Our Notes & References

First and only Russian edition of this important didactic essay for a future sovereign – very rare outside Russia: we could not trace any copy at auction or in institutions in the West.

A superb example bound in red morocco and beautifully fresh, complete with its fine allegorical frontispiece.

When the French theologian and bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704) was appointed a tutor of the Dauphin, the son of the “Sun King” Louis XIV, he wrote several works for the edification of his pupil, one of which was this Politique tirée de l’Écriture sainte [Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture], a discourse on the principles of royal absolutism. He started this work in 1679, set it aside for twenty years, and resumed only by the end of his life; his nephew, the Abbé de Bossuet, completed and published it in France in 1709.

Throughout his essay, Bossuet argues that royal authority comes directly from God and that the person of the king is sacred, supporting his arguments with direct quotes from the Bible. He asserts, for instance, that “God establishes kings as his ministers, and reigns through them over the people.” He also states that “the prince must be obeyed on principle, as a matter of religion and of conscience” but that no sovereign is above the law “for if he sins, he destroys the laws by his example.”

Bossuet distinguishes absolutism from despotism and stresses the need for the monarch to follow moral laws. State power for him is the way to ensure the survival of humanity, often challenged by bad inclinations (as a consequence of the original sin). Bossuet also discusses the duties of the sovereign’s subjects, the civil society in general, the Church-State relations, civil and international wars, state economy and family life.

The thoughts of Russia’s early court literati resonated with Bossuet’s political theology: the French biography of the great Russian poet Antiokh Kantemir (1709-44) highlights that: “Les principes d’une [Politique tirée de l’Écriture sainte], ne pouvoient manquer d’être du goût d’un Ministre, qui puisoit lui-même la Politique dans sa Philosophie” (quote from Ospovat); the historian and statesman Vasilii Tatishchev’s philosophical work Dukhovnaia [Spiritual] (1775) also discusses the questions of political morality through references to the Biblical texts.

During Catherine the Great’s reign, guided by the ideas of enlightened monarchy and a desire to strengthen State power, several of Bossuet’s writings were published in Russia, including an incomplete translation of Discours sur l’histoire universelle (1681; in Russian 1761-1789) “for the heir to the throne Pavel” (Kuleshova). At the same time, the influence of the “development of local Russian ideological ideas gave rise to other socio-political theories that did not coincide with those of [the Catholic] Bossuet” (Kuleshova). It is worth noting that Catherine’s change of direction in the late 1780s led to the confiscation of the Discours from Moscow bookstores in 1787.

The new Tsar Alexander I being enthroned in 1801, it seemed the right time to publish Bossuet’s Politique which hadn’t been translated into Russian in the 18th c., and the Moscow priest Ivan Ivanov (Bedrinskii, 1769-1831) naturally dedicated his translation to Tsar Alexander. The Russian edition contains six parts of Bossuet’s essay out of ten, and the second part of the original work has never been translated into Russian since then (Kuleshova).

Interestingly, Bedrinskii applied for an official authorisation from the Minister of Education to use the work in schools: the request was rejected in November 1802 for the ministry found the book to be “totally inappropriate for this purpose”.

Provenance

“Printed in Russia” (light blue ink stamp to frontispiece recto, witnessing an official import into the USA).

Bibliography

Smirdin 381; Sopikov 2306; Svod. Kat. 1800-25 766; Kirill Ospovat, Pridvornaia slovesnost: Institut literatury i konstruktsii absoliutizma v Rossii serediny XVIII veka, NLO, 2020; Elena Kuleshova, Zhak-Benin Bossiue i ego vremia: iz istorii obshchestvenno-politicheskoi mysli Frantsii vtoroi poloviny XVII veka, SPbGU, Sankt Peterburg, 2006.