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’.

Meletij Smotryc’kyj viewed his Homilary Gospel (Jevanhelije ucytelnoje, Vievis, 1616) as a crucial requirement for the “spiritual good” of the Ruthenian (Ukrainian-Belorussian) nation. In light of the fierce debate over the Union of Brest (1596) he saw the need for an Orthodox collection of Gospel pericopes and sermons in the vernacular to supplant reliance on Polish Catholic and Protestant postils. Thus, he translated into Ruthenian a Church Slavonic collection of sermons on the Gospels, while simultaneously introducing formal revisions that allowed the work to compete more successfully with similar Polish texts.

This volume contains the first English translation of 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. Included are a map, an annotated index, and an index of Biblical citations.

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. The Izbornik is the earliest extant witness to the reception and subsequent transformation of Eastern Orthodox moral instruction that resulted from the transmission to Rusʹ of Bulgarian Slavic translations from the Greek. The Homilies of Grigorij the Philosopher, translated for the first time into any modern language, is the earliest dated and localized Slavic text (Kiev, ca. 1062).

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. Written in 1710, Hrabjanka’s chronicle deals with the revolution of Hetman Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyi and its aftermath. In his introduction Yuri Lutsenko demonstrates that the work is not so much a chronicle in the traditional sense, but rather a well-written dramatic account of events intended to glorify the achievements of the Cossacks.

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.