The study of Catholicism in the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century: scientific discourse and polemical context

The research aims to identify the points of contact between scientific and polemical discourses in the context of journal polemics and on the pages of Russian works of the 19th century on the history of Catholicism. The article examines the works of A. A. Bronzov, N. I. Kareev, A. M. Ivantsov-Platonov, D. A. Tolstoy, Yu. F. Samarin, P. N. Zhukovich and other well-known authors, studies the reasons for and the degree of their involvement in the polemical context. Since scholars during that period were not a priori critically disposed towards Catholicism in general, the scientific novelty of the research lies in determining the degree of contact between scientific and polemical discourses in the works on the history and dogmatics of Catholicism by Russian historians and theologians of the second half of the 19th century, in identifying topics that, despite the overall neutral-scientific tone of some studies, always took on a pronounced polemical, “anti-Catholic” coloring. Such, for example, were studies on the history of the Jesuit order, analysis of their main theological works and social service. The author found that the interest in the history of Catholicism among Russian scientists and theologians of the 19th century was due to the development of Russian science, the socio-political context and historical events that took place within the Catholic Church. The polemical component often prevailed in journal articles and had significant weight in popular science works addressed to a wide audience. In highly specialized works, there was often a tendency to maintain a neutral scientific point of view on historical facts. However, there were subjects that were always interpreted from generally accepted confessional positions.