Love One's Enemies: Ioasaf Krokovskyi's Advice to Peter in 1702
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
President and Fellows of Harvard College Love One's Enemies: Ioasaf Krokovs'kyi's Advice to Peter in 1702 Author(s): Gary Marker Source: Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1/4, UKRAINIAN PHILOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (2007), pp. 193-223 Published by: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41304506 Accessed: 02-02-2016 17:40 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Harvard Ukrainian Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 129.49.5.35 on Tue, 02 Feb 2016 17:40:52 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Harvard UkrainianStudies 29, no. 1-4 (2007): 193-223. Love One's Enemies: Ioasaf Krokovs'kyi's Advice to Peter in 1702 Gary Marker BAIlIEMy qAPCKOMy nPECBETAOMYBEAMMECTBY, TOCY- AAPIO HAllIEMY npeMMAOCTMBOMy,ot noAaiomaro MMp-b L(APH He6ecHaro,MnpHaro b Aep^aBe IjapcKOM FIpaBAeHMH, ot 3acTynHMijbi XpMCTHaHOBT>HeilOCTblAHblH, F[pe6AarOCAOBeHHbIH L(API414bI, B03- 6paHHbiHBOEBOAbl, HenpeoAOAeHHbinHaA BparaMMno6eAbi, npenoAoGHbixmBoroHOCHbix Oijob Haiiinx, AHTOHMH OEOAOCMfl mnpoHMx Cbhtwx nenepcKMx...1 T hus concludes an invocation to PeterI in 1702introducing the new printingof the Kyiv Paterik that was dedicatedspecifically to thetsar. This par- ticularedition is noteworthynot simply because itwas a presentationvolume. It includesnew verses, illustrations, and, most importantly, an originalintro- ductionaddressed to thetsar himself, composed by the sitting archimandrite ofthe Caves Monastery,Ioasaf Krokovs'kyi. Written in a homileticstyle, the essayfollows a familiarbaroque formulaexpressing unrestrained adulation of the rulerand his achievements,connecting him to God, biblicalheroes, and martyredsaints. Interspersed among these numerous and unremarkable allusions,along with the obligatory adulation of the double-headed eagle and theintercession of the Theotokos, however, are lengthy and elaboratepaeans to love,mercy to one'santagonists, and peace. Thesethemes were not so unusual in theearly 1720s when the victory over Sweden was completeand Petercould affordto be magnanimoustoward his vanquishedfoes. But theywere quite extraordinaryfor these times two decades earlier, when war was mostdecidedly in the air.No othertext of its day contains anything quite like it, a departure so strikingthat it immediatelycaptures the reader'sattention, as I imagineit was meantto do. Krokovs'kyi'smost persistent message dwells on thebiblical prescriptionto loveone's enemies, a laudablesentiment surely, but hardly what one mightexpect in theearly stages of the Northern War. This content downloaded from 129.49.5.35 on Tue, 02 Feb 2016 17:40:52 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 194 MARKER This introductoryessay (much like Krokovs'kyi himself) has successfully eluded scholarlyanalysis, or even passingmention. None of the studiesof staropechatnyepredisloviia i poslesloviiathat proliferated during the 1980s and 1990srefer to it,and neither,so faras I can determine,does anythingelse, withthe singleexception of a verybrief reference in the companionvolume on Petrinepanegyrics.2 1 have spent some timeendeavoring to findout what I can aboutKrokovs'kyis clerical career and his mentalworld- no easymatter, as will soon be evident.At thispoint I am stillreconstructing Krokovs'kyi's lifeand workto providea contextfor teasing out the textsimportance and possiblemeanings. This paper constitutesresults to date ratherthan a final assessment,a reconstructionof his pastoral activities and writingsleading up to thePaterik , an exegesisof this particular edition, and thensome suggestions about his outlookand whathe mighthave been talkingabout in his message ofpeace and love. Introduction The Petrineera producedquite a fewclerical authors, panegyrists, and hom- ilists,arguably more than at anyprevious time in the entirehistory of East SlavicOrthodoxy. Collectively they produced a numberof important tracts on a wide rangeof subjects,some overtlypolitical, others not. Theyalso orated manyhundreds, and perhapsas manyas a fewthousand sermons, most of whicheither have been lostor haveattracted little serious attention. In addi- tion,several hierarchs such as Krokovs'kyipenned sermon-liketexts in the formof instructions, meditations, and introductionsto otherworks, and these too havedrawn sparse notice. The primaryexceptions to thisrelative inatten- tionhave been thehandful of preachers in residenceat