Raffaele Petazzoni criticism of Wilhelm Schmidt’s conception of urmonotheismus

In this article, the author offers a comparative analysis of the theoretical positions of two outstanding religious scholars of the first half of the 20th century. Te Austrian priest Wilhelm Schmidt and the Italian Raffaele Petazzoni studied the religious views of primitive tribes and tried to solve the problem of the origin of the concept of a Supreme Being. Te views of these researchers are shown in comparison with each other, because each of them considered himself a supporter of the cultural-historical approach to studying the beliefs of primitive peoples. However, in the course of their research, they came to completely different conclusions. Schmidt and Petazzoni wrote polemical treatises against each other for many years. Particular atention is paid in the article to the difference between the views of Schmidt and Petazzoni on such a key concept as “monotheism”. Petazzoni states that monotheism in its pure form does not exist even in modern world religions, and suggests tracing its special way of originating out of polytheistic religions. Wilhelm Schmidt disputes this point of view and gives a number of interesting counterarguments.