Kirill of Turov: Bishop, Preacher, Hymnographer

The second volume of Slavica Bergensia is devoted to the literary legacy of the twelfth-century Kievan author(ity) known as Kirill, bishop of Turov. It is a daunting fact that we know close to nothing about Kirill’s life and activity. No contemporary historical source mentions his name, and the short Synaxarion Life, written no earlier than the mid-thirteenth century, is largely composed of hagiographical topoi. What we do have, however, is a quite remarkable corpus of texts, which belong to a number of different genres or forms: festal homilies, monastic commentaries, some letters, a cycle of prayers, other hymnographical texts, including several versions of a penitential Prayer Kanon, a Kanon to Ol’ga, and an abecedarian prayer. We do not know whether or not all these texts were written by one and the same author, and if this author is to be identified as “Kirill, bishop of Turov.” If he is, Kirill of Turov must certainly be regarded as a major figure in the history of early East Slav literature and spirituality. Alternatively, the label “Kirill, bishop of Turov” might have been invented at a later point, in order to designate an appropriate authority as the author of a set of texts that were fairly popular and obviously held in high esteem.

1. David Kirk Prestel: Ascent to the Cave: Kirill of Turov and Kievan Monasticism
2. Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath: A Shadow of the Good Spell: On Jews and Anti-Judaism in the World and Work of Kirill of Turov
3. Fedor Dviniatin: Semanticheskie oppozitsii v torzhestvennykh slovakh Kirilla Turovskogo: Bog/chelovek v Slove o rasslablennom
4. Ingunn Lunde: N’’ ne ot svoego serdtsa siia iznoshiu slovesa: Kirill of Turov’s Rhetoric of Biblical Quotation
5. Vladimir Kolesov: Simvol kak semanticheski sistemoobrazuiushchii komponent v tekstakh Kirilla Turovskogo
6. Robert Romanchuk: Efrosin of Kirillov and the Paschal-Pentecost Cycle of Kirill of Turov
7. C.M. MacRobert: In Search of a Canon: The Dissemination in Fourteenth-Century East Slavonic Manuscripts of Prayers and Hymns Attributed to Kirill of Turov
8. Joy Bache: The Perception of Time in Three Sunday Prayers Attributed to Kirill of Turov
9. Ekaterina Rogachevskaia: The Concept of Sin in Kirill of Turov’s Writings
10. Contributors
11. Index

Not available online.