Reading about intellectual life in sixteenth-century Russia, I am struck by how many of its heroes are people out of time

Reading about intellectual life in sixteenth-century Russia, I am struck by how many of its heroes are people out of time. Archbishop Gennady, for one, can be pictured quite vividly among the public figures of today.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the so-called Book Correction (Knizhnaya sprava) was actively pursued: a revision of the texts of old translations of the sacred books. Naturally, such work was done by erudite men, with a knowledge of Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Novgorod, which had escaped the Tatar devastations, offered an excellent base for the study of texts.

And so Gennady did not shrink from laying the Book Correction at the door of the educated and well-read Novgorod priests. He called it a heretical distortion of traditional texts. Sounds familiar, does it not? Archbishop Gennady maintained that he lacked sufficient books to pass judgement on heresy, while "the heretics have all the books", and consequently they could exploit their advantage in knowledge and manipulate the Church's ideology.

The paradox is that precisely the same work was being done in the archbishop's own circle in Moscow, and with the involvement of European minds. Maximus the Greek, an Athonite monk of Byzantine origin, well acquainted with the ancient authors and rare texts, was brought here. Well, under both Ivan III and Vasily III the state understood perfectly the importance of holding a monopoly on the production of knowledge.

The Council of 1551 would oblige the urban clergy to engage in the Book Correction.