Historiography of orthodox culture at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries

The paper analyzes the works of Russian secular and Church historians of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries - A.V. Kartashev, E.E. Golubinsky, A.P. Dobroklonsky and P.V. Znamensky - and considers the problem of the formation of Orthodox culture in Russia in the context of the spiritual phenomenon and social service in Russian Orthodox Church. The author examines the factors that influenced the formation of the spiritual culture and determines its significance for the development of the Russian state. Comparing the different points of view of Church and secular scholars, the author found that the book culture of pre-Mongol Russia was largely of European culture, since it was not characterized by the desire for self-isolation, which was largely due to the activities of Orthodox ascetics, who, without rejecting borrowed literature, sought to develop original literature.