41. Polemic literature and I.Vyshensky

Vyshensky, Ivan , b ca 1550 in Sudova Vyshnia, Galicia, d after 1620 in Mount Athos, Greece. Orthodox monk and polemicist. Biographical information on him is sparse. 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, probably in the hope of having it printed. Titled ‘Knyzhka’ (Book), it did not appear in print at that time, but its transcriptions circulated widely in Ukraine. In 1604–6 he visited Ukraine and quarreled with the leaders of 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. He rejected as pagan both secular education and learning on the one hand and old, pre-Christian folk traditions on the other. Stylistically, Vyshensky drew upon the traditional forms of the epistle dialogue and polemical treatise and often mixed these genres. In strong, colorful language he depicted the moral decadence of the upper classes, particularly of the clergy, and contrasted them with poor peasants and simple monks. Exalted feelings alternate with harsh satire and sarcasm. An abundance of epithets and similes, the dramatic use of rhetorical questions and exhortations, ironic portrayals of everyday detail, a rich vocabulary, and the use of the vernacular make his writings lively and persuasive. His style owes much to Byzantine sermons and is closely related to the polemical writings of his Ukrainian (Meletii Smotrytsky) and Polish (Piotr Skarga, Mikołaj Rej) contemporaries. It is one of the finest examples of the baroque style.

42. H.Hrabianka and his Chronicle

52. Hrabianka, Hryhorii, 1686–1737/1738. A Cossack officer and historian. He held various offices in Hadiach regiment: judge (1717–23), quartermaster (1726–30), and colonel (1730–8). For signing and delivering the Kolomak Petitions he was imprisoned from 1723 to 1725 in Saint Petersburg. He died in a campaign against the Crimean Tatars during the Russo-Turkish wars. Hrabianka is the author of Diistviia prezil’noi i ot nachala poliakov krvavshoi nebyvaloi brani Bohdana Khmelnytskoho, hetmana Zaporozhskoho s poliaky ... (The Events of the Most Bitter and the Most Bloody War since the Origin of the Poles between Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Zaporozhian Hetman, and the Poles ..., 1710). This work presents the history of Ukraine from ancient times to 1709; almost half of it deals with the Cossack-Polish War of 1648–57. Hrabianka used various official documents, eyewitness accounts, chronicles, the Sinopsis of 1674, and other works. His chronicle is inspired by the idea of Ukrainian Cossack autonomism. He condemns those Russian voivodes who restricted Ukraine's political rights.