Church history is an important factor for understanding the past, present and future of Ukraine and Ukrainian society. On the territory of contemporary Ukraine, several denominations claim to be the true successor of the church established by Vladimir the Great. The information war between them has long gone beyond canonical questions and arose in the struggle for the historical consciousness not only of believers but the whole society.
This discussion has its roots in Early Modern era, when the Kyiv ecclesiastical intellectuals, competing claims by various religious and political centres, declared an independent Church tradition. Starting at the end of the 16th and continuing throughout the 17th century, a process of "invention" of the Kyiv historiographical, hagiographic and polemical tradition took place that was proclaimed, however, as a return to "ancient times".
The aim of this workshop is to examine what ideas and practices were taken up by the Kyiv clerical elite in order to articulate their own tradition and what ideas were refuted or simply ignored in the political declarations and polemical, historiographical and hagiographic writings. The parallel "invention of tradition" in the United and Orthodox Churches provides important material for comparing this process in both parts of the once-unified Kyiv Metropolia. The aim of the workshop is to not only highlight the peculiarity of the situation of the Kyiv Church Metropolia, but also to put it into a pan-European context, underlining the significance of the East-European ecclesiastical, cultural and political history of the Early Modern period.
Possible topics:
- Political and ecclesiastical strategies of Kyiv ecclesiastical elites of the 16th – 18th centuries
- Theological debates in the Kyiv Church Metropolia in the 16th – 18th centuries
- The cult of saints and its role in the formation of Kyiv ecclesiastical identity
- Historical narratives: composition, transfer, heroes and events
- Library collections and reading practices on the territory of the Kyiv Church Metropolia in the 16th – 18th centuries
This call for papers addresses historians, theologians, art historians, and scholars in related fields. Please send us a short abstract (about 500 words) for papers with a length of 20 minutes which address the above questions. The conference will be held in English. Abstracts can be submitted in English, Russian, or German.
A publication of the best papers from the workshop is planned.
The workshop will take place on Zoom. A subsequent off-line meeting for the selected authors is in planning for 2022.
The workshop is organized by:
Prof. Dr. Julia Herzberg, Dr. Nataliia Sinkevych
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Historisches Seminar der LMU
Geschichte Ost- und Südosteuropas
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
80539 München
Please send your proposal to Dr. Nataliia Sinkevych by 30 July 2021: