Background
Symeon of Polatsk was born on December 12, 1629 in Polotsk (Vitebsk region, Belarus), probably, into a family of merchants.
2004
The monument to Simeon Polotsky (Polotsk; by sculptor A.Finsky)
educator philosopher theologist translator writer enlightener
Symeon of Polatsk was born on December 12, 1629 in Polotsk (Vitebsk region, Belarus), probably, into a family of merchants.
Symeon Polotsky studied at the Kiev Ecclesiastical Academy and probably continued on to the Jesuit college of Wilno.
In Vilna Symeon Polotsky became a monk of the Uniate Order of St. Basil. But that did prevent him becoming an ecclesiastic figure loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow. From the mid-1650’s to 1664 he taught at a bratstva (religious community) school in Polatsk at the Epiphany monastery. In c.1656 he took Orthodox monastic vows as Symeon.
The Belarusian period in the creative activities of Symeon Polotsky was over in those tragic circumstances of the Polatsk period. In 1660 he went to Moscow seeking assistance to the Polatsk monastery, lived there for some time and presented his laudatory Recitation to the tsar in which he called him Tsar the Sun. In 1664 he accepted the invitation to move to Moscow. Being afraid of persecutions by Rzeczpospolita’s authorities, as an adherent of orientation toward Moscow, Symeon Polotsky left his native town. Not temporarily, as he thought, but forever.
Symeon Polotsky became an advocate and later an ideologist of the Orthodoxy and Russian autocracy. He started a destructive for the Belarusian culture process of cultural emigration, becoming mass in the 18-19th centuries, when the intellectual and creative potential of the Belarusian people, in the absence of their own statehood and national self-identity, "emigrated" either to the Polish or Russian cultures.
The authority of Symeon Polotsky was promoted by his active polemics with ideologists of Old Belief, his censure, though not always just, of dissenters and by his participation in the High Council (1667-1668), where he was a secretary-translator to Middle East patriarchs of Alexandria and of Antioch and to the Gaza Metropolitan Paisios Ligaridis. The Council censured patriarch Nikon, whose reforms Symeon Polotsky had supported initially. In Moscow he was engaged in pedagogical, enlightening and publishing activities.
In spite of the political and church struggle he remained devoted to literary activities. Symeon Polotsky was the author of a theological treatise, books of collected sermons, poems, plays. His collections of Christian Church "messages" and "sermons" entitled. "The Spiritual Midday Meal" and "The Spiritual Evening Meal" were of encyclopedic nature. The basic works of Symeon’s of Polatsk literary heritage are collected works, "The Multi-Flowered Garden" and "Rhythmologion" published after his death. The former was for the Russian public a genuine encyclopedia of knowledge in history, ancient mythology, philosophy, theology, morals and Christian symbolism. Plays in the latter collection were staged in the Kremlin court theatres. Thus the professional theatre in Russia started with plays written by Symeon of Polatsk. Throughout his service, at the Muscovy court, Symeon of Polatsk was active also as a translator. He translated from Latin and Polish, edited popular secular and religious works.
In Moscow the attitude to the public and religious activities of the enlightener and to his works was not unanimously favourable. Writers and clergy of Greek Byzantine orientation did not trust the "Latinist" and "Westernist" Symeon Polotsky, though they respected his talent and encyclopedic knowledge. The literary and cultural concept of the enlightener from Polatsk aimed at linking Russia to the European cultural area was gradually overcoming although the relations between Muscovy Orthodoxy and "Latinists" born in Belarus and Ukraine often became quite complicated. Holding a key position in Muscovy on the issue of extending the Western European culture, Symeon Polotsky, as a predecessor of the enlightened absolutism ideologists of Peter I, managed to convince the conservative traditionalists at the court of Aleksey Mikhaylovich of the necessity to develop public education after the European school – University pattern, to introduce courtiers to secular literature, music and theatre.
A year before his death the enlightener worked on a project of developing the Russian higher school using the Kievan Mohyla Academy as a model. He meant to provide the knowledge of not only the Greek language and theology, but also of the achievements in the European humanities and culture, of Latin and natural philosophy.
The writer died at age of 51. Symeon Polotsky bequeathed his personal library, which was then the best in Moscow, to Polatsk, Moscow and Kiev monasteries and divided his money among Belarusian monasteries in Polatsk, Vitsebsk, Orsha, Minsk and Vilna. The grave of Symeon Polotsky is not preserved while the tombstone with an epitaph by Silvester Medvedev is at the Church of the Saviour of the former the Icon of the Saviour Monastery.
Being an active by nature and hard-working person, Symeon Polotsky used all means for the self-fulfillment as a public figure and a writer. He wrote poems, speeches, scientific treatises. Apart from his native Belarusian language he had a good command of Latin, Polish, Church Slavonic and Russian. Upon Symeon’s arrival, talented Belarusian men of letters and educators formed their circle with the monastery at its center. He did a lot for the Orthodox community, but remained tolerant, avoiding the criticism of Catholicism, and tried to reconcile dogmatic differences.
Being a highly educated teacher and a writer, Symeon Polatsky was equally well aware of the Slavonic and West European cultures and tried to achieve their synthesis. It was not, probably, by chance that Symeon, who had received both Orthodox and Catholic education was inclined to the compromising Uniate Church, which then might have appeared to him to be an acceptable form of rapprochement between Western and Eastern European traditions and cultures.
During the Polatsk period he wrote mostly in Belarusian, his style was bookish and lofty, close to the Church Slavonic language. His early poems were of religious nature. The characteristic features of his works of that period were patriotism, love and respect to his people, native town and the country.
The war between Russia and Rzeczpospolita (1654-1667) changed drastically not only plans but the entire life and destiny of twenty-five-year-old Symeon of Polatsk. The occupation of almost entire territory of Belarus and Vilna, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, by the Muscovy army in the years of 1654 – 1655, greatly impressed the young man and shook his belief in the stability of Rzeczpospolita. In those circumstances, he revealed his pragmatism and placed hopes for the rescue of his homeland on a political union with Russia. However, Symeon of Polatsk never stopped loving his Motherland - Belarus and Rzeczpospolita. At that time he wrote several works of political satire, in which he revealed the adventurous plans of occupation by the Swedish king Charles X Gustav, who in the mid -17th century wanted to split Rzeczpospolita using as a pretext the Keidan Union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with Sweden.