Dostoevsky and the the "Roman Question" (1862-1865)

The aim of this article is to study the moral and philosophical principles of F. M. Dostoevsky in his attitude to Catholicism. The chronological borders of the article comprise the period when the brothers Dostoevsky edited the journals Vremya (“Time”, 1861–1863) and Epokha (“Epoch”, 1864‒1865). Dostoevsky’s interest in Catholic issues, which occupies such an important place in the writer’s historiosophical system, is associated during this period with a key topic, which in the relevant historiography came to be termed the “Roman Question”. It deals with a prolonged political crisis in the relationship between the Catholic Church and the united Italian state, caused by the annexation by the latter of the independent Papal state and, as a result, the liquidation of the secular power of the Roman pontifi ces, which took place in 1871 and led, ultimately, to the convocation of the First Vatican Council and the proclamation of the dogmata of papal primacy and papal infallibility. The “Roman Question” was frequently refl ected in the materials of the journals “Time” and “Epoch”, the articles of which discussed important aspects of the issue, including theological and moral problems of the boundaries of the secular and ecclesiastical authority of the Roman pontifex, personal features and policies of Pope Pius IX, the role of the Jesuits in the formation and active “promotion” of the ideology of ultramontanism in the churchpolitical agenda, as well as some very questionable, from a moral point of view, methods of missionary work of the Catholic Church during this period, in particular, the “case of the boy Cohen”. The materials of the study suggest that as early as the 1860s, F. M. Dostoevsky had shaped, both in his essays and in materials of his journals, all the main themes of his later anti-Catholic polemic that was to be refl ected in his epistolary and essayistic legacy (“Writer’s Diary”) as well as in his novels (“Idiot”, “Demons”, “Brothers Karamazov”).