Orthodox Reform in Seventeenth-Century Kiev: The Evidence of a Library

Abstract

Abstract Drawing on the surviving lists of books from the private collection of Peter Mohyla, the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev in 1633-1646, the crucial period that followed the restoration of his confession’s legal status in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the article examines the place of Western monastic works in shaping the spiritual and doctrinal parameters of Orthodox reform. Beginning in the Archdiocese of Kiev, it subsequently spread to other branches of the Eastern Church, which remained outside communion with Rome in the seventeenth century: Greek, Moldavian, and Russian. The article establishes vital links between the process of Orthodox renewal and the European movement for religious change and considers the case for the applicability of the confessionalization model as a suitable analytical framework for Orthodox religious reforms.