The Writings of Ural Origin on Napoleon the Antichrist of the First Half of the 19th Century

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of two Old Believers eschatological writings created in the Urals in 1820-1840s, which are now kept in the largest collections of the Ural Cyrillic old printed books and manuscripts: the Laboratory of Archaeographical Studies (LAS) of the Ural Federal University and the library of the Ekaterinburg Orthodox seminary. One of these essays is “Tolkivanie o Antichriste” (“The exegesis on the Antichrist”), which substantiates the idea that Napoleon I is the Antichrist. It has already been introduced into scientific circulation in the 19th century, but its copies from the LAS fund allowed revealing a new data about the history of its existence. The article clarifies the date of the essay, determines its impact on later Old Believers literature. The second essay, “Tsvetnik” (“Flower Garden”), continues the theme of the first one, relying on it. “Tsvetnik” is a rather complicated and multifaceted work, containing a lot of reasoning. It covers a lot of questions, problems and assessments of domestic and foreign events contemporary to the author. The main task of the essay was to substantiate the fact that Louis Napoleon, the future French emperor Napoleon III, was the new hypostasis of Napoleon I, the antichrist. The article analyses in detail main ideas of the Tsvetnik's author, the source base of his work, which included not only traditional Christian literature, but also contemporary to the author secular publications. © 2021 Institute of History and Archeology of the Ural Branch of RAS. All rights reserved.