Writer and prince

Ivan Vyshensky is one of the most illustrious Ukrainian polemical writers. Numerous books on him have been published, and yet it would be wrong to say that all pages of his life have been sufficiently studied. This is, after all, only natural, because there is very little biographical information left about the writer. We usually draw information about him from his works.

Researchers have noted that Vyshensky was connected with the Ostroh cultural center that had emerged in the late 1550s and reached its peak in the 1580s through the 1590s. This center comprised one of the first Cyrillic-character print shops and Ostroh Academy, Eastern Europe’s first higher school. This institution published the first printed Bible in Old Slavonic (1581) as well as various books and polemic works.

The analysis of Vyshensky’s biographical data allows us to claim that the Ostroh center played a crucial role in the making of him as a writer and a religious and cultural figure. We do not know exactly the time and place of Vyshensky’s birth, but he is believed to have been born in the mid-16th century in the small town Sudova Vyshnia, Galicia. However, this is nothing more than a likely hypothesis.

Vyshensky does not speak much about Galicia in his works. Instead, he focuses on Volhynia and Volhynian realities. The writer says in an autobiographic passage in his Brief Response of Feodul that he spent his young years in Lutsk. In his Advice he recalls Zhydychyn, a village near Lutsk, in which there was a well-known Volhynian Orthodox monastery. The same work also mentions Ostroh.

Ample evidence suggests that Vyshensky was connected with Prince Vasyl-Kostiantyn Ostrozky, who in fact organized a cultural center in his ancestral city of Ostroh. For example, in the summer of 1598 Ostroh printed Knyzhytsia (Book), which included eight epistles of the Alexandria Patriarch Meletius I Pegas translated from Greek, an epistle from Prince Ostrozky, and Vyshensky’s anonymous message on behalf of Athos monks. Incidentally, this was the only work published in the writer’s lifetime.

Knyzhytsia, which came out shortly after the 1596 Church Union of Berestia, was anti-Uniate in spirit. It was published at the expense of Prince Ostrozky, who strongly opposed the Union at the time. Researchers believe that the Ostroh Knyzhytsia was a model for Vyshensky, and when he was in Athos the next year, he used it as a pattern for Knyzhka, a collection of his own works.

It is noteworthy that Vyshensky wrote a special message to Ostrozky. In his Advice he mentions Kostiantyn, one of the prince’s sons, condemning him for conversion from Orthodoxy to Catholicism. He also mentions in his works the Orthodox bishops Kyrylo Terletsky and Ipatii Potii, who were in contact with Ostrozky. Obviously, Vyshensky was quite aware of what was going on at the court of this affluent Volhynian magnate.

Ivan Franko once noted that Potii’s Antiryzis mentions a Vyshensky who was in service to Prince Ostrozky. It says, in particular, that when Potii became the Bishop of Volodymyr and Berestia, the prince sent him a letter about the conditions of a union with Catholics. This letter was handed over “via Mr. Vasyl Surazky and Mr. Vyshensky.” Incidentally, Vyshensky knew very well and highly valued Surazky’s polemical treatise Knyzhytsia.

On the basis of the aforesaid Potii’s message and other indirect evidence, Franko concluded that Vyshensky might have been a servant at Ostrozky’s court: here he “was finishing his education and earning his daily bread.” “Living at the court of such a high-profile nobleman as Ostrozky, whose estates brought him a million-worth income and the court gave shelter to thousands of most diverse people: the nobility, scientists, artists, and just all kinds of cheats and hoaxers, was undoubtedly a good school for a young person,” Franko writes.

“It would be wrong to think that his life was a bed of roses. On the contrary, he learned here what it is to starve and not to sleep well; he had to be always on his guard, pander to thousands of small and big whims, be on everybody’s beck and call, and often suffer willful and stupid humiliations and insults. But, at the same time, he could learn to see the lower depths of life, distinguish between true and false luster, mingle with learned and experienced people, and always come into contact with people of different strata — from ordinary and underprivileged peasants to primates, senators, and kings.

“All this could only broaden the circle of his knowledge and deepen his life philosophy, all the more so that he had a critical, profoundly moral, and penetrating, in no way obsequious, mind. It is this comprehensive school of life that can explain our author’s knowledge of the world and people in spite of his small and apparently late-acquired bookish learnedness. With this knowledge of real life, human customs and characters, Vyshensky radically and positively differed from other contemporary and later-time writers of clerical origin, who were even more learned than he was.”

Naturally, Franko’s reflections are of hypothetical and even somewhat literary and artistic nature, which Ahatanhel Krymsky once noted. Yet they seem to be quite trustworthy, as does the fact that the young Vyshensky served at Prince Ostrozky’s court. For it is true (Franko is entirely right in this) that Vyshensky knew that era’s life very well, and he could have acquired this experience, in all probability, at the prince’s court.

