Zinovii Otenskii was an important figure in the history of Orthodoxy in Russia in the middle of the sixteenth century. A monk of the small Otnia Monastery near Novgorod, he is known entirely from his writings. Most of his work was published and analyzed in the nineteenth century, but the 1863 edition of his Demonstration of Truth was imperfect and the 1894 analysis of F. Kalugin, excellent for its time, is now very much out of date in many respects. Zinovii’s reputation rests on two aspects of his work. One was the detailed refutation of the anti-Trnitarian teaching of his contemporary, the monk Feodosii Kosoi, whose views survive exclusively in Zinovii’s refutation, and the other was his own account of the theology of the Trinity and a number of other issues.

Lytvynenko and Shpakovskiy have edited and translated Zinovii’s Panegyric to St. Hypatius of Grangra and the first four parts of his Demonstration of Truth (Istiny pokazanie). The panegyric to St. Hypatius praises the fourth-century saint for his defense of the Trinity against the Arians. The Demonstration was a much longer work, the response of Zinovii to the inquiries of two monks and an icon-painter about the teaching of Feodosii Kosoi on the Trinity. This edition presents the shorter version (RGB, f. 98 [Egorov] no. 337) with variants from the longer version published in Kazan’ in 1863. These first four parts concern the dispute over the Trinity. In the rest of the Demonstration, Zinovii discussed a number of other issues, including icon painting and the propriety of monastic landholding. This selection omits them, though the issues around iconography may have had some relevance to the Trinity. Even so, the result is an important contribution to the record of a major debate in the Orthodox church of Russia in the sixteenth century. Kosoi was not the first to express unconventional views on the Trinity. The so-called “Judaizers” at the end of the fifteenth century also had doubts on the topic and earned not only condemnation and for some execution for heresy but also a detailed refutation from St. Joseph Volotskii. That refutation served as an important source for Zinovii.

Joseph Volotskii has been the object of considerable research over the years, even in the Soviet era, while Zinovii has not. Indeed, attempts to uncover what Feodosii Kosoi actually thought based on Zinovii’s refutation have been more frequent than analysis of the Zinovii’s positive contribution. The author-translators have gone a long way toward resetting the balance. In their view, Zinovii, using his knowledge of Russian, Byzantine, and Greek patristic writings on the Trinity, managed to present a thorough account of this basic Christian idea. To help the reader follow the text, their introduction provides a detailed summary and analysis of both the Panegyric and the Demonstration. It also provides an account of the sources of Zinovii’s thought in the Greek fathers and especially in his borrowings from the work of Joseph Volotskii. They follow with care his use of Scripture, both to support his accusation that Kosoi was mainly using the Old Testament as well as Zinovii’s own practice in the interpretation of both parts.

The more modern text, the translation, and introduction are a major addition to our knowledge of Orthodoxy in sixteenth-century Russia. Like most such contributions, it stimulates many questions for further research. Why was a there a continuous history for nearly a century of contention over the nature of the Trinity in Russia? The only other dispute of any significance seems to have been over the extent of monastic landholding, an important issue but not of fundamental theological significance. Among the Orthodox Ruthenian population of Lithuania, there was also an anti-Trinitarian movement, but the belief of historians is that this movement, like Lithuanian Protestantism, was the result of the impact of Central and West European developments. There was no such impact in Russia since the Novgorod “Judaizers” antedated Western Unitarianism. There was no influence of Protestant thinking in Russia at all. The Russians, even Ivan the Terrible, knew about Luther, but no one seems to have been tempted by his teaching. Why did the Trinity cause so much dissension?

It would be unfair to expect the author-translators of this edition to answer these questions. It is to their credit that they have brought an intriguing figure back into scholarly discussion, a figure whose work was consulted and even printed into the seventeenth century and then promptly forgotten. The translation is exemplary and will provide an aid to the interpretation of Zinovii’s writings for some time. The account of the structure of the text and its sources is an equally valuable addition to our knowledge about a figure who deserves much more attention than he has received from scholars.