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VYSENS'KYJ'S ШЕА OF REFORM 41subsequent attempts to reach perfection for the entire Christianitas, not onlythrough the early and later Middle Ages, but through the Renaissance, theProtestant and Catholic Reformations, and beyond. As Ladner has pointedout, although "the history of man can be seen as a sequence of newbeginnings,... it is not surprising that early Christendom should haveimpressed its own character on the universal idea of renewal and thatspecific Christian expressions of it should have had an appreciable influenceon subsequent developments in civilization ever since." 17Nor should VySens'kyj's steadfast allegiance to the tradition of Orthodoxspirituality and the church fathers lead us to conclude that he wasmerely a retrograde "apologist for ignorance," 18spiritually distant from andtotally at variance with the mainstream of Ruthenian cultural trends, andthat his writings remained essentially unaffected by the distinctive characteristicsof Reformation and Counter-Reformation models and patterns ofthought. In the first place, as Sister Sophia Senyk recently has reminded us,it is incorrect to suggest that the houses and communities of Mt. Athos,where VySens'kyj spent most of his adult life, stood in isolation from theconfessional and intellectual controversies that were taking place in theRuthenian lands of the period. 19We should also remember that, even afterhe had embraced the contemplative life on Mt. Athos, VySens'kyj continuedto follow closely events in the Ruthenian lands. All his extant writings,though mostly written on the "holy mountain," were produced in consciousresponse to a particular crisis or perceived ordeal in the Ruthenian lands.We should not forget, moreover, that it was VySens'kyj who—owing to hisreputation for erudition among the Athonite monks—was entrusted with thedifficult task of responding to the frontal assault launched against theRuthenian Orthodox cultural heritage by Piotr Skarga in his polemicaltreatise, On the Administration and Unity of God's Church under OneShepherd, which had been reissued in Cracow in 1590. 2017Ladner, The Idea of Reform, p. 1.18The formula "apologiste de l'ignorance" was first introduced in reference to VySens'kyj byAntoine Martel (La langue polonaise dans les pays Ruthènes: Ukraine et Russie blanche,1569-1667, Travaux et mémoires de l'université de Lille, n.s., Droit et lettres, 20 [Lille,1938], pp. 259-66). Cf. G. Grabowicz, Toward a History of Ukrainian Literature (Cambridge,Mass., 1981), pp. 37-38.19Senyk, "L'Hésychasme dans le monachisme ukrainien."20See Eremin, Ivan ViSenskij, pp. 316-20. Piotr Skarga's O rządzie i jedności KościołaBożego pod jednym Pasterzem i o greckim od tej jedności odstąpieniu, the revised version of atreatise which first appeared in print in Vilnius in 1577 (O jedności Kościoła Bożego... ), wasdedicated to the newly crowned King Sigismund Ш Vasa (1587-1632). Scholars generallyaccept the view that VySens'kyj's Kratoslovnyi otvtt Feodula and Zaćapka mudraho latynika zhlupym rusinom were written in direct response to the 1590 edition of Skarga's treatise. On theimpact (both direct and indirect) of Skarga's writings on Vyäens'kyj, see Tretiak, Piotr Skarga,