Antoine Orenov and Mikhail Vysheslavtsev: Secular Teachers at the Trinity Seminary in the Last Quarter of the 18th Century

Abstract

The article presents new archival data that provide reconstruction of the history of two secular French and German teachers who worked at the Trinity Seminary in the 1780s: Antoine Orenov and Mikhail Vysheslavtsev. Despite their different backgrounds (a foreign pastor and a Russian nobleman), both of them were anomalies in the clergy environment. New archival findings allowed rectifying the age and details of a poet and translator of the late 18th and early 19th centuries Mikhail Vysheslavtsev’s biography. The article reconstructs the reasons for their appearance in the seminary as teachers, their position, and their involvement in teaching French, German, and other subjects. This reconstruction reveals an interesting model of cultural and social interaction that was not typical of the seminary environment during this period, but was, as it turns out, possible.

DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2025.2.06