Lithographed Courses As a Source for Studying “Marginal” Theology of the Second Half of the 19th — Early 20th Centuries

Teaching theology in secular universities of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th — first half of the 20th centuries has not yet attracted profound attention of historians, especially in the context of placing university professors in a non-academic (“mainstream”) tradition, rather than an extraacademic (“marginal”) theological one. Mainstream theologians served in the institutions of the Holy Synod, and in their lectures, they addressed the church audience, primarily students of theological academies and seminaries. Marginal (in the sociological sense) theologians are those who were outside the corporation of theological educational institutions, and they addressed a wider, mainly non-church audience. The article discusses lithographed courses as a source for studying “marginal” theology. Since such a research has been carried out for the first time, the main task at the first stage was to search the funds of the largest national scientific libraries (the Russian State Library and the Russian National Library) and to form a preliminary index of lithographed lectures on theology delivered at universities and other secular higher educational institutions of the Russian Empire. The novelty of the project is its focus on identifying and analyzing research interests of the representatives of clergy and monasticism engaged in the scientific study of religious culture, often outside theological academies and therefore less constrained by certain rules and norms.