or activelysupported by the tsaristcourt, the UkrainiansStefan Iavors'kyi, Feofan Prokopovych, TeofilaktLopatyns'kyi, and Havry'ilBuzhyns'kyi. Some otherwell-known Moscow (and, moreimportantly, velikorusskie) clerics, most notably Karion Istomin,also producedsermons (or at leastslova of some sort, according to the inventoriesof their works) and yetwe knowthem almost entirely as authors of pedagogicaltexts- primers,multilanguage lexicons, and the like- and as overseersof thepechatnyi dvor . What,when, or to whomthey preached, or how theyemployed scripture and othersacred texts remains almost entirely unknown.When we ventureoutside of the court the coverage is sparserstill. Withthe exception of Dymytrii Tuptalo in Rostov,Ioann Maksymovych briefly in Tobolsk,and perhapsseveral others, few Petrine-era clerics who preached outside of Moscow or St. Petersburghave enteredinto the mainstreamof Russianhistorical narratives. This is a pity.Preaching at the pulpitin provincialcathedrals remained This content downloaded from 129.49.5.35 on Tue, 02 Feb 2016 17:40:52 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions IOASAFKROKOVSKYI'S ADVICE TO PETER 195 highlyexceptional until the very end ofthe eighteenth century, and theoppor- tunityto preachwas theoreticallylimited to thosegranted the formal title of propovednik,a signifier of having mastered specific rhetorical skills at seminary. Thisfact alone markedthese orations and thosewho intonedthem as special, voices thatwere privileged to speak and at timespublish when others could not.Much ofthis preaching from the pulpit was confinedto cathedralsin the capitals,yet a fewhierarchs located outsidethe metropoledid occasionally produceengaging and thought-provokingwords that deserve inclusion into the intellectualand culturalhistory of the day. The reasonsfor including them go beyondenriching and enlargingwhat is stilla verysmall canon, although those are twodesiderata. Sermons, or otherhomiletic- style texts, provided the pri- maryvehicles through which educated clergy communicated their ideas, made subtlesuggestions, praised, and condemned.In spokenform they constituted, or had thecapacity to constitute,intimate - ifhighly formalistic - speech acts beforea select,typically well-placed, and alwayscaptive audience of listeners. On thoseoccasions when these texts went into print shortly after the orations theyachieved a secondand moreenduring life, a kindof literary permanence, throughwhich the wordsand the authorswho assembledthem could reach beyondtheir immediate listeners to moredistant readers, even if the implied second audience(lay and clericalelites) was sociallynot all thatdifferent. Most intellectualor culturalhistorians, if they read the sermons at all,tend to look primarilyat pokhval'nye slova and viewthem as freestandingtexts, or ideologicalstatements in themselvesoutside of a largerdiscourse or context. Alternatively,linguistically trained specialists, most notable Viktor Zhivov and GiovannaBrogi, have examinedsermons in searchof key words and expres- sions of sacrality,tsarist charisma, and pagan allegory,so as to tracestatist and secularizingtendencies. But homiliescould be richer,subtler, and more multivalentthan that, and as slovaBozhii they almost invariably dwelled fun- damentallyon thebiblical, the theological, and thespiritual. Riccardo Picchio's conceptof dual codes comes to mindhere, but if anything, it understatesthe multiplemeanings that could be read intoa particularlywell-crafted sermon, a situationthat demands that these texts be read closely,and frombeginning to end.3Set withina rigidnarrative, more or less scholasticstructure that all the relevantsermonizers had carefullystudied or taughtin seminaryand knewbackwards and forwards,these typesof printedtexts could at times also functionas communicationsacross geographic space, directedto those who,equipped witha similartraining, would knowwhere and how to look forthe voice ofthe author and thepersonal or politicalsuggestions contained withinwhat was otherwisea formalisticcommentary on scriptureor a saint's life.In thehands of a giftedpractitioner such as Prokopovychthe result could be a sophisticatedand multivalentwork demanding a trainedeye and a care- fulhermeneutic reading. But even in lesserhands, the mediumcould be an This content downloaded from 129.49.5.35 on Tue, 02 Feb 2016 17:40:52 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 196 MARKER effectivevehicle for subtly embedding individual arguments within otherwise commonplacestructures and