Ivan Vyshenskyi ( uk , Іван Вишенський; born ca. 1550 in

Sudova Vyshnia Sudova Vyshnia ( uk, Судова Вишня) is a town in the Yavoriv district 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 h ...

– after 1620, Mount Athos,

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...

) was a Ukrainian Orthodox

monk A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...

and religious philosopher. 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 topic ...

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 ( uk, Луцьк, translit=Lutsk}, ; pl, Łuck ; yi, לוצק, Lutzk) is a city on the Styr River in northwestern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Volyn Oblast (province) and the administrative center of the surrounding Lu ...

and was connected with scholars from the

Ostroh Academy Ostroh Academy ( pl, Akademia Ostrogska) was an academy located in Ostróg, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It is considered to be the first institution of higher education in the territory of present-day Ukraine, dating to 1576 and founded ...

. Within the years 1576–1580 he traveled to Mount Athos in

, 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 largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

and the

uniate church The Eastern Catholic Churches or Oriental Catholic Churches, also called the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches, Eastern Rite Catholicism, or simply the Eastern Churches, are 23 Eastern Christian autonomous ('' sui iuris'') particular churches of t ...

. 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; 2 February 1536 – 27 September 1612) was a Polish Jesuit, preacher, hagiographer, polemicist, and leading figure of the Counter-Reformation in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Due to his oratoric ...

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

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

asceticism. Vyshenskyi wrote not in the common

Church Slavonic language Church Slavonic (, , literally "Church-Slavonic language"), also known as Church Slavic, New Church Slavonic or New Church Slavic, is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bosnia and Herzeg ...

, but in the Ruthenian language, an older form of

Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...

External links

Ivan Vyshensky
in the

Encyclopedia of Ukraine The ''Encyclopedia of Ukraine'' ( uk, Енциклопедія українознавства, translit=Entsyklopediia ukrainoznavstva), published from 1984 to 2001, is a fundamental work of Ukrainian Studies. Development The work was creat ...

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

Biography

Work

Further reading

External links