University College London

Review
Reviewed Work(s): Latin Books and the Eastern Orthodox Clerical Elite in Kiev, 1632-1780
by Liudmila V. Charipova
Review by: James Cracraft
Source: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 87, No. 1 (Jan., 2009), pp. 129-131
Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London,
School of Slavonic and East European Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25479344
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reviews 129
This is also a somewhat frustrating book: a dissertation which would have
benefited from severe pruning, editing and checking. In the lengthy chapter
on the Life, in particular, Isoaho strives too hard to make simple points
complex, to seek analogies and precedents of dubious relevance, to knock
down opponents (sometimes for what they don't actually say), and on occasion
to use trenchancy as a substitute for argument or self-criticism. For example,
Isoaho insists that in order to understand the image of Aleksandr in the Life
we have to understand hagiographic conventions and perceptions, but then
blurs the distinction between hagiography and eulogy (and indeed other forms
of medieval writing) to an extent which compromises any genre-specific argu
ment on hagiography as such. Too many statements are methodologically
confused or confusing. Thus (p. 138): the writer of the Life was 'clearly famil
iar with the obligations that a true chivalric hero had to fulfil, because the
narrative repeats the metaphors for honour in war that were well-known all
over Europe': what exactly is being claimed here about the writer's knowledge
of European images of a 'true chivalric hero'? Is there any textual basis for
such a major claim? 'Clearly' is not an argument. Or (p. 45) 'the significance
of Prince Aleksandr as a second Hezekiah is of the utmost importance when
viewing the contemporary events of Russian history'. Why? It may be impor
tant for interpreting a text, but how is that relevant to 'contemporary events^.

Or (p. 129): 'the continuity of an old cult of ancestor worship [...] is

obviously the key to understanding the tradition of the Russian Orthodox

Church in neglecting official canonization.' There is nothing 'obvious',

because the premise itself (ancestor worship) is only a speculative hypothesis.

And in any case it is misleading to label as 'neglect' the fact that in the
early Middle Ages local cults could emerge and flourish without a sense that
sanctity had to be confirmed according to a centralized procedure and list.
Then there are the straightforward lapses: 'the apocalyptic book of Sirak'
(p. 307); a phantom scholar 'Koluchchi' for Colucci (pp. 18, 81, bibliography
and index!); an imaginary 'holy father Amphilotheus' (p. 124) who looks like
a hybrid of Philotheus and Amphilochius (the latter being the saint who is
actually mentioned in the source); Archbishop Evfemiy (p. 232); the allusion
(p. 108) to staroslavianskii as 'the spoken Slavic language', whereas in the rele
vant paragraphs in the book by Begunov (cited in the footnote) staroslavianskii

means conventional written Church Slavonic, by contrast with the East Slav
vernacular). My favourite is on p. 367, where stankovaia zhivopis' becomes
'paintings of the Stankov region' (check a dictionary; or a map).
Such defects are unnecessary and distracting in what remains, at core, a
helpful survey.

Clare College, Cambridge Simon Franklin

Charipova, Liudmila V. Latin Books and the Eastern Orthodox Clerical Elite in Kiev,

1632-1780. Studies in Early Modern European History. Manchester

University Press, Manchester and New York, 2006. x + 259 pp. Notes.
Appendices. Bibliography. Index. ?50.00.
The core of this useful book (chapters three to five) comprises a very detailed

history of the library of the famous Kiev Mohyla College, later Academy,
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130 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 2009

from its founding in 1632 until 1780, when an accidental fire (the author
emphasizes) seems to have destroyed most, but not all, of its holdings. The
book's first two chapters offer a rather disjointed history of 'Ruthenia' or
Rus-Ukraine down to the mid-seventeenth century, and a somewhat updated
biography of Peter Mohyla (1596-1646), the episcopal founder of both college
and library who thus sought to revive the local 'crisis-stricken [Orthodox]
church' (p. 45). Chapter six, the last, attempts to summarize the book's find
ings and their historical significance. In this chapter particularly, the author's

reach, informed by a variety of big names in communication studies,

discourse analysis, reader reception theory, book, print and library history
(see also her Introduction), greatiy exceeds her grasp, meaning the very solid
research carried out in the collections of the Ukrainian National Library in
Kiev. Perhaps realizing the disparity, she has added a brief, clearly stated
Conclusion, one blessedly free of both endnotes and big names. It might well
be read first.
In those core chapters, the Mohyla library's history is divided into three
periods ? the seventeenth century, 1700 to 1740, and 1741 to 1780 ? each

