Reverend Ivan Vyshensky’s Cultural and Worldview Movements in South-Western Rus' of the Second Half of the 16th Century – Beginning of the 17th Century

Abstract

Reverend Ivan Vyshenskyi (1530-1620) was an Orthodox eremite and a famous Ukrainian writer-polemicist of the second half of the 16th century – early 17th century. This period in the history of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was marked by the events associated with the decision of the Ruthenian Orthodox Church eparchies in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to break with the Eastern Orthodox Church and enter into communion with, and place themselves under the authority of the Pope of Rome in 1596.
The Saint expressed a number of essential features of the worldviews (and, partly, of the civil position) of the part of the Orthodox Church that did not compromise on the question of the Union. His attitude to Roman Catholicism, after the events of the Union of Brest, was extremely negative. There is some biographical information about the monk’s life, especially before his departure to Mount Athos. During his youth, he lived in South-Western Rus’, where the worldview movements gave rise to a minor cultural revival in polemical literature. In this literature, a significant place is occupied by the work of Reverend Ivan.