Transformation of the Hagiographic Genre in the Russian Court Literature of the Early Modern Times

Abstract

A significant moment in the history of the hagiographic genre falls on the Early Modern Times in Russia (the second half of the 17th – the beginning of the 18th c.). Continuing to serve to didactic goals and to create a «hagiographically enlightened» ideal image, the life of a saint is included in the court Russian literature in the composition of the namesake greeting, a characteristic and extremely popular genre of the epoch. The article demonstrates that the image of the saint, heavenly patron of the sovereign or members of the royal family played an important rolein the spiritual life of Tsars Alexei Mikhailovich and his son Fyodor Alekseevich. The importance of it was reflected in an appeal of the poets to the lives of the saints and especially revered ascetics at the court,in order to create the namesake poetic greetings on the hagiographic basis. The stencil of the medieval genre is eroded. The panegyric glorification of the addressee and the praise to his heavenly patron in the poetic message, permeated through and through with the hagiographic motifs,  is combined with the political actualization of the content of the work.