The Cossack period, or the Middle period of Ukrainian literature, began in the 16th century. It was a historical time of great unrest and political upheaval which culminated in the Cossack-Polish War of 1648-54, and of religious strife between the Uniates and the Orthodox, which centered around the Church Union of Berestia in 1596. Yet this period is also noted in Ukraine for its vibrant and varied cultural activity. One important mode of literary culture that arose as a consequence of religious controversy over the Church Union of Berestia was a rich polemical literature written in Old Ukrainian and in Old Polish, rarely in Church Slavonic. The stormy religious and political polemics were initiated by the Polish Jesuits Piotr Skarga and Benedykt Herbest, who harshly criticized the institutional and spiritual 'vices' of the Orthodox church. In response the Orthodox published two treatises by Herasym Smotrytsky of the Ostrih Academy which were followed by a multitude of works by various authors; these works varied in size and form from short, sharply worded 'epistles' to long scholarly exposes. From a literary point of view, the most important place in the polemical literature of the period is occupied by a brilliant stylist and maximalist defender of Orthodoxy and Eastern asceticism, Ivan Vyshensky... Learn more about the Ukrainian polemical literature of the 16th to 18th centuries by visiting the following entries:
 |
POLEMICAL LITERATURE. Publicistic and literary writings on religious and church issues and on national politics. In Ukraine and Belarus polemical literature dates back to the religious denominational struggles of the 16th and 17th centuries, especially those in conjunction with the 1596 Church Union of Berestia, but also those that were part of the general European processes of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. Initiatially the leading role in the polemics on the side of the Orthodox was assumed by writers associated with the Ostrih Academy, including Prince Kostiantyn Vasyl Ostrozky himself. Along with the Ostrih polemicists, Ivan Vyshensky, the most outstanding publicist in Ukrainian literature, stepped into the fray against the Catholics. The leading Uniate polemicist was Ipatii Potii. Meletii Smotrytsky first directed his polemics against the the Uniates but then changed his allegiance, and figured prominently as the author of several treatises against the Orthodox. Polemical works were also written by the Orthodox metropolitan of Kyiv Petro Mohyla...
|
| Polemical literature |
.jpg) |
SMOTRYTSKY, HERASYM, b ? in Smotrych (now in Dunaivtsi raion, Khmelnytskyi oblast), d October 1594. Writer and teacher; father of Meletii Smotrytsky. He was secretary at the Kamianets-Podilskyi county office and in 1576 was invited by Prince Kostiantyn Vasyl Ostrozky to Ostrih, where he became one of the leading activist members of the Ostrih intellectual circle. In 1580 Smotrytsky became the first rector of the Ostrih Academy. He was one of the publishers of the Ostrih Bible, to which he wrote the foreword and the verse dedication to Prince Ostrozky. The dedication is one of the earliest examples of Ukrainian versification (nonsyllabic) and is somewhat reminiscent of Ukrainian dumas. Smotrytsky's polemical works against those betraying the Orthodox faith and a satire on the clergy have been lost. Only his book, Kliuch tsarstva nebesnoho (Key to the Heavenly Kingdom, 1587), which is the first printed example of Ukrainian polemical literature, has survived...
|
| Herasym Smotrytsky |
 |
POTII, IPATII, b 12 April 1541 in Rozhanka, Podlachia region, d 1613. Churchman and Uniate metropolitan of Kyiv. The son of a nobleman, he was raised at the Polish royal court, and attended a Calvinist school. After attending Cracow University he entered the service of King Sigismund II August. Potii was continually involved in religious affairs. Having adopted Calvinism, he reconverted to Orthodoxy in 1574. At the initiative of Prince Kostiantyn Vasyl Ostrozky he was made bishop of Volodymyr-Volynskyi and Brest in 1593. As bishop he began formal negotiations with Roman Catholic representatives, and in 1595 he was sent to Rome as a representative of the church in Ukraine, to set forth its confession of faith before Pope Clement VIII. He returned to lead the sobor that culminated in the Church Union of Berestia. After the proclamation of the union Potii was one of its leading supporters, both in defending it against Orthodox opposition and in seeking equal rights with Roman Catholics in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth...
|
| Ipatii Potii |
 |
VYSHENSKY, IVAN, b ca 1550 in Sudova Vyshnia, Galicia, d after 1620 in Mount Athos, Greece. Orthodox monk and polemicist. He passed some of his youth in Lutsk and was connected with the Ostrih Academy scholars. Ca 1576-80 he entered a monastery at Mount Athos. There are 15 known works by Vyshensky: seven epistles, six treatises, a dialogue, and a story. His most important works were directed against the Church Union of Berestia and were written in the late 1590s. In 1600-1 he prepared a collection of the 10 works he had written by then and sent it to the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood. Vyshensky's writings stand out among Ukrainian polemical works of the 16th and 17th centuries by virtue of both their literary merit and their ideological content. He did not simply reject the Uniate church and Catholicism. Grounded in Byzantine asceticism, he sharply criticized temporal life and the entire church hierarchy and secular hierarchy and urged a return to the simplicity of old Christian brotherhood in order to bring about God's Kingdom on earth...
|
| Ivan Vyshensky |
.jpg) |
SMOTRYTSKY, MELETII, b 1577 in Smotrych, Podilia, d 27 December 1633 at the Derman Monastery, Volhynia. Philologist, churchman, and polemicist; son of Herasym Smotrytsky. He studied at the Ostrih Academy; the Jesuit college in Vilnius; and, from 1605, in Leipzig, Nuremberg, and Wittenberg. In 1608, he returned to Vilnius to teach at the Orthodox brotherhood school. There he wrote his famous defense of the Orthodox church, Trenos... (Threnos..., 1610). He is believed to have served as a professor and rector of the Kyiv Epiphany Brotherhood School in 1618-20. In 1620 he was consecrated archbishop of Polatsk. During the next three years he wrote several polemical tracts. Smotrytsky travelled to Constantinople and the Holy Land, and after his return he joined the Uniate church, in 1627. In 1627-8 he negotiated with Yov Boretsky and Petro Mohyla in an attempt to re-create a united Ruthenian church in union with Rome but under its own patriarch...
|
| Meletii Smotrytsky |
 |
MOHYLA, PETRO, b 10 January 1597 in Moldavia, d 11 January 1647 in Kyiv. Ukrainian metropolitan, noble, and cultural figure; son of Simeon, hospodar of Wallachia (1601-2) and Moldavia (1606-7), and the Hungarian princess Margareta. After his father's murder in 1607, Mohyla and his mother sought refuge in Western Ukraine. He was tutored by teachers of the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood School, and pursued higher education in theology at the Zamostia Academy and in Netherlands and France. After his return to Ukraine he entered the military service and fought as an officer in the Battle of Cecora (1620) and Battle of Khotyn (1621). In 1621-7 he received estates in the Kyiv region and became interested in affairs of the Ukrainian Orthodox church. In September 1627 a dietine in Zhytomyr chose Mohyla to succeed the late Zakhariia Kopystensky as archimandrite of the influential Kyivan Cave Monastery...
|
No comments:
Post a Comment