The strange two: Antonio Possevino and the Archbishop of Rostov David

The brief work which Osip Bodjanskij entitled Sobor na predloženie papskago posla Antonija Posevina v 1582 g. (or Skazanie), published in 1847 among the materials of Moscow’s Church Councils Against Heretics of the XVI Century, presents Jesuit Antonio Possevino as an opponent of Tsar Ivan IV.

According to Skazanie, the dispute went through three different stages. Possevino appears only during the third session, when he ‘literally’ repeats the speeches delivered by the Archbishop of Rostov David during the first and second sessions. Their shared heresy is thus revealed by Tsar Ivan IV, and the two ‘Papal legates’ leave, defeated and put to shame.

David’s statements, which Possevino supposedly repeats verbatim, have nothing to do with Catholicism. They contain, if anything, some distant echo of medieval Gnosticism and of the debates which aroused excitement in the most radical wing of the Reformation. The present article aims at underlining this aspect, which has long been neglected by scholars.

As we know, the Archbishop of Rostov was stripped of his title and exiled into a monastery. Nevertheless, what he actually said and for what he was convicted still remains an open question.