Slavonic Translations of the “Master of Rhodes Letter”

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.

Russian and is known in Russian manuscripts of the 17th and 18th centuries.4 The "Book of the Antichrist", which became widespread in Europe by the end of the 15th century, opened with the prophecy of the birth of the Antichrist from the tribe of Dan, based on the words of the Old Testament patriarch Jacob.5 The richly illustrated "Book of the Antichrist" attracted readers and was one of the most widespread, but far from the only, essays that prophetically announced the imminent birth of the Antichrist. Another work announcing the birth of the infant Antichrist, the "Master of Rhodes Letter", dates to the middle of the 14th century. This essay had a peculiar fate: written in the form of a report, it was rewritten as a series of letters and accounts of real events6 and, once the date indicated in it was updated, came to be relevant at any time. The latest translation known to us was published in 1706 in English. Like the earlier "letters", it is presented in the form of an account of recent events and is accompanied by the publisher's reflections on whether this text could have been created by Protestants.7

"The Master of Rhodes Letter" in Europe in the 14th-15th Centuries
The "Master of Rhodes Letter" is written in the form of a letter from the Master of the Order of the Johannites to Italy. In different versions of this story, the place of writing varies: either Rhodes or, in later versions, Malta is specified.
The key element is the Order of the Johannites (Hospitallers), which from 1310 was located on the island of Rhodes and since 1530 -on the island of Malta.
The earliest version of the text was written in Latin on behalf of a priest retelling the news that circulated in Jerusalem, which allowed Robert E. Lerner and Jessica Roussanov to name the original text "Jerusalem Rumors".8 R. Lerner suggested that the original short version was created around 1356 in the middle Rhine region.9 According to a later elaborated version of the text, which was recorded no later than the last quarter of the 14th century,10 the letter was written by the Master of the Order of the Johannites and sent to Italy. The letter announced the birth of the Antichrist in the vicinity of Babylon. The child's father remained unknown, and the mother came from the biblical tribe of Dan and was a harlot. The letter went on to describe two embassies sent by the Hospitallers to Babylon to check on the terrible news. The messengers learned that the child born to the harlot had an unusual and repulsive appearance; being two months old, he had the mental capacity of an adult. His birth was marked by a number of supernatural phenomena: precious stones and snakes fell from the sky, voices were heard, and so on. One of the mountains in the vicinity of Babylon split in two, and a stone column appeared in the crevice with the words of prophecy engraved on it. The locals fully trusted the Antichrist, considering him a prophet and messiah and handing over to the "Saracens" for death anyone who refused to worship the infant. The content of the "Master of Rhodes Letter" makes one wonder whether its creation is connected with the activities of the Order of the Johannites to a greater extent than R. Lerner assumed. Obviously, the occurrence in the text of "Saracens" who appear to be on the side of the Antichrist reflected the constant confrontation between the Hospitallers and the Turks,11 which began with the arrival of the Johannites on Rhodes and continued until their exile to Malta. Italian cities took part in the conflict, most importantly, Venice.12 This explains why the "Master of Rhodes Letter" devoted to the growing power of the Antichrist and his Saracen patrons is addressed specifically to the Italian authorities.
