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42 HARVEY GOLDBLATTIn the second place, we should not underestimate the possibility that thestructures of VySens'kyj's thought may have been conditioned by theinfluences and counter-influences that marked late sixteenth- and earlyseventeenth-century Ruthenian culture. More specifically, there are cogentreasons to believe that his oeuvre, which many scholars continue to see asthe expression of an eminently "medieval" mode of literary consciousnessand a total rejection of the "new learning" that ostensibly characterizedintellectual life in the Ruthenian lands of the period, may indeed reflectideas emanating from the Protestant Reformation 21as well as certain principlesspread and enunciated by the Catholic Counter-Reformation. 22 There isno question that the well-entrenched historiographie vision which informsus that the writings of Ivan VySens'kyj, the patriotic defender of Orthodoxspirituality, never betray the influence of the "tools" employed by hisProtestant—and especially Catholic—adversaries is in need of wholesalerevision. 23VySens'kyj's cultural legacy, therefore, must be investigated not only inlight of the Orthodox Slavic heritage that helped shape his ideology, butalso against the backdrop of Ruthenia's direct exposure to, and involvementin, the cultural life of the multinational Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.Consequently, any examination of those aspects of his thought that appearto rely on the spiritual tradition of Orthodoxy can neither disregard thecomplex matrix of ideas characteristic of the confessional and ideologicalconflict between the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation nor ignorethose aspects of humanist scholarship that played a fundamental role in thedoctrinal disputes between the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. Theseconsiderations thus not only apply to VySens'kyj's eschatology, with itsoverwhelming vision of persecution and general apostasy, his search forself-perfection, with its requirement for the solitude of the desert, and hisexaltation of the primitive church and apostolic poverty, with its negation ofthe existing social order. They also refer to the issues of "sacredpp. 233-87; Eremin, Ivan ViSenskij, pp. 295-96, 316-25. For Skarga's arguments against the"Slavic language" ("iezyk Słowieński"), see part 3, section 5 of the work, as published inP. Gil'tebrandt, Pamjatniki polemićeskoj literatury ν zapadnoj Rusi, vol. 2 (=Russkajaistoriceskaja biblioteka, 7) (St. Petersburg, 1882), cols. 482-88, esp. cols. 485-87.21See Franko, Ivan VySens'kyj, pp. 7-8, 323-24; M. Hrasevs'kyj, Istorija Ukrajiny-Rusy,10 vols, (reprinted New York, 1954-57), 6:399-421; V. N. Peretc, "Ivan Vyfenskij іpol'skaja literatura XVI veka. Issledovanija i materiały po istorii starinnoj ukrainskoj literaturyXVI-ΧνΠΙ vekov, 1," Sbornik Otdelenija russkogo jazyka i slovesnosti 101, no. 2(1926): 15-47; Sevcuk./van VySens'kyj, pp. 6-8.22Peretc, "Ivan Vysenskij i pol'skaja literatura," pp. 24-30, 34-42.23See Η. Goldblatt, "On the Language Beliefs of Ivan VySens'kyj and the Counter-Reformation," Harvard Ukrainian Studies 15 (1991): 7-34.