At the Junction of Religion, Culture and Language: on the Polemic Aspects of Sylvester Kossów’s Paterikon

Abstract

This article analyses the text titled Paterikon or the Lives of the Holy Fathers of the Kiev Caves by Sylvester Kossów. It is a unique monument from the collection of Kiev’s Polish diaspora; a written testimony of the multiculturalism of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and of the multifaceted Polish-Russian relations. The purpose of this outline is: 1) to indicate the generic polemic elements at the level of composition and pragmatics, and 2) to identify the repertoire of language subordinated to them that implement the persuasive objectives of the polemical text. Analyses have shown that the polemical nature of the work can be seen both in the structure, where elements of refutation dominate, and in the particular use of language, primarily associated with probation. In this second area, two global communication strategies were revealed: content authentication (which consists of citing historiographic sources and documents, as well as performing etymologisation procedures), and apotheosis of people and places (implemented by strategies of embedding the message in the past, by reference to genealogy, by the hyperbolisation of saints’ virtues, the sacralisation of monastic reality, etc.). The persuasive language includes, inter alia, syllogisms, argumentum ad verecundiam, argumentum ad baculum, argument from tradition, enumeration, and contrasts. The shape of the text confirms the European community of rhetorical culture and makes Kossów a model representative of humanistic values and of the ways of expressing them.