Pietrzkiewicz, Iwona. Kultura książki w zakonach męskich Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego XV–XVIII wieku (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Pedagogicznego, 2019), 447 s.

The article discusses the most significant monumental paintings of the Dormition Cathedral and Trinity Gate Church of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra created in the first third of the 18th century. They are сonsidered in the context of the most important trends of spiritual and cultural life of the Hetmanate. The author concentrates attention on the important details that characterize the system of painting in those temples and underlines the close connection between fresco images marked by the inscriptions with the church literature of that time. Besides, among the results of the research there is the point that the Holy Liturgy is the most significant theme in the theological program of paintings of both Lavra temples.It is noted that the topic of the Holy Liturgy became one of the central themes in Ukrainian theology of the second half of the 17th century. Sharp disputes between Kyiv and Moscow theological circles were concentrated on the very moment of the Holy Liturgy associated with Eucharistic Transubstantiation. The author mentions publications of the Ukrainian Orthodox printing houses of that time, which covered that issue, and underlines a number of discrepancies in other dogmatic moments found in Kyiv and Moscow publications.Lavra school monumental ensembles of the first third of the 18th century are presented as a reflection of this topic. We believe that the idea of a figurative display of the liturgical ceremony on the walls of the altar first appeared in the paintings of the Dormition Cathedral of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. Thus, the way was paved for the topic that has become traditional and lasted like that over the century. The analysis of the preserved project of baroque paintings of the Great Church, available images of the Trinity Gate Church, and inscriptions makes it possible to say that the ideological and artistic content of Lavra school monumental paintings of the first third of the 18th century reflected the most relevant ideas of that time. Among them one could mention sharp theological disputes over the moment of Eucharistic Transubstantiation that typified the second half of the 17th century.

As it is broadly known, the history of the Church began to be one of the most potent elements in Early-modern controversial literature. Ruthenian polemical writings were not an exception; both Uniate and Orthodox authors broadly used facts of Church history considering themselves as the continuators of the Kyivan Christianity. Understanding historical narrative as a logically consistent sequence of events with implicit causal relations, this article presents the analysis of the appearance and transformation of two important historical narrations: on a Great Schism and on the Unity of Florence. Both historical narratives were written with polemical purposes and are closely connected with each other. Playing with names, dates, and sources, Ruthenian early-modern intellectuals in more or less skillful ways tried to give a historical overview of the relations between Rus, Constantinople, and Rome.The medieval Byzantine and Slavic polemical traditions were not reliable anymore. A different attitude to historiographical authorities provoked the shift of the hierarchy of the quoted sources. Ruthenian tradition, represented by the hagiographical texts and Russian Chronograph, is mostly quoted by the Uniate authors, not by orthodox ones. For them it is the most important historical proof that their own historical choice — the Union with Rome — does not contradict but continues the faith of their fathers: Kyiv metropolitans of the pre-Mongolian era.

Tymoshenko, Leonid. Ruska relihiina kultura Vilna: Kontekst doby. Oseredky. Literatura ta knyzhnist (XVI — persha tretyna XVII st.): monohrafiia (Drohobych: Kolo, 2020), 796 s.: il.

The library of the teacher and gymnasiarch of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Ivan Samoilovych (c. 1737–1783) is a little-studied aspect of the history of the KMA and an extraordinary phenomenon in the domestic historical library science. Until now, it has not been the subject of independent historical and library research. Samoilovich was the teacher of rhetoric, poetics, and German. The main source base for the study of his library is the registration list concluded after the death of the owner in 1783, which numbered 1,147 items, and old prints which are now stored in the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine in the department of libraries’ and historical collections and in the collections of the rare books department. The bibliographic analysis of the library fund showed that the composition of the book collection reflects the professional activity of the owner and the range of his intellectual interests. The topics of the books cover a wide range of interests: editions of grammars, dictionaries, works used for translations from Latin and German, works on public speaking, works by ancient authors and European humanists of the Renaissance, works on philosophy, logic, theology, natural sciences, medicine, general and church history, pedagogy, library affairs, and fiction.