Regardless of whether the text originated in the German principalities in the middle of the 14th century or in some other setting at an even earlier time, by the beginning of the 15th century the "Master of Rhodes Letter" had gained popularity in various European countries. At the end of the 14th-beginning of the 15th centuries, its translations into Italian, Spanish and German appeared. There are no fewer than 34 handwritten copies of the "Master of Rhodes Letter", which differ significantly in text and composition.13 The most complete information about the extant manuscripts, editions, studies and mentions of the "Master of Rhodes Letter" was collected by Klaus Graf,14 but a text-critical study of this pseudo-epistle has not yet been carried out. The known manuscripts (most of which date to the 15th century) are divided into several groups, depending on the addressees of the epistle and the date to which the birth of the Antichrist is assigned. Thus, at least five manuscripts are addressed to Venice. Some manuscripts indicate the same year of the birth of the Antichrist -either 1385 or 1440 -which no doubt indicates the date when the text was revised. Frances Courtney Kneupper has shown convincingly that the "Master of Rhodes Letter" attracted the particular attention of theologians who met at the Council of Basel (1431)(1432)(1433)(1434)(1435)(1436)(1437)(1438)(1439)(1440)(1441)(1442)(1443)(1444)(1445)(1446)(1447)(1448)(1449). Its prophecies about the birth of the Antichrist and the vague expectation of the collapse of the adherents of the true faith agreed with the mood of the participants at the Basel Council. F. Kneupper connects the creation of the revised version of the "Master of Rhodes Letter" mentioning the date of 1440 with the sessions of the Council.15 Throughout the 15th century, the popularity of the "Master of Rhodes Letter" in European countries grew. The dates in the manuscripts of this time indicate new interpretations of the prophecy and attribute the birth of the Antichrist or the sending of the letter to 1408, 1412, 1441, 1465, 1489, 1491,

Translation of Feofil Dederkin into Russian (15th Century)
Prophetic and apocalyptic writings became widespread not only in Western Europe and Byzantium, but also in the Slavic countries. 22 The prophetic letter about the birth of the Antichrist was in demand not only in Western countries. Already in the 1440s, it was translated into Russian with elements of "prosta mova" by a certain Feofil (Theophilus) Dederkin. Until recently, this translation remained unknown to scholars. Dederkin addressed the letter to the Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily Vasilyevich the Blind (1425-1462),23 narrating the story of the birth of the Antichrist as the latest news and introducing himself as one of the participants in the events.24 Dederkin prefaced the translation with a message that a certain essay in Latin was sent from Venice to the Kingdom of Poland, and from Poland to the city of Lutsk, one of the centers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Dederkin used the term "leaf" ("лист"), which in the clerical terminology of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania meant "letter" or "epistle". The term "leaf" ("лист") for any letter, regardless of the origin of its author, is characteristic of the business correspondence of the about the birth of the Antichrist.26 He omits all information about the Master of the Hospitallers and the Order of the Johannites and smooths the line between his own words and the beginning of the translated text, so that the reader gets the impression that Dederkin himself talked with the members of the embassy to Babylon. The supporter of the Antichrist mentioned in the Latin text -a Franciscan brother from the city of Viterbo -under the pen of Dederkin becomes a noble Venetian. Perhaps this is due to the desire of the translator to make the text more understandable for the Muscovite Grand Duke, who was well aware of Venice, but might not have heard of Viterbo. At times, Dederkin, or his assistant who translated the message, experienced difficulties in transmitting the Latin text. He tried to translate some phrases verbatim, but he was hopelessly confused: "this letter we have (received) from our (envoys), which epistle our confidants received in the Babylonian lands through us" ("листъ есмя от нашихъ, которыи взяли вѣрнии во странах Вавилоньских чрес нас посланье", cf.: "litteras recepisse a nostris exploratoribus, quos pro nostra fideliumque salute in partibus Babilonie"), misunderstood the original: "not glorious descent" ("роду неславна", cf.: "staturam infantuli mirabiliter esse formatam"), or provided the opposite meaning in the translation: "the star did not appear" ("не явилася звезда", cf.: "alique stelle vise sunt"). He missed some details -for example, an indication of the month of birth of the child or the story about the descent of lights flashing over the house of the infant's mother: "they said they saw a large flame" ("огнь велик повѣдаютъ видѣли", cf.: "apparuit ignis magnus supra domum, ubi erat dictus infans, qui descendit subito in terram sine verculo exstinctionis"). 27 The translator completely left out the interpretation of the rockfall and the flying snakes, attributed to the words of the infant; on the other hand, he colorfully described the snake, turning it into a fire-breathing dragon: "a dragon appeared flying around his house and frightening all of the people with his hissing, (and) fire came out of its mouth" ("Змии явишася лѣтающи округъ дому его и свистаниемъ вся человѣки устрашающи, огнь из устъ его исхожаше", cf.: "Unde dictus 26 We had the opportunity to compare, in addition to the text published by J. Roussanov and R. Lerner (c. 1400), the German and Latin editions (c. 1502), as well as the Paris and Augsburg manuscripts: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ms. lat. 8731 (Italy, c. 1450); Augsburg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. I.3, 2°, 18 (1472). Both manuscripts are available online. Of these, the closest to Dederkin's letter is the text of the Paris copy, on which we rely for the rest of our study: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ms. lat. 8731, ff. 33r-34r. For example, only this copy contains the name of the mother of the Antichrist, close to the translation of Dederkin: Chancas (cf. Канътаса). It is from the Parisian copy that the Latin text is cited from hereon and it is reproduced in the Appendix. 27 Words that Feofil Dederkin omitted are in bold.
