Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/173

 by the Bible; and reason, when it contradicts the Bible, is false ."

Thus the principle that reason must be subordinated to revelation was expounded by a father of the Greek Orthodox Church, was stated by a series of Russian writers of the 15th and 16th centuries, and prevailed even in the 17th in Muscovy.

From this point of view the Bible (so far as it was translated) supplied the place of scientific and learned works on nature and man; pious commentaries, e.g., those of Georgius Pisides on God's creation, took the place of treatises on natural science; and the lives of the saints, particularly the great collection of the Metropolitan Macarius, stood for monographs on moral and historical subjects.

Although Greek culture was much better fitted for such a rôle, Russian men of letters began to have recourse to Latin civilization and to study Latin books, particularly those which were of use for theological controversy and scholastic learning. By degrees some notions on formal logic, some dissertations of Aristotle on natural science, expounded in this spirit, some treatises of Thomas Aquinas on justice and other topics, and some works on history, for instance, the chronicle of Martin Byelsky, penetrated into Russia.

This movement developed first in Kiev, and somewhat later spread to Moscow.