Dmytro Tuptalo as an Outstanding Ukrainian Hagiographer, Church and Cultural Figure

This year it is the 370th anniversary of birthday of Danylo Savych Tuptalo – a prominent Ukrainian hagiographer, church and cultural figure. Future hierarch Dimitry was born on December 11, 1651, in the small town of Makariv, that is in the Kyiv region, in the pious family of the Cossack sotnyk Sava Hryhorovych and Mariya Mykhailivna. Historical and dogmatic-polemical works, texts of sermons, precepts have been and still remain important for us. They illustrate the world outlook, views, value system, high intellectual and moral level of Dimitri Tuptalo. However, his fundamental hagiographic encyclopaedia – Lives of Saints, known as Chetya-Mineya, is the most significant work of the Saint. This is a combined collection of the lives of saints by days and months of the year from September to August. Demetrius Tuptalo has started work in 1684, when he accepts the proposal of Pechersk Archimandrite Varlaam Yasynskyi and settles in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. Work on Lives of Saints in 4 volumes has lasted for the whole 20 years (with intermissions). Each volume covers three months of the year. We are convinced that the contribution of Dimitri Tuptalo to the Ukrainian written culture in general and to the Ukrainian hagiography, in particular, is extremely significant. As the biographies of famous bishops, patriarchs, monks, and secular persons, canonized by the Orthodox Church, are undoubtedly important for our spiritual culture. Hagiographic literature has always enriched the believer, is a certain example of piety. These works open new meanings, nurture curious thought, give examples of the embodiment of the highest virtues in the lives of saints, incite to self-centration and self-completion.

Vitae as a Subject Source in the West European Pictorial Art of the 14–17th Centuries (On the Example of the Image of Saint Jerome of Stridon)

For many centuries, Western European art drew its subjects from ancient history, mythology and the Bible. The artists paid great attention to the depiction of saints, for each of whom, over time, a pictorial canon with its own attributes and certain subjects was formed. As a result, the viewer not only easily recognized a particular saint, but he could also get acquainted with the facts of his biography and the role he played in the history of the church. Saint Jerome of Stridon was one of the most popular among artists, of all the Fathers of the Church he was portrayed more often than others. The article discusses the formation of this canon on the example of Jerome’s life and work. It is based on a literature review of this topic and it contains the main studies of the biography and literary activity of Jerome, from which the artists drew subjects for their works. The article describes chronologically the vitae of St. Jerome, his hagiography from Jacobus de Voragine’s “The Golden Legend”, biography and posthumous legends, miracles and appearances of the saint from “Hieronymianus” by Giovanni d’Andrea. Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote a historical biography of Saint Jerome. Since the 19th century a large number of scientific studies of Jerome’s life and work has appeared. The article analyzes specific works of Jerome, which were also sources for pictorial images. Special attention is paid to a review of art history literature, as well as medieval bestiaries, since the paintings with St. Jerome are filled with numerous symbolic animals. A review of literature and sources on the stated topic will help stimulate researchers to further study the relationship between the lives of saints and their iconography in art, identify gaps in research on this topic and specify aspects that researchers have not yet paid attention to.

Lives, Lives, and Afterlives

Caesarius of Arles in his role as bishop struggled to guide his growing Christian community amid the political and religious fragmentation of early sixth-century Gaul. This article examines the ways in which he shaped his pastoral pedagogy to address the ecclesiological challenges of the post-Roman world. In his own life, in retelling the lives of saints, and in publishing his sermons, Caesarius variously reconceptualized “example” in order to teach ordinary Christians how to live out their faith in a universal church – a stable, if idealized, community that brought comfort in uncertain times. His innovative pedagogy also reshaped the complex administration of the expanding Gallic church. Caesarius thus created a pedagogy of example to fit the needs of his post-Roman community.

Some Features of the Mysterious Invisible World of Sufism

The article is devoted to the reflection of the theme of dreams in Sufi writings, mainly manakibs (Lives of Saints), relating to the Middle-Age Transoxiana. Sufism is the earliest form of the spread of the Islamic faith in the world. Sufism has absorbed both some elements of the Qur'anic teachings, and many popular beliefs associated with the belief in supernatural forces. Sufis are people who dedicated their lives to the knowledge of God through various spiritual practices, one of which is, for example, the interpretation of dreams. In these dreams there are various images that are interpreted as flukes of providence, for example, appearing Saint Khidr (or Khoja Khizr) in a dream, who is considered as absolute authority and patron of the Sufis, and who is the bearer of the moral principle; he supports and guides people on the path of virtue. On the opposite side there is the genies community, which is “hostile” towards the Sufi community. Moreover, many Sufi authorities interpreted their presence in dreams or in reality as “good” or “bad” omens. Constant presence of such theme in Muslim hagiographic writings reflects the complex and specific worldview of Sufism. Some historical and Muslim hagiographic works (manakibs) of the late Medieval Transoxiana became the source base of our work. They contain numerous hagiographic episodes that tell us of such unusual phenomena in the life of Sufis. The subject of this article is the study of the dreaming spiritual practice of the Sufis. The purpose of the research is to study the phenomenon of dreams and its significance in Sufism, to consider the place and meaning of such an important hagiographic character as Khoja Khizra and such creatures as jinn in the Sufi’s worldview. The novelty of this work lies in the introduction of new information contained in the Lives of Muslim Saints of Transoxiana in the 16th century.

Modern Russian Lives of New Martyrs and Confessors of the XX century in the aspect of corpus lexicography

We express an idea that modern lives of saints are important part of current Russian literary process, lists the types of information that mark the corpus of the lives of new martyrs and confessors of Moscow Diocese, and lists the lexical and semantic poles that are allocated in the corpus. The article is provided with a large amount of factual material.