with all its diversity of opinions, which has to be considered. The same is expressed more freely in a different context: "If British and American scholars in translation work did their best to stand at the highest point of critical scholarship, it is then necessary to take the development of the biblical criticism in general and its present-day demands in particular as the highest criterion".
The first volume ends with the abstracts of some notable works on textual criticism, and it is not that much surprising to find that they are preceded by the panegyric — "English literature of that kind is plentifully rich, decisive and trustworthy, with the scholars being scrupulous and careful", and so forth. The abstracts look somewhat over-condensed, as Vinogradov is trying to abridge an entire branch of scholarship into a section of his volume, but nevertheless they are still valuable, at least as annotation to the works which most of his expected readers may otherwise have never had an opportunity to come across.
The second volume opens with a brief sketch of paleography from the earliest Phoenician script till the Middle Ages. Then the proper history of the biblical text in English comes, starting from the earliest vernacular versions from the 8th century and other attempts preceding the famous work of William Tyndale. In his customary way he takes every opportunity to make a lengthy digression in order to describe, for instance, the growth of medieval universities, or the spread of the Greek and Hebrew learning. Vino-gradov details the work on biblical translation during the Reformation up to the publication of King James' Bible, and then the fate of this version up to the 1880s. His knowledge is profound and meticulously expounded, for he is standing on the shoulders of his British predecessors. What comes from him personally is the deep interest to the canon development and textual details of various versions in their mutual relation and that to the original. It is a truly internal history of translation but not that of translation alone. Whenever it is necessary, Vinogradov gives an explanation of various relevant issues, e.g. theological troubles which appeared when 'sola Scriptura' principle and the idea of literal infallibility of the Scripture was challenged by Qeri and Ketiv, As it comes to the latest revision, the text of Vinogradov becomes contradictory within itself, which is the best indication that this volume, or at least its core, is no more than a patchwork of copypasted (or better 'translated and pasted') abstracts and quotations. So far as Vinogradov is following the consensus, the text is coherent and consistent. But when his English sources are arguing against each other — as indeed was the case with the attitudes to the revision over the 1870s and 1880s — Vinogradov prefers to harmonise them even at the extent of consistency, rather than to find his own position and to pass his own judgment on the issue.
The need for the third volume was suggested, perhaps, by Vinogradov's scholarly intuition. In the Protestant world of England, and especially of the United States, the Bible occupied a very special place, hardly ever comparable to its significance for Russia or any other Orthodox culture. The third volume is therefore a cross between a history of the British and American denominations, and a reference book on various related issues, such as the Bible teaching in the Protestant universities (which has clearly stolen a way into Vinogradov's heart) or the development of biblical textual division into chapters and verses.
The 'History of the Anglo-American Bible' was written in China and was completed by 1888. In this year Vinogradov suffered another access of his mental disorder and had to return to Russia. At first he was attached to Kievo-Pechersky Monastery, but in a year's time settled down in its St. Petersburg metochion. He lived there till 1895 and published, at his own expense, his scholarly works. One of them was the one we considered above. Another was the first volume of his 'History of the Bible in the Orient' (St. Petersburg 1889-1895) [6]. Its title is somewhat misleading. Although conceived as an encyclopedic survey of all Oriental biblical traditions, from Syriac and Armenian to Chinese and Japanese, as it was clearly announced in the preface, the first volume, which comprised some 1200 pages, followed its original design only for the first few hundred pages, but then has deteriorated into a lengthy badly styled and poorly structured introduction into the Chinese culture and history. This unwanted development may have been caused by the lack of scholarly discipline or simply by the medical condition. In either case it does not come near the history of the Bible in English. The Bible here has no inherent worth as the subject. It is more a pretext for Vinogradov to plunge into the sea of various Oriental issues, hardly dealing with the Bible at all. His intonation and attitude changed radically: "One should be surprised, he wrote in this volume, by the
extraordinary boldness, and even more by the risk and persistence, which are demonstrated by the Anglo-American scholars, who claim to have the best translations of the Bible into their language and then into other world tongues from English. Anglo-American theologians and Bible societies have ejected, in most editions if not forever, the apocrypha, or the non-canonical books of the Scripture, and even some parts of the latter, being utterly sure about their infallibility. Yet the same biblical theologians would tolerate Mormon revelations, which make a separate Sacred Scriptured, defended in its pretended authority by the hierarchy, which is half mock-Old Testament, half New Testament. Hardly better are many other sects and schisms, for they overweight personal right of biblical interpretation with all its load of severe criticism. This undermines the faith of those, who love the Bible and would be happy simply to trust it without any doubt or hesitation about its integrity and authenticity of its text". It sounds as if that was written by a different person, and it is unclear what caused such a reverse. The plain explanation is that his mind was darkened when he wrote this. Another explanation keeps his mind on the better side, but makes allowance for the fact that in 1890 Vinogradov submitted his 'History of the Anglo-American Bible' to the Synod, expecting it to be recommended for seminary libraries. The official review was sour, and the official reader, Fr A. A. Lebedev, pointed out indignantly that Vinogradov had fallen under the influence of the British scholarship, thus belittling the Slavonic Bible, which did not beseem an Orthodox monk well. Vinogradov, who was an obsequious man (as he had once called himself in a letter addressed to one of his patrons) may have simply been frightened by this reaction and acted correspondingly.
