Meletius Smotrytsky
One of the most popular Russian educational books of the 17th-18th centuries, “Slavonic Grammar and Correct Syntagma,” was published in 1618-1619 in the suburbs of Vilna - Evyu (in various sources the spellings Evyu and Evye are also found). There, on the shore of a lake with the same name, at the beginning of the 17th century, the estate of the Oginsky princes was located, where in 1618 Bogdan Oginsky founded a printing house that printed Slavic and Polish books. The back of the title page of the “Grammar” of 1619 is decorated with the coat of arms of Bogdan Oginsky, and the book itself is dedicated to the Patriarch of Constantinople Timothy and the Archimandrite of the Vilna Monastery Leonty Karpovich.
The Moscow edition of 1648 is the third in a row (the second was published in 1629 in Vilna). Printed at the behest of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and with the blessing of his spiritual father, Moscow Patriarch Joseph, it appeared anonymously, in an “edited” form, supplemented by linguistic reasoning, the authorship of which is attributed to Maxim the Greek. The main text is preceded by a rather extensive preface, which contains maxims about the benefits of grammar and the need to read
Holy Scripture, as well as the “spiritual instructions” of the church fathers.
The author of "Grammar" Meletius (Maxim) Smotritsky is a learned monk who received a European education, a member of the Vilna Orthodox brotherhood, who became an active church politician who dealt with issues of confrontation between the Eastern and Western churches. For some time he taught the Slavic language at the school of the Vilna monastery and on this occasion he compiled his “Grammar”.
It is divided into four parts: spelling, etymology, syntax and prosody, representing new system stresses in versification. “What do these four parts teach? Spelling teaches the right to write, and to speak directly in speech. Etymology teaches sayings to be more accurately exalted in their own parts. Syntax teaches words more difficult than syntax. Prosodia teaches verses to be composed using a meter, or a measure of quantity.”
Initially intended to counter the increasing polonization of the western region, Smotrytsky’s book played an important role in cultural development Russia. Before the appearance of the “Russian Grammar” in 1755, M.V. Lomonosov, it was the main textbook of the Church Slavonic language. For several decades, literate people learned from the “Slavic Grammar” “it is good to speak and write.”
Only the prosody of the innovative philologist did not evoke the sympathy of his contemporaries and immediate descendants. Famous poet XVIII century V.K. Trediakovsky, in his article “On Ancient, Middle and New Russian Poems,” wrote about this: “It is not known whether the method he didn't like the rhyme or so he was he didn’t like the rhyme, or he was so in love with the ancient Greek and Latin method of versification that he composed his own, for our poems, completely Greek and therefore Latin. But even if this diligence of Smotritsky is commendable, our learned spiritual people did not accept this composition of his verses, it remained only in his grammar as an example for descendants, and they were often established more on rhyme verses of the average composition, bringing them into some order and the sample of Polish poems."
The Moscow edition of the “Slavonic Grammar” of 1648 appeared 11 years after the author’s death. Shortly before his death, a sharp turn occurred in Smotritsky’s worldview. If before, at the time of compiling the “Grammar”, the scientist-preacher tirelessly struggled with the idea of subordinating the Orthodox Church to the Uniate Church, then by the time the second edition of the textbook was published, having visited Italy and the Middle East, he accepted the union and in his last works came out with sharp criticism dogmas of Orthodoxy.
Meletius Smotrytsky (about 1578-1633) Slavonic grammar correct syntagma. By the indulgence of the many-sinful deceiver Meletius of Smotrisky, in the consecration of the church brotherhood of Vilna, at the Temple of the Descent of the Most Holy and Life-Giving Spirit, established, wandering, acquired and accustomed, years from the incarnation of God the Word 1619. I reign the Apostolic See of the Great Church of God of Constantinople to the Vilna Patriarch, Father Tim Ofey, Vilensky Confession presented to Father Leonty Karpovich, Archimandrite. In Evue, 1619. 252 l. (504 pp.) Bound in full leather from the 17th century. 14.4x9.1 cm. On the back of the title page. owner's inscription in walnut ink: “This is the grammar of Ivan Umov.” Already in the “Description of early printed books of Slavic and Russian Count F.A. Tolstoy" (Moscow, 1829) edition is classified as "very rare".
Smotritsky's "Grammar" is an outstanding monument to Slavic grammatical thought, the basis of Church Slavonic grammar science for the next two centuries, which went through many reprints, revisions and translations, was first published in 1619 in the city of Evye. She had a great influence on the development of Russian philology and the teaching of grammar in schools. Written on the model of Greek grammars, Smotritsky’s work reflects the specific phenomena of the Church Slavonic language.