infans interrogatus respondit, lapides preacisos significare electis suis gaudia Paradise, serpentes vero dare mortem contratriis suis"). The translator reduced to two words the prophecy written on the pillar: "The time has come" ("Приде час", cf.: "Venit hora mea, ortus meus, exitus de mundo"). Perhaps it was these misunderstood words about the exodus into the world of the Antichrist that led to the appearance of the phrase "he began to rule" ("нача пановати") in Dederkin's translation. Dederkin mentions that the Latin original was obtained by him from Venice. However, given the abundance of Latin and Italian manuscripts in which Venice appears as the addressee of the "Master of Rhodes Letter", it is obvious that the name of this city was borrowed from a literary source. There is no reason to believe that the Latin original actually came to Dederkin from Venice. In addition, Dederkin indicates the year of the birth of the Antichrist as 1440. This date can only be taken as a 'terminus post quem' , since it dates back to the revision of the "Master of Rhodes Letter" prepared at the time of the Basel Council.
Describing the second embassy to the Babylonian countries, Dederkin adds that it was sent from Radoml, a city in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This allowed Dederkin to give the story the features of a contemporary incident that he himself witnessed: "we selected a location at a holy cathedral in Radoml and jointly decided to send several (people) to Babylon" ("мы есмя избрали дом у святомъ сборѣ в Радомлѣ и содиначили есмя некоторыхъ послати до Вавилона", cf.: "Congregato consilio nostri capitolii decrevimus aliquos nostros fratres in Babiloniam destinare"). This is another example of an incorrect translation by Diderkin: instead of the verb "convened" ("събрали", cf.: "congregato") he uses "selected" ("избрали"), and translates the word "consilio" using the word "дом" in the sense of "location"28 instead of "съвет" ("council").
The language of the translation bears characteristic features of "prosta mova" or the Old Belarusian language, a dialect of the Old Russian language typical for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and common to the East Slavic lands, which acquired pronounced features by the 15th century. Among the most typical lexemes indicative of "prosta mova" are: "кажут" ("they say"), "послали до твоей милости" ("we sent to your mercy", with prepositional control in the dative case), "знаменитый" (in the sense of "noble"),29 "борзо" ("soon"), "пановати" ("to rule"), "выкладают" (in the meaning of "they interpret"),30 "содиначили" (in the meaning of "jointly decided"),31 "Полское корольство" ("Polish kingdom", instead of the usual term for Poland used in Moscow, "land of the Lyakhs" ["земля ляхов"] or "Lyadish land" ["Лядская земля"]), "мѣсто" (in meaning of "city").32 The lexical features indicate that the translation was prepared in the eastern lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The only known manuscript containing the letter of Feofil Dederkin addressed to the Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily Vasilyevich is the manuscript Russian Academy of Sciences Library, collection of the Arkhangelsk Museum of Antiquities, No. 617, which contains the text on ff. 2v-5v.33 The folios with Dederkin's message are woven into a manuscript that dates from the 1440-1450s34 and is a collection of eschatological and spiritually edifying works. Judging by the peculiarities of the language and palaeographic data, the collection was copied in the vicinity of Pskov,35 a territory that in the middle of the 15th century was located between the Muscovite State and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and experienced influence from both sides. Based on palaeographic observations, the folios with Dederkin's letter may be dated to the same period. The letter is not set off by a cinnabar title and so for a long time escaped the attention scholars. The proximity of the dating of the manuscript to the time Dederkin's letter about earthquakes is known in three manuscript copies, the earliest of which (dated to the 1460s) was recorded by the Kirillo-Belozersky encyclopedic scribe Euphrosin; another (dated 1483) was located in a manuscript from the St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery in Kiev; the third was found in a manuscript from Pskov (dated 1517).40 Thus, although the letter about earthquakes was not widely circulated, it was known both in Muscovy and in Kiev. The appearance of both of Dederkin's messages in Pskov may speak of his ties with this city, which for a long time retained its independence in disputes between the Moscow and Lithuanian Grand Dukes.
