Ultimi roghi : Fede e tolleranza alla fine del Seicento : Il caso di Andrej Christoforović Belobockij

The Confession of Faith by A.Ch. Belobockij, a Polish scholar accused in Moscow in 1681 of being a heretic, is an extraordinary manuscript document and a witness of one of the most delicate phases of transition of the relations between Poland and Russia, in the framework of European foreign policy at the end of the seventeenth century. The theological and political controversy that developed around this text shows clearly not only the contradictions and unexpected ideological openings in Russia in the years immediately preceding the reforms of Peter the Great, but also the importance of the rhetorical knowledge and of the doctrine of a Polish scholar, nourished with the ideas of peace and tolerance developed in the works by the Catalan mystic Ramon Llull and by Lelio and Fausto Sozzini. Thse ideas were endorsed and disseminated by a small elite of intellectuals, members of a European koinè of intellectuals that ranged from Spain to as far as to the Russian lands.