“Kol’ dobro i kol’ krasno Christa radi umirati” : il discorso sul martirio nell’omiletica rutena della seconda metà del Seicento e l’influsso della Controriforma

This paper investigates the rhetoric of martyrdom that developed in seventeenthcentury Ukraine. My focus is limited to the discourse of Orthodox martyrdom as it is developed by Ukrainian Baroque preachers recounting the life and death of the martyrized princes Boris and Gleb. In particular, I concentrate on one exemplary case, Antonij Radyvylovs’kyj’s Slovo pervoe na sviatyx strastoterpec kniazej Borisa i Gleba (Kiev, 1676). In tracing the contours of ideologies of martyrdom that arose in the specific cultural setting of seventeenth-century Kiev, I shall also tackle the problem of inter-confessional encounters, in particular of those taking place along the Orthodox-Catholic divide, by evaluating the impact of the “martyrological revival” experienced by post-Reformation Europe. However, the image of the Eastern Slavic Orthodox martyr as it emerges from the homiletic sources will be seen not only within the context of the international (Counter-Reformation) influences, but also within the context of the refiguring of the Ukrainian religious landscape after Petro Mohyla’s reforms.