Like the earlier letter about the Antichrist, the translation of the information about earthquakes contains certain lexical features, which indicate that Dederkin came from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.41 This is also evidenced by his family name, since the nickname "Dederka" has been recorded in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since the 16th century.42 In addition, he calls himself an "intercessor" ("богомолец", that is, one who prays to God on behalf of someone) for the Grand Duke of Moscow, which is a term typical for clergy. The use of the full name Feofil (instead of the diminutive "Feofilishko") and the absence of the epithet "sinful" indicates that we cannot view him as a monastic. It can be assumed that Feofil Dederkin was an Orthodox priest, perhaps the rector of a church. Until now, the assumption about the Ruthenian origin of Dederkin was based only on the peculiarities of his language. Two cities are mentioned in the letter about the Antichrist: Lutsk and especially Radoml, about which Dederkin writes in the first person. Radoml is a small town near Smolensk, in the Principality of Mstislavl, which found itself in the thick of political events after the Ferraro-Florentine Council of 1437-1439, when the Orthodox inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were divided into two camps: supporters and opponents of union with Rome. Radoml was located on the lands of Prince Yuri Lugvenevich of Mstislavl, who declared his rights to the throne of Lithuania and in 1440 opposed the Grand Duke of Lithuania Casimir Jagiellonchik.43 In the midst of hostilities, Yuri Lugvenevich cordially received Metropolitan Isidore, who was touring the Ruthenian lands after the conclusion of the union; but defeat in the war forced the prince of Mstislavl to flee to Moscow.44 One can suppose that the supporters of the Moscow prince who remained in his possessions were in a far from comfortable position when the lands of the Mstislavl principality passed to Casimir Jagellonchik and the Orthodox churches were transferred by Metropolitan Isidore into union with Rome. Feofil Dederkin, apparently, was one of such supporters. We already know two letters from Feofil Dederkin sent from the lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily Vasilyevich. This allows us to see in their author an informant for the Moscow prince. In both cases, the source of the translation was widely-circulated letters about events in Western European lands that were eagerly translated into different languages. Such dispatch letters acted as a special genre in which the author and addressee did not have much importance, since these letters were intended for a broad audience. Unlike other informants who reported on political events,45 Dederkin presented news exclusively about the impending end of the world. It can be assumed that for Dederkin, the news about the cities that had sunk into the ground and about the roaring infant-Antichrist were equal in importance and equally valuable as terrible signs of the times.
However, the amazing and scary stories of Feofil Dederkin, judging by the rarity of the extant manuscript copies, did not gain popularity. Perhaps the Grand Duke of Moscow did not consider them important enough or trustworthy. The small number of copies of Dederkin's epistles suggests that eschatological prophecies and the description of signs of the end times did not attract much attention among Orthodox readers. In addition, in the 15th century in the East Slavic lands, the genre of letter was not as widespread as in Europe, where reports on the latest news were collected in special collections, copied and translated into national languages.46

The Ukrainian Translation of the "Master of Rhodes Letter" (1635)
Dederkin's letter is not the only case of the translation of the "Master of Rhodes Letter" in the Slavic lands. In 1635, the letter was translated from Latin into "ruska mova" -the Ukrainian variety of the everyday language of the Orthodox inhabitants of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. in a unique surviving copy originating from Lvov.47 According to the text, the work was brought to the "Ugric Land", or Carpathian Rus, in 1635, where it was translated.48 The Ukrainian translator allowed himself only one innovation: he dated the birth of the Antichrist to 1634, that is, like his predecessors, he turned the letter into the latest news. For the rest of the text, the translator appears to have followed the original. Since the European tradition of the "Master of Rhodes Letter" in the 16th-17th centuries remains unstudied, we have no way to determine the closest Latin text to the translation.49 However, there is no doubt that the Ukrainian translator had the original Latin text in his hands: this is evidenced by the Latin statement preserved by the translator at the end of the work ("Tu ne crede malis hisce et falsis Antichristi nugis"), which is a paraphrase of the proverb "Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito". The translator must have used a contemporary Latin copy of the work and not a fifteenth-century manuscript, since the island of Malta is named as the seat of the master, where the Order of the Johannites had been located since 1530.