Another somewhat dislikeful issue was the manner he treated the Jews of China. A small community of acculturated Jewish settlers, who are likely to have come to China along the Silk Road in the 7th century AD, was discovered by the Jesuits in the city of Kai-feng. Torah scrolls of this community created a furore among the theologians in the 18th and early 19th centuries, as they bore witness to the independent textual tradition of at least the same age as our earliest codices of the Hebrew Bible, if not senior. This profoundly forgotten discovery drew close attention to the Jewish community of Kaifeng, which was at that time struggling to survive. They were contacted by the American missionaries, who eventually bought Kaifeng Torah scrolls. Vinogradov describes that community and its MSS, and Chinese Jews in general in a very sympathetic tone, but all his descriptions were second-hand and made by copypasting and abridging of the earlier publications — as ever. It did not occur to Vinogradov, who was hungrily collecting everything Chinese that he came across a true subject of the genuine scholarly interest, which he ought to have studied himself by means of personal observation.
While in St Petersburg, Vinogradov submitted an album of Chinese pictures to the Academy of Arts and was elected its honorary volunteering member — a title which meant next to nothing, but was dear to Vinogradov as a token of recognition. He published another work, in which he tried to prove that the holy forefathers of the Old Testament, who are said to have lived for centures, were in fact dynastic names rather than those of the individuals [7]. The treatise collected impressive data from various ancient sources, and when it was published, Vinogradov submitted it to the Empress Alexanra Feodorovna, who would later grant an audience to the hieromonk. That was the climax of his carreer. Upon what seemed to be the complete recovery Vinogradov went to China for the second time, but then in 1897 he suffered the third and final onslaught of insanity and had to
retire in Optina for the rest of his days. He saw his dusk while translating from and to Chinese, versioning and arranging the materials he brought from China. He did not return to the biblical study, however. Vinogradov's mind was gradually affected more and more, which irritated the monastery administration and the Synod. Although he did his best to return to St Petersburg in order to do what he considered valuable scholarly research, he never achieved this. He died in 1919 or 1920 from mere starvation.
One would easily observe that most of Vinogradov's texts are either directly translated, often from the English published works, or are extended abstracts from those. That explains, for instance, the excessive volume of his Meisterwerk on the history of the Bible in the East, that gradually grew out of a concise treatise on the modern missionary Bible translations into the vast summa of everything that Vinogradov knew about China, and, by extension, about the East. Another notable feature of his work is the total absence of a critical attitude to, and distance from, the text he is reusing at any given moment. For Vinogradov, any given text was the material for a "scholarly elaboration" (i.e., translation, abstracting and incorporating into a sequence of similar quotations, often without quotation marks). It looks as if he does not understand that any of his texts has its own Sitz im Leben and that is corresponds differenly to every other one. Source criticism is equally absent from his work. In part, that may be just a birthmark of an autodidact with no systematic education who taught himself from the books. Furthermore, in Demidov's law school they would teach him that any authoritative text was dogmatic and the best one could do is to adapt it as close as possible into their notes. Yet the most important explanation, I believe, is that Vinogradov shared the Medieval idea of literature as a world of ultimative texts that were by default a sort of scripture that could not, and should never, be broken. Vinogradov was able to formulate the question and to find an interesting topic. When provided with a brilliant source text, he would produce an important and valueble piece of scholarship in Russian, like the "History of English and American Bible". If that text happened to be a recently published work of critical scholarship (e.g., that of Westcott and Hort), that would produce a seemingly ground-breaking work visibly different from anything that had so far been published in Russian. If not, the compiler would fail to notice the depth of his failure.
Another Medieval trait in Vinogradov's approach is his firm belief that he would become a great and acknowledged scholar by means of compiling compendia "on the basis of the best foreign sources". Vinogradov is thus perhaps the last writer to engage in translatio studii.
Литература
1. Виноградов Алексий, иеромонах. История английско-американской Библии. Ч. 1-3. СПб.: Тип. бр. Пантелеевых, 1889-1891.
