A. Hryhorak, PhD student
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine
ORCID: 0000-0001-7643-070X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/1728-2640.2020.144.4
THE IMAGE OF THE LAST JUDGMENT IN THE UKRAINIAN LITERARY TRADITION OF THE 12th – 18th CENTURIES AS A KEY TO EXPLANATION OF THE WORLDVIEW OF UKRAINIAN POPULATION OF THE MIDDLE AGES AND EARLY MODERN TIMES
The article deals with the systematization and analysis of authentic ancient Ukrainian texts dedicated to the topic of the Last Judgment with the author's purpose to reconstruct the worldview of Ukrainian population of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times. The source base of the study included eschatological literature as the most popular and numerous during that ages as well as Holy Bible, hagiographic works, prophecies and the graffiti of St. Sophia Cathedral of Kyiv. The dominant idea in the works found was the idea of the Last Judgment. Through the prism of this idea the most urgent moral problems, which were of acute concern to society, are recovered: the problem of the fall of spirituality, social inequality, the decline of morality etc.
The author also verified the foreign influences on Ukrainian eschatological literature as well the influence of preachers and polemicists of that time on public opinion about the signs of the end of the world. Revealing works in the medieval and early-modern Ukrainian literature devoted to the most fateful subjects, analyzing their content for reflection of eschatological ideas, systematizing the main ideas related to responsibility for terrestrial life, comparing these visions with those translated in literature, revealed the presence of the eschatological ideas on the common background of the general cultural and historical context of the studied ages. A study of Ukrainian eschatological literature led the author to the conclusion that the whole range of written eschatological sources gives us a linear development of the idea of the Last Judgment, from the dissemination of eschatological ideas of the 12th century to their concretization, development, popularization with each new period. Summing up the analysis of the works of eschatological literature, distributed on Ukrainian lands in the 17th – 18th centuries, the opposition of secular and religious thinking becomes noticeable, which is quite clearly reflected in the literature.
Keywords: eschatology, Last Judgment, history of religion, outlook, written sources.
Received by the editorial board: 07.02.2020
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