The son of the Ukrainian writer-polemicist Gerasim Smotrytsky, the first rector of the Ostroh school, an expert in the Church Slavonic language, a participant in the editing and publication of the Ostroh Bible, Ivan Fedorov, Smotrytsky emphasized the need for conscious assimilation educational material- “understand words with your mind…”. They put forward five stages of learning: “see, listen, understand, consider, remember.” That is why “Grammar” is filled with many examples that make it easier to learn grammatical rules. It consists of the following parts: spelling, etymology, syntax, prosody. The work establishes a system of cases characteristic of Slavic languages, two conjugations of verbs, definition (not yet entirely accurate) of types of verbs, etc.; extra letters are marked Slavic writing, which it does not need, there is a section on versification, where instead of syllabic verse it is proposed to use metrical verse, as supposedly more characteristic of Slavic speech.
Smotrytsky Meletiy, secular name Maxim, was born around 1577 in the village of Smotrych, Khmelnitsky region, Ukraine. He combined many talents: philologist, Belarusian and Ukrainian polemicist, socio-political and church leader, Polotsk Orthodox Archbishop (since 1620), Uniate Archbishop of Hieropolitan and archimandrite of the monastery in Derman.
Maxim received his initial education from his father in Orthodox school in Ostrog. He called himself a student of Cyril Loukaris, a Greek scholar who later became the Patriarch of Constantinople. Later, with the support of the Kyiv governor K. Ostrozhsky, he studied at the Jesuit Academy in Vilna. He continued his studies at Protestant academies in Germany (Leipzig, Wittenberg). Then he lived in the Solomeritsky estate near Minsk. He joined the Vilna Orthodox Brotherhood at the Trinity Monastery, where he became close to the founder of the monastery, Leonty Karpovich.
At the age of 19, he witnessed the introduction of the Brest Church Union, the legitimacy of which he did not recognize.
All his church and writing career developed in the context of religious, cultural and national polemics that took place in Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania and Poland in the first decades of the 17th century.
In 1608 - 1623 he was one of the most famous supporters of the renewal of the Belarusian-Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
After joining the union in 1627, he advocated reform of the Uniate church.
In 1610. The printing house of the Vilna Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit published, under the pseudonym Theophilus Ortolog, the polemical work of M. Smotrytsky “Frynos, that is, the Lamentation of the Eastern Church” in Polish, which he used in all his published polemical works. The author, in the image of the mother church, which cries and suffers, came out in defense of Orthodoxy against all Western Christianity. The work caused a wide socio-political resonance. Although the author diligently avoided political involvement, the book aroused the alarm of Sigismund III, who ordered the book to be burned and the printer and the author to be arrested. The publisher of the book, Leonty Karpovich, was sent to prison, but the anonymous author managed to escape punishment.
In 1616, the printing house of the Vilna Orthodox Brotherhood published “The Teaching Gospel” with a foreword by M. Smotrytsky.
In 1637, Metropolitan P. Mogila published a revised version, omitting the name of the interpreter, probably due to the scandal caused by M. Smotrytsky’s transition to the union.
Between 1617 and 1618 M. Smotrytsky became a monk in the Vilna Monastery of St. Spirit under the name Meletia. He worked in the monastery's fraternal school and was the rector of the Kyiv fraternal school (1618-1620).
Smotritsky went down in the history of linguistics as a polyglot and the author of several school textbooks. In 1615 in Cologne he published a grammar of the Greek language, in 1617-1620. created the Lexicon (dictionary) of Church Slavonic and Greek, took part in writing the Primer of the Slovenian Language (1618). The top scientific activity Smotrytsky became “Slovenian Grammar, more correct syntagma” (1618-1619). In it, the author argued that in the Church Slavonic language it is possible to develop science, and the Church Slavonic language itself is equal to the Greek and Latin languages. “Grammar” by M. Smotritsky became an important factor in the development of East Slavic spiritual culture, and was reprinted several times until the 19th century. was the most authoritative and widely used textbook on Slavic linguistics in the Orthodox world. She was bullied twice in Moscow. Individual chapters were published in Holland.
Smotritsky was the first to introduce the letter “g” and legalize the use of the letter “y”; set the rules letter designation vowels and consonants, use capital letters, separating marks, transfer rules; identified eight parts of speech - pronoun, verb, name, participle, etc.; described the declension of adjectives and numerals.
M. Lomonosov called “Grammar” “the gates of learning.”
In the XVIII - first half of the XIX century. it became the model for Serbian, Croatian, Romanian and Bulgarian grammars.