The Ukrainian translation is much closer to the Latin text than Dederkin's version. It contains the description of stones falling from the sky and an unusual noise, as well as the prophetic interpretation of them by the infant, which was omitted in Dederkin's translation. In the Lvov manuscript, the text of the prophecy on the pillar, which had been shortened by Dederkin to two words, is fully preserved: "The birth of the Antichrist who is born has already taken place" ("Южь пришло нароженя того антихриста, юж ся народил"), cf.: "The time has come" ("Приде час") in Dederkin's translation. While Dederkin shortened the text, the Ukrainian translator, on the contrary, added numerous artistic details of his own, which sometimes led to errors and misunderstandings. Thus, in the above-mentioned plot, jewels ("lapides preciosos") under the pen of the Ukrainian translator turn into "manna, pearls  Lvov, 1906, vol. 4, pp. 397-400. 49 Gisela Möncke finds 12 editions of the text on the birth of the Antichrist, which copied the original edition of "Diss büchlin …" of 1502 and are dated to the 16th century: G. Möncke, "Zeitungen vom neugeborenen Antichrist," pp. 214, 218-219. and precious stones", and snakes ("serpents") -into "shuffling" ("шарканье").
In the description of the second embassy, the Ukrainian translator adds of his own accord that four "persons" were sent: "two clergy and two laymen" ("две духовныи и две свецки"). Obviously, the participation of both secular and ecclesiastical authorities in the embassy should have added credibility to the text.
One of the few abbreviations made by the Ukrainian translator is the exclusion of the story of the Saracens leading unbelievers to the infant and killing them. It can be assumed that the translator deliberately avoided mentioning Saracens as the Antichrist's patrons, so as not to provoke conflicts with the Turks after the conclusion of peace in 1634 following the Ottoman Empire's unsuccessful war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The Ukrainian translation is preserved in a manuscript miscellany dated to the 17th century, which includes the correspondence between the Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev Peter Moghila and his correspondents in Lvov. The figure of Metropolitan Peter Moghila of Kiev is extremely significant for the history of Orthodoxy in the Ruthenian lands of the 17th century. After the revival of the Kiev Metropolis in 1620, Peter Moghila in 1633 achieved the recognition of Orthodoxy as an official confession of the Commonwealth. Closely associated with the Orthodox circles of Lvov, Peter Moghila had a large number of supporters there at the beginning of his career. Dramatic events, constant conflicts, the need to maneuver between the Polish king, the Moscow tsar and the Uniate metropolitan, however, maintained a constant state of tension throughout the life of Peter Moghila and his Orthodox followers. The essay on the birth of the Antichrist was translated into Ukrainian during the period of the revival of the Orthodox hierarchy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth following the adoption of the Union of Brest and the transfer of the majority of church parishes to the Greek Catholics.

The Russian Translation of the "Master of Rhodes Letter" (End of the 17th-early 18th Centuries)
At the beginning of the 18th century, the "Master of Rhodes Letter" became known in Russian in the form of a "pretended letter" or "letter-forgery" ("подмётное письмо"). The full text of the translation has not survived or remains to be found. We know about it only from the work of Metropolitan Job of Novgorod (d. 1716), who on May 8, 1707, published at the Moscow Print Yard "A Brief Response to a Pretended Letter about the Birth During Our Times of the Antichrist" ("Ответ краткий на подметное письмо о рождении сими времены антихриста").50 In his essay, Metropolitan Job quotes an anonymous letter about the birth of the Antichrist and proves the impossibility of the events described in it. The "Response" is built in the form of a dialogue with an opponent who was too gullible about the news of the birth of the Antichrist. Metropolitan Job's polemical composition contains only short quotations from the "Master of Rhodes Letter", so it is impossible to judge how complete the translation was. Nevertheless, based on the storyline outlined by Metropolitan Job, we can recognize the "Master of Rhodes Letter". It has many differences from the texts of the 15th century and even from the Ukrainian translation of the 17th century, including abbreviations and a free retelling of the plot.
