Ivan Wyschenskyj

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ivan Wyschenskyj ( Ukrainian Іван Вишенський , scientific transliteration : Ivan Vyšens'kyj , Russian Иван Вишенский ; * around 1550 in Sudowa Wyschnja not far from Lemberg ; † after 1620 on Mount Athos ) was a Ruthenian monk and scholar. He is considered to be one of the most important representatives of Orthodox polemical literature.

Life

Little is known about Vyshenskyi's life. It is certain that he spent a certain time in Lutsk in his youth , although it is believed that he was the secretary of a Ukrainian prince there. In the last quarter of the 16th century he went to Mount Athos, which at that time was the center of the Orthodox monastic culture. There he stayed until the end of his life, interrupted only by a stay in the Ukraine between 1604 and 1606.

Services

Wyschenskyj was a defender of Orthodoxy and an opponent of Catholicism and the United Faith . He intervened through letters from Athos in the denominational disputes that had led to the Union of Brest and thus to the emergence of the United Church in 1596 , and argued in favor of Orthodoxy. In particular with the Jesuit Piotr Skarga , a supporter of the Union, he delivered violent arguments that were conducted in a very polemical manner. The language in which Wyschenskyj wrote was not - as is common among Slavic Orthodox scholars - Church Slavonic , but Ruthenian . Together with Iwan Uschewytsch and Meletij Smotryzkyj , he can be considered one of the most important scholars who used this language.

literature

  • IP Eremin (Ed.): Ivan Višenskij. Sočinenija. Moskva 1955.
  • Bernhard Gröschel : The language of Ivan Vyšens'kyjs. Cologne etc. 1972.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. Gröschel, p. 2