SERMON AS A RELIGIOUS COMMUNICATION (EMOTIONAL TOOLS OF PERSUASION IN THE SERMONS BY ANTONIJ RADYVYLOVS’KYI)

Abstract

Territorially and mentally, Ukraine is the borderland of different civilizations. Ukraine’s geographical location and historical conditions have drastically affected the course of social, political and cultural developments. It appears that the Baroque era became an important bridge in the convergence of Western and Eastern Europe. The rhetoric and homiletic genre held an important place in the art system of the old Ukrainian literature, and even more so in the Ukrainian Baroque literature in the time of radical national upheavals and inter-confessional wars. Since the early 1600’s the Ukrainian sermon acquired some new features, which was due mostly to the socio-historical changes. A major role in the development of church oratory prose was played by the instructors of the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium, whose rhetoric textbooks relied on both the ancient theory of rhetoric art and the Baroque works of the literati from Central and Western Europe. The "new" type of a sermon, i.e., a topical kazannia (sermon), evolved as a part of the anti-Catholic cultural and religious movement, which was a reflection of the socio-political situation. Whereas in the 1500’s and early 1600’s theUkrainian sermon constituted an exegesis of the Biblical text (expository sermons) designed in a moral and instructive spirit, the late 1600’s saw the arrival of the sermon whose main feature became the departure from the homily principle. Instead, the Gospel passages were interpreted in compliance with the principles of a rhetorical speech, or, to be more exact, of a topical kazannia. Antonij Radyvylovs’kyj was a Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium alumnus, so his sermons were built on the premises of Rhetoric art.