The article describes the preconditions for the establishment of the collegium of the Society of Jesus in Lviv in the second half of the 16th century. By analyzing the existing sources and studies on the history of the Jesuit order, it is relatively easy to notice a significant bias in favour of studying their educational activities. At the same time, almost no studies exist which could illustrate the development of the facility itself in the context of the events of those times. Hence, there is a great number of terminological and factual inconsistencies, as well as the interpretation of Jesuits’ activity only in terms of their educational work. In this regard, the aim of this article is to make an attempt to research the preconditions for the establishment of the facility of the Society of Jesus in Lviv as based on the existing sources. Moreover, the main goal of this article is to establish the objectives and plans of the order to establish a local facility in Lviv on the basis of the sources. The sources published by the order itself play a significant role in addressing the issue. Firstly, these are the statutory documents of the Jesuits — the Formulas of the Institute of the Society of Jesus (consist of apostolic letters issued by Pope Paul III and Pope Julius III) and the Constitution of the Society of Jesus. Due to these documents, certain terminological issues may be clarified in the first place, as well as the functioning mechanism of Jesuit facilities. The epistolary heritage of the order is of no less importance: in particular, the one where the ongoing cases of that time are addressed. After analyzing the already published documents, it can be noted that the order had completely separate plans to develop their network, and teaching different sciences to children was not their only aim. Instead, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was considered to be a territory for missionary work and further movement to the East. Furthermore, the plans to establish a facility of the order with a status of the college in Lviv can be traced long before the official invitation of the first monks to Lviv. Considerable attention is paid to the interpretation of the notion of “college,” which is important for understanding the motives of the establishment of the Society of Jesus facility in Lviv and explains its further activity. On the basis of the results obtained in the article, necessary conclusions are made in order to conduct further studies.

The Library of the Jesuit college in Lviv is known as the biggest and best-equipped library in the city. It was founded at the beginning of the 17th century, and after one hundred years, there were approximately 12,000 books. But there was a huge loss of books after a great fire in 1734. After that Jesuits restored their book collection. Historiography says that there were approximately 10,000 books in the library at the time of the dissolution of the Society of Jesus. Unfortunately, it is impossible to verify the information about 10,000 books because historians still cannot find an old catalogue of the library. In the article, the author analyzes manuscript III 12719 from the National Library in Warsaw. The author proves that this manuscript is the catalogue of the library of the Jesuit college in Lviv. This catalogue was created in 1774, after the dissolution of the Jesuits. Its author was a former Jesuit monk, Stanisław Chmielowski, who was assigned by Austrian authority to create catalogues of the libraries of the abolished Jesuit colleges. According to this catalogue, the Jesuit library consisted not of 10,000 books but of 5,000. It corresponds to the information from Ludwik Grzebień, the author of the best known research about the Jesuit libraries in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After 1713, the Jesuit library in Lviv was still functioning. Due to the order of Vienna’s authority, the Jesuit library was turned into a public library. It was the first public library in the city. At the same time, the library arranged an educational process in schools in the city. As stated by inscriptions in the catalogue, teachers, clergy, and civil servants were the readers of the library. In 1784, the former Jesuit library became a part of the Lviv University Library.

Masliichuk, Volodymyr. Zdobutky ta iliuzii: osvitni initsiatyvy na Livoberezhnii ta Slobidskii Ukraini druhoi polovyny XVIII — pochatku XIX st. (Kharkiv: Kharkivska derzhavna akademiia kultury, 2018), 544 s.

Bielikova, Halyna. Yavlennia. Pamiatky Kyivskoho Bratskoho monastyria»: albom-kataloh (Kyiv: Natsionalnyi khudozhnii muzei Ukrainy; Kyiv: Maister knyh, 2019), 304 s.; il.

Kotliarov, Petro. Humanist i reformator: osvitni, relihiini ta sotsialno-politychni praktyky Filipa Melankhtona (Kyiv, Vinnytsia: TOV «Nilan-LTD», 2017), 360 s.