Gregory Tsamblak between Byzantium and Eastern Slavs

My paper explores the Byzantine legacy in the medieval Orthodox Slavic written culture and the subsequent appreciation of the original Slavonic works, based on Byzantine examples, by the later Eastern Slavonic bookmen. It focuses on one of the most significant cultural and political figures of the late medieval Orthodox Christian tradition—Gregory Tsamblak, a Kyivan Metropolitan from 1415 to his death in the winter of 1419/20. His writings (numerous liturgical sermons and canons, eulogies, a vita, and a translation narrative) present a thorough and complex use and reuse of the Byzantine hagiographical and hymnographic repertoire. The first part of my paper discusses the ways in which Tsamblak used specific Byzantine texts to produce his works, giving a new meaning to the borrowed excerpts. In this section, I also examine which Byzantine authors Tsamblak favoured and drew upon in shaping his works and explore the reasons behind his choices. In doing so, I hope to contribute to the understanding of the logic behind the reception and dissemination of Byzantine literature among Orthodox Slavs in the early 15th century. The second part of the paper explores how Tsamblak’s own legacy was viewed by later East Slavic bookmen such as Metropolitan Macarius (d.1563), Stefan Javors’skyj (d.1698) and others.