There is a popular hypothesis advanced by V. Kolosova a few years ago that the writer took monastic vows at the Dubno Monastery of Holy Transfiguration in the 1590s. If this is true, it is further proof that Vyshensky was linked with Ostrozky, for Dubno was in fact the prince’s main residence. He used to spend more time here than in Ostroh. Besides, he cared about and showed considerable interest in Dubno monasteries.

The above-mentioned letter from the writer to the prince is convincing proof of the link between Ostrozky and Vyshensky. This may have been one of the polemicist’s first works, a trial of the pen, so to speak. And it is quite telling that this trial was associated with none other than Prince Ostrozky. In a sense, the prince’s personality and deeds were an impulse for Vyshensky as a writer.

Researchers have been noting, though, that the epistle says practically nothing about the prince. This is a moot point. The writer had to follow certain etiquette, for Ostrozky was titled as “prince by God’s grace,” i.e., a person whose authority was blessed by God and who stands over most of the mortals. This is the way the prince’s entourage, to which Vyshensky apparently belonged, treated him. So the writer was supposed to keep a certain distance and “back-slapping” was out of the question.

Yet an attentive reading of the epistle can reveal a lot. The first eye-catching thing is that the writer addresses Prince Ostrozky as Vasyl. It is somewhat unusual because when the prince came of age, he stopped using the name given him at baptism and, instead, began to use his father’s name Kostiantyn which most often occurs in panegyrics dedicated to the prince.

Vyshensky’s epistle is also a panegyric, although a special one. Using the name Vasyl, the writer points to the Orthodox tradition and urges everybody to strictly uphold it. This is, in fact, the thrust of this work.

Is this accidental? Obviously not. Vyshensky could not be unaware of the fact that the Ostrozky family had almost broken with the Orthodox tradition. The point was not only in that the prince married Zofia Tarnawska, a Catholic, and his daughters were baptized according to the Catholic rite, as that-day customs required. The prince gave them in marriage to the men who advocated Reformation faiths. As for the prince’s three sons who were baptized as Orthodox ones, two of them — Ivan (Janusz) and Kostiantyn — were converted to Catholicism.

Kostiantyn was mentioned in Chapter Three of Vyshensky’s book Knyzhytsia, often referred to as “Advice.” The polemicist wrote: “What is Kostiantyn Ostrozky famous for? He threw away Christian simplicity and got caught into the devious trap of the Papal faith, as if it were a cute toy. Did he not disappear and vanish? And why did he not leave a fruit of his? Because he slew Christianity.” As is known, Ostrozky agonized over the conversion of his middle son Kostiantyn to Catholicism. After the conversion, which he underwent together with his wife, Kostiantyn lived for just a few years and died without producing any children. Some people, including Vyshensky, interpreted this as punishment for renouncing his faith.

Vyshensky must have known about Ostrozky’s intention to form a church union. If he really handed over, together with Vasyl Surazky, a letter from the prince to Bishop Ipatii Potii about the conditions of a union with Catholics, he must have been initiated into this delicate thing. Naturally, Prince Ostrozky had his own vision of this problem, insisting on the concept of a universal union, which was at odds with the views of Uniate Bishops. But even a universal union could have come under criticism of Orthodox stalwarts.

We do not know about Vyshensky’s attitude to Ostrozky’s church union plans. But he congratulated the prince when the latter took a firm anti-Uniate stand after the Berestia council of 1596. In a letter to this potentate, the polemicist portrays him as a protector of Orthodoxy and thanks him: “Thank God for your firmness, steadfastness, sincerity, and probity which you display towards God, for the untouched virginal innocence of your faith without any dishonesty or vileness, and which you, God willing, shall preserve to the end.”

It follows from the polemicist’s work that this firmness in faith must resist Catholic expansion. For he regards the latter as the greatest danger to his fatherland: “There is no salvation of Rus from the Pope’s infidelity. I have seen a treacherous messenger, a Jesuit, a buffoon who reviles Jesus.” The writer believed that one must adhere to their tradition and oppose all the novelties that are coming from Catholic West: “Would it not be better to see the light of the ever-present reason the Orthodox Church is endowed with rather than lock oneself and die in the darkness of pagan sciences? Would it not be better to stay healthy with us, praising God in the simplicity of heart, than to separate from us and fall ill with a comedian and foolish piety and die?”