2. Конрад Н. И. Синолог из Оптиной пустыни: (Новые материалы по истории Пекинской духовной миссии) // Неопубликованные работы. Письма. М.: РОССПЭН, 1996. С. 107-119, 464-466.
3. Астафьев Н. А. Опыт истории Библии в России в связи с просвещением и нравами. СПб.: Тип. В. С. Балашева, 1889.
4. Чистович И. А. История перевода Библии на русский язык. СПб.: Тип. М. М. Стасюлевича, 1873 (21899, перепечатка М.: РБО, 1997).
5. Рождественский В., свящ. Историческое обозрение священных книг Нового завета. Вып. I. СПб.: Тип. Ф. Г. Елеонского и Ко, 1878.
6. Виноградов Алексий, иеромонах. История Библии на Востоке. Т. 1: Китайское государство, Корея, Япония, Бурма, Аннам, Сиам и др. СПб.: Тип. бр. Пантелеевых, 1889-1895.
7. Виноградов Алексий, иеромонах. Древнепатриархальные династии царей в Ассуро-Вавило-нии и Персии, Китае, у евреев и магометан или патриархально-династическая хронология и теория, основанная на исторических памятниках по новейшим открытиям и выводам науки. СПб.: Тип. бр. Пантелеевых, 1895.
Для цитирования: Браткин Д. А. Почему Иеромонах Алексий Виноградов (не) был ученым? Пример translatio studii в конце XIX века // Вестник СПбГУ Философия и конфликтология. 2017. Т. 33. Вып. 2. С. 146-156. DOI: 10.21638/11701/spbu17.2017.201
References
1. Vinogradov Aleksii, ieromonakh. Istoriia angliisko-amerikanskoi Biblii [History of the Anglo-American Bible]. Parts 1-3. St. Petersburg, The Panteleyev Brothers Publ., 1889-1891. (In Russian)
2. Konrad N. I. Sinolog iz Optinoi pustyni: (Novye materialy po istorii Pekinskoi dukhovnoi missii) [Sinologist from the Optina monastery. New data on the history of Peking church mission]. Neopublikovan-nye raboty Pis'ma [Unpublished works. Letters]. Moscow, ROSSPEN Publ., 1996, pp. 107-119, pp. 464-466. (In Russian)
3. Astaf'ev N. A. Opyt istorii Biblii v Rossii v sviazi s prosveshcheniem i nra-vami [An essay on the history of the Bible in Russia in connection to the enlightenment and morals]. St. Petersburg, V. S. Balashev Publ., 1889. (In Russian)
4. Chistovich I. A. Istoriia perevoda Biblii na russkii iazyk [The history of the Bible translation into Russian]. St. Petersburg, M. M. Stasyulevich Publ., 1873. 2nd ed. 1899. Repr. Moscow, Russian Bible Society Publ., 1997. (In Russian)
5. Rozhdestvenskii V., sviashch. Istoricheskoe obozrenie sviashchennykh knigNovogo zaveta [A Historical review of the holy books of the New Testament]. Issue I. St. Petersburg, F. G. Eleonsky and Co. Publ., 1878, pp. 282. (In Russian)
6. Vinogradov Aleksii, ieromonakh. Istoriia Biblii na Vostoke [The history of the Bible in the orient]. T. 1: Kitaiskoe gosudarstvo, Koreia, Iaponiia, Burma, Annam, Siam i dr. [Vol. 1: The Chinese Empire, Corea, Japan, Burma, Annam, Siam]. St. Petersburg, The Panteleyev Brothers Publ., 1889-1895. (In Russian)
7. Vinogradov Aleksii, ieromonakh. Drevnepatriarkhal'nye dinastii tsarei v Assuro-Vavilonii i Persii, Kitae, u evreev i magometan ili patriarkhal'no-dinasticheskaia khronologiia i teoriia, osnovannaia na is-toricheskikh pamiatnikakh po noveishim otkrytiiam i vyvodam nauki [Ancient patriarchal dynasties of the kings in Assyro-Babylonia and Persia, in China,among the Jews and the Mohammedans, or The patriarchal dynastic chronology and theory based on the historical monuments following the most recent discoveries and conclusions of the scholarship]. St. Petersburg, The Panteleyev Brothers Publ., 1889-1895. (In Russian)
For citation: Bratkin D. A. Why Hieromonk Alexei Vinogradov was (not) a scholar? A late 19th century example of translatio studii. Vestnik SPbSU. Philosophy and Conflict Studies, 2017, vol. 33, issue 2, pp. 146-156. DOI: 10.21638/11701/spbu17.2017.201
Received: 12.12.2016 Accepted: 15.12.2016
