EVLAMPIEV, Igor – PETRUCIJOVÁ, Jelena – FEBER, Jaromír. St. Francis of Assisi and the Search for a “New” Christianity in the Russian Philosophy of the First Half of the 20th Century (D. Merezhkovsky and N. Berdyaev). The authors analyse the understanding of St. Francis of Assisi by D. Merezhkovsky and N. Berdyaev, the prominent representatives of the “new religious consciousness”. The analysis is contextualized by the overview of the conception of Francis’ importance in Russian theological and philosophical literature at the turn of the 20th century. In the Orthodox literature was the evaluation of St. Francis directly derived from the evaluation of Catholicism. The concept of Francis as the “embodiment” of the ideal of the Catholic sacrament prevailed. Merezhkovsky and Berdyaev did not consider the differences between Orthodoxy and Catholicism to be essential. In their view, Francis was to rise above historical Christianity and marked the tendency to transform both churches (Catholic and Orthodox) into a new final state. According to Russian thinkers, the Church must go this way in the name of overcoming the religious crisis that all humanity is experiencing.