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Article

Open Access

Between the Religious Tolerance and Confessional Loyalty: The Orthodox Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from John Herbinius’ Point of View

Author(s)

Nataliia Sinkevych

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DOI:10.17265/2328-2177/2018.05.005

Affiliation(s)

Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

ABSTRACT

John Herbinius (1633-1679) was a well-known Lutheran theologian and writer. Living long time on the territory of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (in contemporary Vilnus), he wrote a description of the Kyiv religious caves, which was published in 1675 in Jena. The purpose of this research is to contribute to the further understanding and interpretation of the church history and inter-confessional relations on the territory on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the middle of the 17th century, and its later influence on historical and cultural development. Herbinius, being deeply connected with the West-European Protestant world, and at the same time, living in multi-cultural and multi-religious Vilnius, tried to maneuver between the religious tolerance and confessional loyalty, the adherence to the ideas of German reformation and a personal friendship with the Orthodox clergy. The methodology of this work includes historical, inter-confessional, heuristic, biographical, reader-orientated, and linguistic approaches, textual, contextual, and comparative analysis. This article has shown that the Protestant author percepted and treated the Orthodox Church in a very positive way: Church customs, canonical law, and discipline, clergy, and even monasticism did not provoke any criticism from his side. However, on the questions of iconolatry and confessional exclusivism of the Orthodox Church Herbinius could not refrain from criticism. They evidently contradicted his views on real Christian piety and religious tolerance.

KEYWORDS

John Herbinius, Kyiv monastery of the caves, the Eastern Orthodox Church, confessional dialogue, religious tolerance

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