Parental education as a spiritual and moral duty in the work "On the Kingdom of Heaven and the Upbringing of Children" (17th century)

The article is devoted to the study of pedagogical views reflected in the work of an anonymous author of the 17th century "On the Kingdom of Heaven and the upbringing of children", viewed through the prism of Christian anthropology and the spiritual and moral pedagogical tradition: the purpose of the study is to identify the dominant educational attitudes related to the understanding of parenthood as a spiritual feat and moral duty to God, revealed through the imperatives of piety, austerities and absolute obedience. Based on textual and hermeneutic analysis, key pedagogical principles have been identified, including the idea of parental responsibility for the fate of the child's soul ("if anyone does not teach his children the fear of God and virtue, he will betray them to fierce torment"), the priority of salvation over education and worldly skills, as well as the functioning of parental authority as an extension of God's will. A comparative analysis of the educational concepts of the author of the work and representatives of two trends of pedagogical thought of the 17th century: the Grecophile (Byzantine-Russian) (Epiphanius Slavinetsky, Euthymius Chudovsky) and the Latin (Western European-humanistic) (Simeon Polotsky, Karion Istomin), which allowed to establish the specifics of the Orthodox ascetic approach to understanding the essence of parenting in the family.