Ivan Vyshenskyi (; born ca. 1550 in

Sudova Vyshnia Sudova Vyshnia (, ; ) is a small city in the Yavoriv Raion of the Lviv Oblast (region) of Ukraine. It hosts the administration of Sudova Vyshnia urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Its population is The town has a number of Catholi ...

– after 1620,

Mount Athos Mount Athos (; ) is a mountain on the Athos peninsula in northeastern Greece directly on the Aegean Sea. It is an important center of Eastern Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodox monasticism. The mountain and most of the Athos peninsula are governed ...

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

) was a Ukrainian Orthodox

monk A monk (; from , ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a man who is a member of a religious order and lives in a monastery. A monk usually lives his life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many reli ...

and religious

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

. He is considered to be an important

polemicist Polemic ( , ) is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called polemics, which are seen in arguments on controversial to ...

of the time.

Biography

Not much is known about the life of Vyshenskyi. It is considered to be likely that he spent part of his youth in

Lutsk Lutsk (, ; see #Names and etymology, below for other names) is a city on the Styr River in northwestern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of Volyn Oblast and the administrative center of Lutsk Raion within the oblast. Lutsk has a populati ...

and was connected with scholars from the

Ostroh Academy The Ostroh Academy (; ) was an influential institute of higher learning located in Ostroh in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It is considered the first institution of higher education in the Eastern Slavic world, dating to 1576 and foun ...

. Within the years 1576–1580 he traveled to

, which was the center of Orthodox monk culture. He stayed there until his death, with the exception of a short visit to Ukraine between 1604 and 1606 when he quarreled with members of the Lviv brotherhood.

Work

In his writings, Vyshenskyi opposed

Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

and the

uniate church The Eastern Catholic Churches or Oriental Catholic Churches, also known as the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches, Eastern Rite Catholicism, or simply the Eastern Churches, are 23 Eastern Christian autonomous (''sui iuris'') particular churches of ...

. He sent messages arguing his position from Mount Athos. Vyshenskyi was especially polemic in his communications with

Piotr Skarga Piotr Skarga (less often Piotr Powęski, incorrectly: Pawęski; 2 February 1536 – 27 September 1612) was a Polish Jesuit, preacher, hagiographer, polemicist, and leading figure of the Counter-Reformation in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealt ...

, who supported church union. His arguments were based on opposition to the church hierarchy of Catholicism and to

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

asceticism. Vyshenskyi wrote not in the common

Church Slavonic language Church Slavonic is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. The ...

, but in the

Ruthenian language Ruthenian (see also #Nomenclature, other names) is an exonymic linguonym for a closely related group of East Slavic languages, East Slavic linguistic Variety (linguistics), varieties, particularly those spoken from the 15th to 18th centuries in ...

, an older form of Ukrainian.

References

External links

Ivan Vyshensky
in the

Encyclopedia of Ukraine The ''Encyclopedia of Ukraine'' (), published from 1984 to 2001, is a fundamental work of Ukrainian Studies. Development The work was created under the auspices of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Europe (Sarcelles, near Paris). As the ...

1550s births 17th-century deaths People from Sudova Vyshnia Ukrainian male writers Ukrainian philosophers Eastern Orthodox monks from Ukraine Eastern Orthodox philosophers Athonite Fathers {{Eastern-Orthodoxy-bio-stub

Biography

Work

Further reading

References

External links