The idea of tsar as an autocrat whose God-blessed reign is rooted in his God-chosen dynasty, was fully formed in Russia in the 16th century. Still at the end of the century, after the death of Feodor Ivanovich who left no successor, the model collapsed. The new ritual and symbolical system of choosing the tsar was rapidly created. This step signified the radical shift of notions that concerned the origins and the system of reign. The article is focused on this new model and the way it influenced the culture of the 17th century.

The medieval Devil is not only the father of lies but also the father of illusions and expert in transformations assuming multiple masks (from insects and wild beasts to humans and angels) lengthy described in the Byzantine and Old Russian hagiography. The article explores the role of the illusionist transformations in the Old Russian demonological imagery and compares their functions in Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic contexts. It focuses also on the methods the medieval artists used for visualizing the illusions described in the lives of saints and explores the inevitable gap between the textual and visual narrative strategies.

In the second part of the article the authors continue to explore the functions the concept of devilish illusions played in the Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic religious imagaries. They analyze the methods the Medieval artists used to visualise the demonic transformations and explore the inevitable gap between the textual and visual narrative strategies.

Antichrist is the key figure of the apocalyptical prophecies, the last and the main enemy of the Church. In the East and the West of Christian world the sinister «son of devil» drew attention of many authors and painters. Since the first centuries A.D. there have appeared different ideas about the nature and appearance of the Enemy. The iconography of Antichrist has embodied an array of variable interpretations. He was depicted as a seven-headed monster, dappled Beast, seductive young man, imperious ruler. His visual images include gestures of sorrow, triumph, fury, desperation or fear. In Russian icons, frescos and miniatures multiple figures of Antichrist spread rather late, starting from the second half of the XVIth century. The article is focused on the semiotics of these diverse images. In the first part, which is published in this issue, the author reviews Muscovite Rus' eschatological tradition and early Christian texts that have influenced Russian iconography of the Enemy.

Antichrist is the key figure of the apocalyptical prophecies, the last and the main enemy of the Church. In the East and the West of Christian world the sinister «son of devil» drew attention of many authors and painters. Since the first centuries A.D. there have appeared different ideas about the nature and appearance of the Enemy. The iconography of Antichrist has embodied an array of variable interpretations. He was depicted as a seven-headed monster, dappled Beast, seductive young man, imperious ruler. His visual images include gestures of sorrow, triumph, fury, desperation or fear. In Russian icons, frescos and miniatures multiple figures of Antichrist appeared rather late, starting from the second half of the XVIth century. The second part of the article, which is published in this issue, is focused on the semiotics of these images. The author reviews European visual tradition of the Enemy and compares it to Russian iconography and «textual portraits» of Antichrist.

The author studies medieval Russian concepts that concern the world of angels and demons — nature, origin, abilities of the immaterial spirits and their influence upon the world of men. The relevant notions of medieval authors are researched in their evolution from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Time. The author reconstructs significant ideas of ancient Russian literature in the context of works of early-Christian authors that were popular in Russia and traces the evolution of those ideas in the «transitional» XVII century. Can a demon kill, create or alter material things? What are the limits of demonic power in the earthy world? Can an angel err, sin or not obey the will of God? What are the limits of his freedom? Medieval scribes and authors of the XVII century found different answers to the questions that were of principal importance for the culture. Modifications that penetrated in traditional concepts in the XVII century appear to be very interesting and often unforeseen. The study of these themes helps deeper understanding of the originality of the epoch that lies between the Middle Ages and the Modern Time.

In the final part of his article the author seeks for studying the evolution of canonical Christian ideas, common for medieval Russian literature, in some famous sources of the 17th century. Two autobiographical Lives of the first ideologists of the Old Belief schism, archpriest Avvakum and coenobite Epiphany, written in Pustozersk earthen prison, prove to present two different models of relations between man and God. While Avvakum followed the traditional hagiographical patterns in descriptions of miracles that had happened to him, Epiphany created a story, filled with bright ideas that appear to be both typical and new for the Old Russian literature. The phenomenon originally reflects the process of evolution that kept altering medieval Russian culture throughout the «transitional» century.

The article is dedicated to an interesting phenomenon of the contemporary Russian historiography — the phenomenon of «paradox»; it is focused on the methodological principles of historians who study consciousness (notions, «mentality») of medieval people. The strategies which are applied here are based on totally different assumptions: while some historians insist on the idea that categories and concepts of people remain unaltered through centuries, the others ground the theory of «fundamental difference» between «the way of thinking» of medieval people and our contemporaries. Nevertheless historians of both trends agree on the idea that we can find many «paradoxes» in medieval sources and in «the medieval way of thinking» itself. As a result, we may speak of a peculiar explanatory theory that is being created in history. The author of the article seeks after finding the non-verifying suppositions (hypothetical knowledge) in the works of historians who not only see «paradoxes» in sources but accept their objective status. Finding out «paradoxes» in medieval texts and «mentality» is the result of certain guess-works that are taken by historians in the process of investigating sources or even before opening them. Studying these problems on the ground of some well-known researches the author comes close to the relevant issue of «understanding» and «explaining» methods in history and methodological principles that are necessary for the verified study of self-consciousness of a man and an epoch.

The author investigates the dramatic period of Russian history, the deep cultural crisis that took place at the beginning of the 17-th century and was called by its contemporaries «the Time of Troubles». The historian tries to explore self-consciousness of contemporaries of the time, to reconstruct ideas and notions settled in their minds. Running a historical-phenomenology investigation, he tries to reconstruct the myths of the culture, myths as the way of understanding life and happenings. What ideas will come to light as a result? How did the contemporaries comprehend and evaluate miseries and dramatic events of the time? Trying to reveal the roots of such cultural phenomenon as Time of Troubles, the author offers to investigate the «mythreality» of people of the 17-th century. Could the knowledge, attained here, alter our idea of the past? An effort to answer these questions the author makes in the article, dedicated to the first tsar of the dramatic period, the famous boyar on the throne — Boris Godunov.