Museikon_1_2017

190 | Confessional Fluidity and the Byzantine inheritance in Early Modern Ruthenian Society (Conference)
Confessional Fluidity and the Byzantine
Inheritance in Early Modern Ruthenian Society
Conference
24 November 2017, La Maison française d’Oxford
In the late 16 th and 17 th centuries, the Ruthenian lands — the
former southern and western medieval Orthodox Rus principalities
with the ecclesiastic centre of Kyiv—formed part
of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Though multiconfessional
and multi-ethnic, by the early seventeenth
century, the retreat of Protestantism and Orthodoxy among
the noble citizens who formed the Commonwealth’s
ruling elite, ensured that Roman Catholicism dominated
its high politics and its institutions.
The religious upheaval of the Reformation and Counter-
Reformation spanned the Commonwealth and its Ruthenian
lands, and the influx of values, concepts, mentalities
and innovations associated with early modernity reformed
Ruthenian Orthodox culture. After 1596, the formation of
the Uniate Church and the consequent outlawing of the
Orthodox Church until 1632 posed fundamental questions
concerning Ruthenian religious identity, and a period of
considerable confessional fluidity ensued.
In Ruthenian lands, Orthodox, Uniate, Catholics and Protestants
competed for souls in a process that simultaneously
strengthened confessional identities and stimulated the
development of syncretic elements among them. Cultural
hybridity became manifest in families, communities, and
Ruthenian society as a whole. The focus on Ruthenian
religious identity raised issues about the position of the
Ruthenians within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,
and propositions were put forth to transform the commonwealth
of two nations into a Commonwealth of Three
Nations.
This conference is devoted to the political, religious and
cultural re-visioning that fundamentally reordered the
early modern Ruthenian world to accommodate the
multiple cultural and historic forces that coalesced in the
formation of personal, local, transcultural and ecumenical
identities of Ruthenians. It explores how the Orthodox
landscape formed by traditions derived from the past of
Kyivan Rus was remapped to accommodate new political
and ecclesiastical realities, and how the past was moulded
and restaged in the invention of new traditions and
identities.
Session i.
Literature, print culture and confessions, part 1.
9.00 am - 9.15 am: Arrival.
9.15 am: Introduction.
Venue: La Maison française d’Oxford 2-10 Norham Rd, Oxford OX2 6SE
9.30 am - 10.00 am:
Natalia Sinkevych (Museum of history of Kyiv-Pechersk
Lavra – National Kyiv-Pechersk historical and cultural reserve).
The 17th-century historical and hagiographical narrative,
between Rome, Constantinople, Moscow and Warsaw.
10.00 am - 10.30 am:
Florent Mouchard (Université de Rennes).
Jakub Jan Susza’s hagiographic narrative: Confessional
fluidity as a rhetorical strategy.
10.30 am - 11.00 am:
Discussant: Simon Franklin (Cambridge University).
11.00 am -11.30 am: Coffee break.
Session i.
Literature, print culture and confessions, part 2.
11.30 am - 12.00
Laurent Tatarenko (Paris-CERCEC/Lublin-IESW).
Linguistic pluralism and confessional building in the
Ruthenian clergies of the 17th century.
12.00-12.30
Vera Tchentsova (Maison française d’Oxford).
Shifting confessions: Orthodox co-religionists from abroad
in Moscow in the first half of the 17th century.
12.30 am - 1.00 pm:
Discussant: Ralph Cleminson (Oxford)
1.00 pm - 2.30 pm: Lunch.
2. Session ii.
Art and ritual.
2.30 pm -3.00 pm:
Maria Takala-Roszczenko (Joensuu, University of
Eastern Finland).
Ruthenian hymnography and ritual and the construction of
confessional identities.
3.00 pm - 3.30 pm:
Nazar Kozak (Lviv University).
‘Dumb as Fishes’: The Akathistos hymn and visual
polemics in the 16th-century Kyivan metropolitanate.
4.00 pm - 4.30 pm:
Olenka Pevny (Cambridge University).
‘Kiouia nostra coelum est’: Petro Mohyla’s re-visioning of
Rus monuments in Kyiv.
4.30 pm - 5.00 pm:
Discussant: Ágnes Kriza (Cambridge).
5.00 pm - 6.00 pm: Drink.
Convenors: Olenka Pevny (Cambridge University),
Vivien Prigent (MFO), Vera Tchentsova (MFO).