The epistle to Ostrozky ends with a call to firmly adhere to the Orthodox faith: “Believe strongly and unbreakably, stay united in faith. There is one who will deliver us, so let us cleave to Him alone from the bottom of our true heart… We do have an invincible force, an unshakable deity, the holy, single, life-giving and undivided Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. It is God in three hypostases in whom we trust, to whom we sing praises, whom we worship piously, and to whom we make the sign of the cross. He is strong enough to wrest us from Latin captivity and free us from the pestilence of an anti-Christ faith.” These words also show, among other things, a hidden fear that Prince Ostrozky may waver in his defense of Orthodoxy and establish contacts with the Latin clergy, as he had done before.

Vyshensky is worried over the departure of the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) aristocratic elite from Orthodoxy and over the emergence of new faiths. We find the following words in his Advice: “Are you, who once were a Ruthenian, a devout Christian, and a chaste citizen of Little Russia, indulging in this childish reasoning, you who live now with Poles and have gone childish, renounced Christ in favor of Cephas, Paul, and Apollos, and are now divided between a Papist, an Evangelist, a New Baptist, and a Sabbatarian?” Incidentally, this is a fitting picture of the denominational situation in the family and at the court of the Ostrozkys: there were Roman Catholics, Calvinists (Evangelists), and Aryans also known as New Baptists and Sabbatarians. This state of affairs aroused resentment in Vyshensky, and he, accordingly, condemned the denominational division of Rus. It is in Advice that he mentions the renunciation of Orthodoxy by Ostrozky’s son Kostiantyn and his conversion to Catholicism.

That Vyshensky was connected to Prince Ostrozky is evidenced not only by his works but also by the writer’s entourage. Although we do not know much about him, even the available scanty information allows us to make this conclusion.

One of Vyshensky’s comrades was Isakii Boryskovych. There is evidence that he was hegumen of the St. Stephen Monastery that belonged to Ostrozky. Obviously, he could not assume this office without a prince’s sanction. It is not ruled out that he, as the monastery hegumen, took part in the 1596 anti-Union Berestia council. Mykhailo Hrushevsky writes on the basis of documentary evidence that after the Church Union of Berestia, the Lviv Archbishop Gedeon Balaban, who was at the head of the Ruthenian Orthodox Church as the Patriarch’s exarch, sent Isakii to the East. In all probability, Ostrozky sanctioned this journey.

It is via Isakii that Gedeon passed a new edition of the book On the Unity of God’s Church under One Shepherd by the Jesuit Piotr Skarga to Patriarch Meletius I Pegas of Alexandria. The patriarch in turn sent the book to Mount Athos via the same Isakii in a hope that Vyshensky will read and appreciate it. With Prince Ostrozky’s consent, Isakii became prior of the Derman Monastery and attempted to reorganize it into a religious and cultural center of Orthodoxy in Ukraine. Probably, Isakii is also the author of Advice on Piety, which was written in the first half of the 17th century and urged Vyshensky to return to Ukraine from Mount Athos.

Fate decreed that Vyshensky come across not only Isakii Boryskovych but also hierodeacon Vitalii, also born in Volhynia. Here is what Vyshensky wrote An Epistle to the Nun Domnikiia in 1605 during a brief sojourn in Ukraine: “I do not condemn grammar teaching and the key to learning syllables and sentences, as some think and say: ‘As he himself has never studied, he envies us and bans everything.’ I know, first of all, that Vitalii, a Volhynian preacher, made such an accusation.” It is known that, thanks to Ostrozky, Vitalii was granted the right to hegumen of the Holy Cross Monastery in Dubno on July 6, 1603. Vitalii translated copiously from Latin and Greek and published the book Dioptra in 1604. Although, on the whole, he advocated traditional Orthodox views, he was not against using the legacy of “Latin wisdom.”

Also closely connected with Vyshensky was Iov Kniahynytsky. His biography says that he studied and taught at Ostroh Academy and was in service to Prince Ostrozky and his son Oleksander. There is an epistle from Vyshensky to Kniahynytsky, which confirms a friendly relationship between them. It is on Vyshensky’s initiative that Kniahynytsky founded the famous monastery Maniava Skete, a bulwark of Orthodoxy in Pokuttia.

The above-mentioned facts allow us to assert that Vyshensky belonged to the inner circle of Prince Ostrozky that and had opportunities to mingle with him and court intellectuals. Even when staying at Mount Athos, he did not break ties with the Ostroh cultural center, and it is Ostroh that published the epistle to Prince Ostrozky, the writer’s only lifetime publication. Among Vyshensky’s confreres were also scribes, such as the Dubno hegumen Vitalii, with whom the writer would hold debates. Therefore, the Ostroh cultural center played an important, if not decisive, role in the making of Vyshensky as a polemical writer.

Petro Kraliuk is a Doctor of Sciences (Philosophy).