crammed with bibliographic data concerning acquisitions, patronage,

personal inscriptions, probable use and the like. The author's research in Kiev
proved especially valuable in documenting the library's holdings in the eigh
teenth century. She has been able to establish, on the basis of contemporary
catalogues, donor letters, book markings and other evidence, that by 1780 the
library contained some 8,500 mostiy printed (some manuscript) volumes, many

of which contained multiple titles, or separate works bound together. She

further determined that of this number, 203 printed volumes and nine in
manuscript survive in the collections of the National Library itself or, in one
case, at the library of Kharkov State University (pp. 125-26, 72). Most of these
203 volumes she then lists in a lengthy appendix, with complete tides and full

publication details along with any ownership inscriptions; eight are manu
script volumes, the rest printed books, many containing multiple tides ? 262
tides in all (pp. 180-231). A second appendix (pp. 232-35) lists several hundred
biblical, classical and patristic authors cited in a book of miracles published
by the Kiev Monastery of the Caves in 1638, apparendy as evidence of the
size or character of the Mohyla library at that early date (p. 166). The claim
falls flat for lack of sufficient explanation, but is indicative of the nature of

much of the argumentation advanced in the book.

Looked at otherwise, the data thus collected enabled the author to docu
ment 1,450 titles held by the Mohyla library in 1780 ? 'nearly ninety percent
of which were in Latin' (p. 158). That is the salient fact here, repeatedly
emphasized and mulled over, with numerous citations, sometimes adversarial,
often confirmatory, to the work of other specialists. Indeed, the overwhelming

number of titles listed in the appendix are also in Latin ? the rest in Polish,
Greek, German and French (only two in Slavonic, two seventeenth-century
manuscript codices). Like the other documented titles, these too are 'princi
pally Western editions of classical authors [especially Cicero] and commentar
ies on their works; patristic literature [both Latin and Greek]; [Roman]
Catholic (mainly Jesuit) ascetic, moralistic [sic], philosophical and theological
treatises, and other minor [?] works [sermons, histories, compilations of
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REVIEWS 131
church canons, bibles and exegetical works, service manuals]; books on poli
tics, mosdy by Protestant writers; lexicons and grammars' (p. 158). In other
words, apart from confirming that Latin was the language of instruction at the

Mohyla College, the contents of its library in the periods under review prove
to have been pedagogical, academic and religious in character, and quite
similar on the whole to those of the contemporary Jesuit college libraries
located all over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on which the Kiev
institution was modelled.

None of these findings will surprise interested scholars, though the abun
dant detail will be most welcome. So will the author's evident sensitivity to the

anomalies of the Mohyla College's position as an outpost of early modern

Latin learning in a historic centre of Slavic Orthodoxy; likewise, her obvious
effort to rein in the nationalist animosities inherent, alas, in her project.
But the slighting of Russian connections (e.g. pp. 55-56, 158-59, 162-64) is to
be regretted, as it variously constrained both her depiction of the college's
history and her assessment of its historical importance. For most of the time

in question, after all, Kiev and its college were under more or less direct
Russian control.
University of Illinois, Chicago James Cracraft

Sunderland, Willard. Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian

Steppe. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY and London, 2006. xv + 239

pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Note on archival sources. Index. Si8.95:

?10.95 (paperback).

Recently issued in paperback, Willard Sunderland's much-discussed Taming

the Wild Field examines the Russian settlement and absorption of the Euro
pean steppe. Although the territory had in an earlier period been home
to terrifying conquerors (the Mongols) and their much-feared descendants
(the Tatars), by the turn of the twentieth century metropolitan Russians
had re-imagined these alien lands as being, if not as a part of the heardand,
nonetheless as a part of European Russia (p. 173). This transformation was far

from uni-directional or teleological; the goals of the Russian government in

sponsoring expansion and settlement into the steppe were neither consistent
in themselves nor consonant with the intentions of settlers. Even the role of

the steppe in the imagination of the Russian metropole had a diverse if not
chequered history. Such expansion through colonization was hardly unheard
of, especially in other empires bordering large grasslands. For Russians,
however, it became the basis of their own exceptionalism vis-a-vis other
European empires. They preferred to imagine the process as a gentle resettle
ment of Slavic peasants onto the 'empty' steppe. Sunderland argues that
colonization was a much more ambiguous process, and 'a deliberate story of
imperialist expansion' (p. 3), territory conquered and appropriated in action
and imagination from other peoples.
The book's central focus is an analysis of Russian policies and attitudes
to the settlement of the European steppe from the late eighteenth to the
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