Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature

The Tale of Bygone Years (Pověst’ vremennykh lět) is the most important source for the history of early Rus’. This massive undertaking provides scholars and general readers with the first fully legible text that includes all of the known redactions of the Pověst’.

This volume reproduces in facsimile the original printed editions of eleven of Smotryc’kyj’s most important religious writings, beginning with the famous Threnos (1610) and concluding with Exaethesis (1629). The Introduction surveys the controversial details of Smotryc’kyj’s biography and critically analyzes the corpus of works attributed to him.

Meletij Smotryc’kyj viewed his Homilary Gospel as a crucial requirement for the “spiritual good” of the Ruthenian nation. The work, presented here with the original printed edition, is important as a critical polemical text from the Catholic–Orthodox debate and also as a monument of early Ukrainian literature.

The Kievan Caves Monastery played a leading role in developing a Ukrainian historical consciousness in the seventeenth century. Several works written by monastery inhabitants testified not only to the site’s former saints and miracles but also to its current holy men and wonders. This volume contains facsimile reproductions of two such works.

Successor to Ivan Mazepa in 1710, Hetman Pylyp Orlyk led the Ukrainians who had emigrated after the Battle of Poltava in the struggle against Russian domination. The present facsimile edition of the Diariusz podrożny, which has never been published in full, constitutes an invaluable guide to Orlyk’s personality, his travels, and his politics.

This continuation of Pylyp Orlyk’s Diariusz podrożny encompasses the dramatic years 1727–1731. From his “honorary” confinement in Ottoman Thessalonica, the Ukrainian Hetman-in-exile tried to influence on his behalf the European powers whose representatives were gathered at the Congress of Suissons.

This volume contains the first English translation of Paisij Velyckovs’kyj’s unfinished autobiography, as well as a biography of the elder by his disciple Mytrofan. Tachiaos’s introduction discusses both works against their historical and generic background.

Among the finest products of early Ukrainian literature were the Lives of the first Rus’ saints. Hollingsworth provides a lucid introduction that discusses each saint and his or her cult in the historical as well as social contexts and examines the literary and textual features of the Rus’ vitae.

This volume consists of two of the oldest texts of Kievan Rusʹ: the Izbornik of 1076 and Grigorij the Philosopher’s Homilies on All the Days of the Week. These rhetorically artistic and sophisticated homilies provide a unique picture of an early Kievan preacher and of the moral needs of his Rusʹ audience.

Krevza’s Defense (1617), on the Uniate side, and Kopystens’kyj’s Palinodia (1621), a defense of the Eastern Church, are perhaps the most illuminating works on the debate that culminated at the time of the Union of Brest (1596), when much of the Ruthenian ecclesiastical hierarchy declared itself in communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

A prominent religious figure, Meletij Smotryc’kyj was caught up in the struggle between Orthodox and Uniate beliefs. His polemics served as the cornerstone of the Orthodox response to the Polish-Lithuanian Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The works collected here offer unique insight into the elite of early modern Rus’.

Hryhorij Hrabjanka’s The Great War of Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyi is one of several Cossack chronicles that transformed the nature of written Ukrainian history in the early eighteenth century. This volume contains facsimiles of two manuscript versions of the chronicle, as well as two published versions that have become bibliographic rarities.

Ilarion, Klim Smoljatic, and Kirill of Turov are remarkable for their personal and literary achievements. Franklin prefaces their work with a substantial introduction that places each of the authors in historical context and examines the literary qualities, as well as the textual complexities, of these outstanding examples of Rus’ literature.

The Kievan Caves Monastery was for centuries the most important Ukrainian monastic establishment. It was the outstanding center of literary production, and its monks served throughout the territory of Rus’ as bishops and monastic superiors. Heppell now makes available the first complete English translation of the Paterik.

Both the Ostroz’kyj and Cetvertyns’kyj codices appear here for the first time in facsimile. Until now they have been known only from footnotes to editions of the Hypatian Chronicle.

Written in the seventeenth century, The Hustynja Chronicle is the earliest systematic history of Kyivan Rus´ and Ukraine from biblical times until the Union of Brest in 1596. This volume is the first scholarly edition of the chronicle. The Introduction, in Ukrainian and English, describes the chronicle in detail and explores its history.