In 1620, M. Smotrytsky was delegated to a meeting with the Jerusalem Patriarch Theophan, who, returning from Moscow, where he ordained Patriarch Filaret, spent several months in the East Slavic lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In Kyiv, Feofan ordained 7 new Orthodox bishops to replace those who had transferred to the union, and among them the Archbishop of Polotsk and the Bishop of Vitebsk and Mstislav - M. Smotritsky.
Soon Smotritsky was elected archimandrite of the Vilna Orthodox monastery to replace the recently deceased Leonty Karpovich.
At his funeral, Smotrytsky spoke “Kazan to the honest cellar of Leonty Karpovich,” published in Russian (Vilno, 1620) and Polish (Vilno, 1621).
In the newly initiated Orthodox hierarchy M. Smotrytsky now occupied the second most important place after Metropolitan Job Boretsky. In the coming years after this, M. Smotrytsky acted as the main defender of the Orthodox Church in the controversy over the legality of the newly installed hierarchy, which was disputed by the Uniate and Catholic sides,
At the same time, the views and activities of M. Smotritsky gave reason to Uniate circles to believe that he was close to joining them. Both opposing sides: Uniate and Orthodox - wanted to have him in their camp and made efforts for this, but neither, it seems, was completely confident in his loyalty.
In 1624-1625, after the reprisal of the inhabitants of Vitebsk against the Polotsk Uniate Archbishop I. Kuntsevich, M. Smotritsky traveled to the holy places of the Middle East, during which he visited Jerusalem and Constantinople. He never returned to Vilna.
He spent the last period of his life in Dermani as an archimandrite of a local monastery, which was in the possession of the Bratslav governor Alexander Zaslavsky, who had recently converted to Catholicism. Zaslavsky, together with Metropolitan I. Rutsky, persuaded M. Smotritsky to join the Uniate Church.
In 1627, he secretly, and after the council of 1628, openly accepted the union. Changes in worldview were reflected in the polemical work “Apology” (1628), which was condemned Orthodox Cathedral in August 1628 in Kyiv: the book was torn and thrown away, the Uniate archimandrite of the monastery in Dubno Kasyan Sakovich was cursed for printing it, and M. Smotrytsky was forced to renounce it in writing.
In order to discredit M. Smotrytsky in the eyes of the Uniates, the renunciation was printed in Russian and Polish languages. In a series of works written in Dermani over the next two years, M. Smotritsky polemicized both with the ideologists of Orthodoxy and with his own own works, written during the period of his affiliation with Orthodoxy.
The papacy, probably due to insufficient trust in M. Smotrytsky, could not decide what to do with him and hesitated in appointing him to the post of bishop. Meanwhile, this question arose before the Kyiv Council of 1628, when M. Smotrytsky was a secret Uniate.
On April 8, 1628, the Congregation for the Propaganda of the Faith asked Metropolitan I. Rutsky to confirm the sincerity of Smotritsky’s acceptance of the union and his loyalty to Rome, which he did in a letter to Rome dated January 9, 1629.
On May 5, 1631, Pope Urban VIII appointed M. Smotrytsky to the post of Archbishop of the Hieropolitan Church.
The last years of his life brought M. Smotrytsky many disappointments, in particular, the failed reconciliatory Uniate-Orthodox council in Lviv in 1629.
The last surviving manuscript of M. Smotrytsky is a letter to Pope Urban VIII, written from Dermani on February 16, 1630, in which he spoke about the use of pressure as the only means of resolving religious conflicts in “Rus”. He believed that the king and spiritual authorities should persuade the gentry to liquidate Orthodox churches and monasteries in their domains. At the same time, he convinced the pope of the need to prohibit the Rusyns from switching to the Latin rite from the Uniate one.
Meletiy Smotrytsky died in Dermani in December 1633, where he was buried.
Alexander A. Sokolovsky
Year: 1648
Author: Smotritsky Meletiy Gerasimovich
Genre: Historical book
Publisher: Printing Dvor
Language: Russian (pre-reform)
Format: PDF
Quality: Scanned pages
Number of pages: 754
Description: Melety Smotritsky (Maxim Gerasimovich Smotritsky) - a prominent public, church figure, teacher and scientist, one of the most educated people of his time; a zealous defender of Orthodoxy, at the end of his life he converted to the Greek Catholic Church.
In 1619, in the city of Evye (now Vievis near Vilnius), the main philological work of Meletiy Smotrytsky was published: Slavonic Grammar, Correct Svtantama - an outstanding monument of Slavic grammatical thought, which became the basis of Church Slavonic grammatical science for the next two centuries. Written on the model of Greek grammars, Smotritsky’s work reflected the specific phenomena of the Church Slavonic language. The textbook consisted of four parts: spelling, etymology, syntax and prosody (stress and pronunciation).
