Ivan Vyshenskyi

Ivan Vyshenskyi (born about 1550, died after 1620) was a Ukrainian Orthodox monk, religious philosopher and important polemicist, born in Sudova Vyshnia. Little is known of his life, though he probably spent part of his youth in Lutsk among scholars of the Ostroh Academy. Between 1576 and 1580 he travelled to Mount Athos in Greece, the centre of Orthodox monastic culture, and stayed there until his death apart from a short visit to Ukraine from 1604 to 1606, when he quarrelled with the Lviv Brotherhood. Opposed to Catholicism and the Union of Brest, he adopted the positions of Byzantine asceticism, condemned the church and society of his time, saw the original Christian brotherhood as the way to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth, and rejected secular education. His sixteen known works combine epistle, dialogue and polemical treatise, were written in Ruthenian, and include a polemical exchange with Piotr Skarga.