The variant of the "Master of Rhodes Letter" known from the work of Metropolitan Job could be attributed to a Russian translator or even to the Metropolitan himself; however, all the innovations belong to a Western European version of the letter about the birth of the Antichrist that formed the basis of the translation. The source for the translation was the same text that was published in 1706 in London in English. By the beginning of the 18th century, the "Master of Rhodes Letter" made its way to Great Britain, where it was still perceived as the latest news and made readers look for the author of the message about the birth of the Antichrist among Protestant contemporaries. It was published in 1706 under the date of March 22 in the periodical Monthly Mercury with the title: "A pretended Letter from the Great Master of Maltha, concerning the Birth of the Antichrist at Babylon, has been spread in several places, and by which many weak people have been imposed upon, is as follows" and was accompanied by the reflections of the publisher, who came to the conclusion that the letter was a fake.51 A comparison of the texts shows that all the quotations used by Metropolitan Job, except for one, are a literal translation of the English text, excepting the phrases misunderstood by the translator: 50 The copy preserved in the collection of the Museum of Books of the Russian State Library is available online: https://search.rsl.ru/ru/record/01008509278. 51 The A woman of great beauty is brought to bed of a son, whose father is not known.
Some beautiful woman gave birth to a son who did not have a father. Родчаа нѣкоторая жена прекрасная сына, не имѣющаго отца. He spoke and walk'd in 8 days after his birth; he calls himself the Messias, the Son of God, in whom a'one we must believ.
The infant who was born began to walk and speak on the eighth day after his birth, and openly calls himself the Messiah, the Son of God, in whom alone it is proper to believe. Рождшиися младенецъ ходить и говорить почалъ по осми днехъ рождения своего, явственно и видѣниемъ сказывается мессиею, Сыномъ Божиимъ, въ которого единого вѣрити должно. This infant rais'd people from death, … restor'd sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, made the lame to walk, and cur'd all sorts of diseases.
The above-mentioned child rose from the dead, gave sight to the blind, hearing -to the deaf, (made) the lame to walk upright, and cast out all sorts of diseases. Вышереченное отроча воскресъ из мертвых, не видящымъ свѣтъ далъ, глухимъ слышание, хромымъ поступъ прямой, и всякия немощи изгонилъ. The child is more inclinable to white than black, has a short neck, his head is of a pointed shape, his forehead wrinkled, his eyes sparkling, his ears very large, his mouth cross ways, his teeth sharp, and his nose hollow.
They heard in the air, for 12 Miles round, a voice crying: Make ready to receive the Son who was promised you.
For three hundred miles around they heard and saw angels singing such words: make ready to receive the son who was promised to you. За триста миль кругом слышали и видѣли аггеловъ поющихъ сия слова: готовитесь принять сына вамъ обѣщаннаго.

"Response" of Metrop. Job, 1707, ff. 2-6
The people of the country worship him … and those who will not are destroy'd without mercy.
Metropolitan Job used a fragment of the heading of the English text to define the sense of the text "подмётное письмо" ("anonymous letter-forgery", cf.: "a pretended letter") and to explain the purpose of the epistle: "возмути простыи народъ" ("he stirred up the commoners", cf.: "weak people have been imposed upon" in the Monthly Mercury). In the English translation, as in the quotations from Metropolitan Job, the date of birth of the Antichrist was missing, and Metropolitan Job borrowed from an English publisher an indication of this feature as a sign of the forged nature of the document: "А в кой годъ, в кой месяцъ, коего числа, не написано" ("neither the year, nor month nor day was written", cf.: "no notice was taken either of the day, month or year" in the Monthly Mercury). Metropolitan Job suggested that the emergence of the "pretended letter" is associated with the activities of the Old Believers: "мню, яко жидовинъ или расколникъ, сии бо наипаче ждутъ антихриста и любимыя о немъ бесѣды обыкоша имѣти" ("I think a Jew or a schismatic, for these, more than others, await the Antichrist and like to have their favorite discussions about him"). This is similar to the perception of the text in Great Britain, where the contemporaries of the English publisher saw in the letter about the birth of the Antichrist a composition of Protestants: "Some ignorant credulous Papists embrac'd this fable greedily out of their zeal against the Protestants, who charg'd the Pope to be Antichrist". The proximity of the "anonymous letter" to the publication in an English journal convinces us that the translation was made not by Old Believers, but by a person who followed closely the latest events in Western Europe.
