Vorontsova I.V. 'New Religious Consciousness' and Catholic Ecumenism of Abbot Portal's School

Abstract: The beginning of the XXth century was marked with the tendency towards modernization of Christianity in the Catholic West and in Russia. The process of preparation for that phenomenon started in the second half of the XIXth century and went on with different instensity. At the beginning of the XXth century it evolved into direct contacts at the private level in the course of which information was exchanged. During the period since 1904 to 1914 Fernand Portal sent his students to Russia to study Russian religious environment as well as to perform ecumenical mission. Portal's students made acquaintances and established contacts with both neo slavophiles an dreligious authors and intelligentsia in general. This fact has allowed to raise a question about the influence of the Roman Catholic modernism on the religious movement of the first decade of the XXth century in Russia. By analyzing the first translations from French into Russian (articles written by Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Joseph Wilbois) made especially for the present research as well as researches of Georges Nivat and Danilova about Slavophilism among the followers of Portal's teaching and the correspondence between 'Neo Christians' and a 'Neo Catholic' Zdziechowski published in her previous articles, Vorontsova specifies the nature of contacts between 'Neo Christians' and Ferdinand Portal's students. As an illustration, Vorontsova publishes the translation of the letter written by the 'Neo Christianity' leader Dmitry Merezhkovsky for the Journal of Portal's followers. This is the first translation of this letter published in Russian academic literature. As the topic for an individual research, the author of the article also touches upon the relations between 'Neo Catholics' and 'Neo Christians' in the first decade of the XXth century. The author presents the translation of Dmitry Merezhkovsky's article from the 'Catholic Journal of Churches' and uses the direct quotation of a French article of Joseph Wilbois on the religious consciousness in Russia. The author of the article concludes that contacts of 'Neo Christians' with the followers of Portal's school had different tasks and goals and proves the fact of mutual influence of those that was especially evident in the first decade of the XXth century.

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