Stefan Javorsâkyj was one of the most prolific and multifaceted personalities of the late 17th century in Ukraine and the beginning of the 18th century in Russia. He is best known for his activity as the highest authority of the Russian Orthodox Church after Adrianâs death, when Tsar Peter I refused to have a new Patriarch elected in 1700. In his office of Metropolitan of Ryazan, considering himself an âexarchâ of the Ecumenical Patriarchal See, he oversaw the smooth functioning of the Russian Church and was soon obliged to confront the Tsarâs reforms in ecclesiastical affairs. In Moscow he wrote religious pamphlets against heretics and a theological treatise which remains a fundamental summa of the Orthodox Church. Javorsâkyjâs best-known works were the sermons he pronounced between 1700 and 1722, the year of his death. Most of them are devoted to the feasts of the liturgical calendar, but some dozens were written and pronounced for official âimperialâ occasions: Peterâs victories against Swedes, name-days and anniversaries of the Tsar or the members of his family, other events connected with the life of the court and military life. These so-called âvictorialâ sermons have been randomly published in Russian journals.
Since the beginning of the 19th century Russian philologists have published and examined Javorsâkyjâs sermons and theological writings. Almost all the sermons of the Russian period were published in 1804â1805, although the edition is unreliable and does not correspond to modern philological criteria. On the other hand, Russian and later Soviet scholars have only briefly mentioned, and essentially ignored the existence of the writings and intense intellectual activity of the Simeon Javorsâkyj who was a Ukrainian student of the Kyiv-Mohyla College and of Jesuit schools in Poland, and of the Stefan Javorsâkyj who had become a monk in Kyiv in 1689 and soon worked as a professor of rhetoric and philosophy (later also theology) in the Kyiv-Mohyla College and became archimandrite of the Monastery of St. Nicholas of the Golden Domes. Russian and Soviet scholarship almost completely omitted the fact that Javorsâkyj was the most important and appreciated panegyrist and preacher of Mazepaâs time: they only briefly mentioned that he prepared and promulgated the ecclesiastical anathema against the âtraitorâ Mazepa who had joined the Swedish King in 1708.
In Russian scholarship everybody knew the works Javorsâkyj wrote between 1684 and 1699, but nobody felt the need or dared to edit or comment on them. The three large panegyrics he wrote for Metropolitan Barlaam Jasynsâkyj and the one he prepared for Hetman Ivan Mazepa deserve special attention, and are now printed following the best rules of modern philology in the first volume of this edition.1 No less important is an autograph manuscript which contains the sermons Javorsâkyj prepared in Ukraine for the main religious feasts, at which Hetman Ivan Mazepa and Metropolitan Barlaam Jasynsâkyj were sometimes present, together with many representatives of the Cossack nobility and town authorities.
In the three decades since 1991 a remarkable number of scholarly essays and books about Ukrainian history, culture, and literature have been published. However, until now only a short ecclesiastical treatise and the contested sermon devoted to St. Alexisâs feast of 17 March 1712 have been published and analysed following high scientific standards, by V.M. Živov in 2004.2 This edition was followed by the publication of Javorsâkyjâs letters to his closest friends, prepared by M.A. Fedotova in 2006.3 By contrast, all the works Javorsâkyj wrote in Kyiv before his years of education in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1681â1688) and in the decade he spent there as a monk and a scholar in Mazepaâs time remain beyond the reach of both scholars and common readers.
We consider that it is time to offer the scholarly communityâand a broader public as wellâthe possibility of reading, besides the original texts of Stefan Javorsâkyjâs four panegyrics, also a large selection of the three dozen sermons that have been handed down to us in the well-known, but poorly investigated autograph containing almost all the known sermons of our writer. The very work of reading the texts, transcribing them, and trying to understand their historical context and both the literal and metaphorical signification of each page or phrase allowed us to discover many yet unknown sources and some important historical facts. It is our hope that further research will shed light on many other aspects of Javorsâkyjâs personality and activity and his surroundings.
This enterprise has been made possible by the generosity of the Polish National Science Centre (NCN)4 and by the spirit of initiative and tireless activity of Jakub Niedźwiedź. Since the very beginning he was aware how important the publication of these sermons is for understanding all the political and cultural subjects involved in the period and the world of Stefan Javorsâkyj: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its crucial role for the cultural development of Russia; the Ukrainian lands which were experiencing a period in which identitarian awareness and all expressions of artistic, social, and economic life were flourishing; the broad Western European and classical heritage which made the Polish and Ukrainian identity and worldview different from the Russian imperial stance. We are particularly indebted to Aleksander Naumow who often helped us to understand difficult passages and generously offered his immense knowledge in theology and church history. Our gratitude goes to the staff of the publisher Brill who helped in the preparation of the edition of difficult texts written in a quite unusual language and script. I cannot conceal my satisfaction at seeing the unpublished Ukrainian works of Stefan Javorsâkyj included in one of Brillâs prestigious series. Let me however stress that the whole enterprise has been made possible by the indefatigable cooperation of a group of talented, knowledgeable, and passionate scholars who worked together in harmony for several years, managing to create the interdisciplinary network needed to approach a personality such as Stefan Javorsâkyj, where the Orthodox religion, European rhetorical tradition, classical and Baroque poetics, four languages, Western philosophy, and Byzantine tradition intermingle on the threshold of Baroque traditionalism and nascent modernity.
Giovanna Brogi
See JAVOR.PANEGYRICS.
See Ðивов 2004.
See ФедоÑова 2006.
Polish literary and cultural patterns in the Russian Tsardom at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries: the case of Stefan Jaworski (Polskie wzorce literackie i kulturowe w Rosji na przeÅomie XVII i XVIII wieku: przypadek Stefana Jaworskiego), OPUS, UMO-2017/25/B/HS2/00932.