TOLSTOY, Leo.

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Opredelenie svyateishego sinoda ot 20-22-go fevralya 1901 goda, No. 557, s poslaniem vernym chadam Pravoslavnoi Grekorossiiskoi Tserkvi o grafe L've Tolstom. First edition, first printing, of this sensational historical document, announcing Tolstoy's excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church and accusing him of "disseminating among the people teachings repugnant to Christ and the Church", which only increased his celebrity in Russia and abroad.The ruling, issued by the church synod, marks the culmination of Tolstoy's long-running dispute with orthodoxy. In his Religious Treatise in Three Volumes (1879-82), he laid out his criticisms of the church and his own vision of a form of Christianity which returned to the basic principles of the faith. The work included his own revised translation of the gospels. He followed this treatise with The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1891-94), in which he wrote of "the perversion of Christ's teaching by the teaching of the Church". Although the ruling effectively implied that Tolstoy had excommunicated himself, it was broadly understood as an attempt to ostracize him and to threaten those Christian anarchists - the Tolstoyans - who followed him. Tolstoy responded by terming it "illegal, or else intentionally equivocal", saying: "it is arbitrary, unfounded, untruthful, and is also libellous".Far from casting Tolstoy in the wilderness, the ruling increased public interest in his views and broadened his readership. When the writer nearly

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