The short time gap between the publication in the English monthly and the publication in Moscow of the "Response" by Metropolitan Job does not allow us to regard the English journal as the direct source for the Metropolitan. In addition, the composition of Metropolitan Job has an important difference (cont.) from the English edition: in the Monthly Mercury it is reported that the voice announcing the birth of the Antichrist was heard 12 miles away, while Metropolitan Job gives the original figure of 300 miles. Probably, the distance over which the sound reached was corrected to a more believable number just prior to publication in the English monthly.
Thus, at the beginning of the 18th century, a Russian translation was made of a text extremely close to the one published in 1706 in the Monthly Mercury. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, foreign newspapers regularly delivered to Russia were one of the main sources of European news.52 Messages about various curiosities and prophecies filled such press and were eagerly translated for the Russian reader.53

Conclusion
The "Master of Rhodes Letter" has been translated at least three times in Cyrillic literature. The chronological framework of the existence of this text in East Slavia is very broad: from the middle of the 15th century to the beginning of the 18th century. Each translation occurs at a time of changes in the status and position of the Orthodox Church: the earliest translation of the 1440s was made in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the time of the conclusion of the Union of Florence; the Ukrainian translation of the 1630s appeared at a time when the Orthodox Church in Ukraine was defending its right to exist; the Russian translation of the early 18th century arose in the midst of the confrontation between the Old Believers and the official Orthodox Church. This led to the fact that the eschatological text about the birth of the Antichrist, originally written in the second half of the 14th century in the German lands, was perceived as current news in the Orthodox culture of Eastern Europe in the 15th century, in the 17th century, and again at the beginning of the 18th century. The Cyrillic tradition of the text of the "Master of Rhodes Letter" significantly expands our knowledge about the degree of prevalence of this eschatological text. b Literally, "one who prays to God for someone." c Literally, "knocks his forehead on the ground". d Here and further the word "leaf" is translated as "letter". e Corrected; the letters то are omitted in the manuscript.
Scrinium 17 (2021)  It so happened that for 5 months the sun did not appear in those places of Babylon and then the light appeared, but not like (the light) that was before.
And on the same night when this evil one was born, the star did not appear. For three hours after his birth // (f. 4r) they said they saw a large flame. And after the 3rd day after his birth, an hour of darkness came in the middle of the day, and at that time (there was) rain and stones, fear and an indescribable thunderstorm. And that night a dragon appeared flying around his house and frightening all of the people with its hissing, (and) fire came out from its mouth.
k The following words were written by mistake at this point and then crossed out: monstra prodysse Вси же вавилоняне яко Богу поклоняютъся ему, а хто ему не вѣруетъ, срачиновъ его приводятъ до того младеньца, и котории не вѣруютъ ему, тѣхъ убивати повелѣваютъ. And on the very night of his birth a great mountain was split in two. Many people who came saw a miracle: they found a great pillar in the split mountain, half of it white, and half of it scarlet, and on both sides (of the pillar) it was written in Greek letters, but in the Jewish language: "The time has come." He began to rule, to produce visions and signs, (to give) health to the sick, to raise the dead // (f. 4v) and to preach light to the blind with his word. All the Babylonians worship him like God, and if someone does not believe in him, they (the Babylonians) lead the Saracens to the infant, and command (the Saracens) to kill whomever does not believe in him (the Antichrist).
p Corrected; the last letter is repeated twice by mistake. q The word scriptum is written twice, and the second word is marked with dots below the line, indicating that it is intended for deletion Р. И выкладаютъ о нем нѣкая писанья и пророчества, иже преже тѣхъ врѣмяни никто же видѣ, ни слышы, прельсти исполънена.