The Moscow edition of Meletius Smotritsky's Grammar (1648) appeared anonymously; the author's name was not indicated due to his transition to Uniatism at the end of his life. The text of the Grammar was significantly edited by the reference workers of the Moscow Printing House, Mikhail Rogov and Ivan Nasedka, taking into account the peculiarities of living Slavic speech; the text was also supplemented with articles from the works of Maxim the Greek about the benefits of studying grammar, examples of grammatical parsing of sentences. The book was printed from December 6, 1647 to February 2, 1648, within 13 months, with a circulation of 1,200 copies. M. Even Yulia Volodimirovna had no idea about such a strange plot. V. Lomonosov called Smotritsky's Grammar the gates of learning. During the 17th-18th centuries, the Grammar was reprinted several times. It retained its scientific and practical significance until the publication of M. V. Lomonosov’s Grammar in 1755.
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In 1618-1619, the main philological work “Slavonic Grammar Correct Svntagma” (Evye, now Vievis near Vilnius) was published - the basis of Church Slavonic grammatical science for the next two centuries, which went through many reprints, revisions and translations. Smotritsky's "Grammar" is an outstanding monument of Slavic grammatical thought. It consists of the following parts: spelling, etymology, syntax, prosody. Written on the model of Greek grammars, Smotritsky’s work reflects the specific phenomena of the Church Slavonic language. He was responsible for the establishment of a system of cases characteristic of Slavic languages (in this Smotritsky was ahead of Western grammarians, who adjusted the cases of living languages to the norms Latin language), establishing two conjugations of verbs, determining (not yet entirely accurate) the type of verbs, etc.; extra letters of Slavic writing are marked, which it does not need. Smotritsky’s “Grammar” also has a section on versification, where instead of syllabic verse it is proposed to use metrical verse, as supposedly more characteristic of Slavic speech (in reality, reproducing an authoritative ancient model; Meletius’ experiment with artificial metrization of the Church Slavonic language had no consequences). His “Grammar” is replete with many examples that make it easier to learn grammatical rules. It was reprinted several times (Vilno, 1629; Kremenets, 1638, 1648; Moscow, 1648, 1721, with an approach to the living Russian language and additional articles on the benefits of studying grammar) and had a great influence on the development of Russian philology and the teaching of grammar in schools. In alphabet books of the 17th century. Extensive extracts have been made from it. Smotritsky’s “Grammar” was taken into account by the authors of a number of subsequent Slavic grammars published abroad - Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf (Oxford, 1696), Ilya Kopievich (Amsterdam, 1706), Pavel Nenadovich (Rymnik, 1755), Stefan Vuyanovsky (Vienna, 1793) and Abraham Mrazovich (Vienna, 1794).
Smotritsky emphasized the need for conscious assimilation of educational material - “understand the words with your mind.” They put forward 5 stages of learning: “see, listen, understand, consider, remember.”
Some researchers mention a dictionary allegedly compiled by Smotritsky around the same time, but no confirmation has been found for this information. Equally dubious is the information about Smotrytsky’s Greek grammar (allegedly published in 1615 in Cologne). However, his participation in the writing of the “Primer of the Slavonic language”, printed in 1618 in the same Evye, is confirmed.
Fight against union (1620-1623)
In 1620-1621, the Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophan stayed in Ukraine and Belarus: almost all the Orthodox bishops there went over to the Uniate, and it was necessary to restore the Orthodox church hierarchy. Feofan sent out letters in which he advised that candidates be elected and sent to him in Kyiv. The Vilna candidate was initially Archimandrite Leonty Karpovich of the Holy Spirit Monastery, but due to his illness, Smotritsky was entrusted with going to Kyiv. It was his Patriarch Theophan who installed him as Archbishop of Polotsk, Bishop of Vitebsk and Mstislav. However, Smotrytsky did not receive any real church power: all the named departments since 1618 were occupied by the Uniate of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Josaphat Kuntsevich, supported by the government of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
At the end of 1620, after the death of Leonty Karpovich, Smotritsky was elected archimandrite of the Holy Spirit Monastery. During this period, he launched active efforts to protect Orthodoxy and new bishops: he gave sermons in Vilnius churches, in squares, in the town hall, and sent his ambassadors with letters and books to cities, towns, farmsteads and magnate castles...
As one would expect, the patron of the union, King Sigismund III, did not approve the new Orthodox bishops and metropolitan. The government of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth condemned the actions of Patriarch Feofan, declared him a Turkish spy, and ordered the newly installed bishops to be seized and brought to justice. Sigismund issued three letters against Smotrytsky in 1621, declaring him an impostor, an enemy of the state, lese majeste and an instigator who should be arrested. A pogrom of Orthodox Christians was organized in Vilna.
