Style: Kirill's Traditionalism
Most of Kievan literature is based on the Eastern Christian tradition which came to Rus’ form Byzantium via Slavonic translations originating mainly in Bulgaria. “The homiletic and exegetic genres are among the ‘purest’ versions of the rhetorical tradition inherited from Byzantium, relatively uncontaminated in language and structure,” as Franklin affirms. ). These genres within the tradition of Christian rhetoric became Kievan elite culture, eagerly imitated by Rus’ medieval authors who “played the game according to received rules.”. The Byzantines also valued the stability of form and expression-the impression of timelessness. Consequently, in creating their native tradition, Kievan writers drew on the “tradition one of whose higher aesthetic virtues was traditionalism itself.”. As Franklin sees it, Kirill’s “self-imposed task was to perpetuate a tradition, not to change or modernize it; to become authoritative by following authority rather than by challenging it.”. Kirill’s works are not original in form because they closely follow the Byzantine style. In content it relies heavily on quotes from the Holy Texts. Kirill’s texts are characterized by their extreme citationality. Simon Franklin in his most current English translation of the sermons numbers about 370 biblical quotation and allusions. Further textual sources for almost all of Kirill’s works are also identified. They are works by early Christian and Byzantine churchmen that would have been available to Kirill in Slavonic translations: John Chrysostom, Epiphanius of Salamis, Ephrem of Syrus, Gregory of Nazianzus, Eusebius of Caesarea, and the scholia of Nicetas of Heraclea, Titus of Bostra, Theophylact of Ohrid, and the chronicler George the monk (George Hamartolus). As Ingunn Lunde points out, Kirill’s technique of quotations is based on the convention of the epideictic discourse where the establishment of verbal correspondences and parallels through emphasis and amplification serve to invocation of the authority of the sacred texts. “What is essential is the recognition of certain layer of sacred texts or voice in the orators’ discourse.”. If we accept the conventional attributions of works to Kyrill of Turov, he can be justly named the most prolific extant writer of Kievan Rus’.
Read more about this topic: Cyril Of Turaw