Early Modern Orthodox Brotherhoods in Church Historiography of the Long 19th Century: Confessionalisation, National Identity, and Methodological Change

• In Event: Impacts of Ukrainian Voluntary Brotherhoods of Laymen on the European Book Culture: For the Legacy of Y. D. Isaievych

Abstract

In Eastern Europe, church historiography was established as a separate area of historical knowledge in the early 19th century. Constructing the images of Orthodox brotherhoods was influenced by a combination of factors: introduction into the scientific discourse of new sources, personal theological and socio-political views of the church historians, changes in general cultural and methodological trends (Enlightenment, Romanticism, Positivism, Neo-Kantianism), and processes of nation-building. Studying the history of Orthodox brotherhoods in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth necessitated a revision of the traditional historiographical paradigms by the church historians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Their general historiographical narratives were etatist and bishop-centric. However, when studying the religious situation in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, church historians gradually formed an image of the nation as a subject of church history.

Author

• Pavlo Yeremieiev, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National U (Ukraine)