Slavonic Translations of the “Master of Rhodes Letter”

Abstract The “Master of Rhodes Letter”, which tells of the birth of the Antichrist, was one of the most popular eschatological writings in Europe in the 15th century. This pseudo-epistle was translated from Latin into Russian in the middle of the 15th century in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by Feofil Dederkin, an informant for the Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily Vasilyevich. Previously only one letter from Dederkin to the Grand Duke Vasily Vasilyevich was known: a translation from Latin describing the earthquakes in Italy in 1456. The “Master of Rhodes Letter” was translated a second time into Ukrainian from Latin in the 1630s, during a time when the Orthodox hierarchy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth resisted the adoption of the Union of Brest. The third translation was made from English into Russian at beginning of the 18th century, and was believed by Metropolitan Job of Novgorod to be the work of Old Believers.