RELIGIOUS POETRY IN THE POETICS TEACHING MANUAL FONS CASTALIUS [CASTALIAN SOURCE] (1685)

Abstract

The article analyzes nineteen religious verses in Kiev poetics teaching manual Fons Castalius [Castalian source] (1685). It is chronologically the first textbook of poetry, which exactly belongs to the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and whose year of creating is not in doubt. Since the modern scientific description of the Ukrainian poetics teaching manuals not exist, the short description of the manuscript was made in the article. The poetics teaching manual consists of two roughly equal parts. The first one describes the general rhetorical information – on periods, amplification, epistles and chria. The religious poems are in the second part of the manual, that deals with the poetics proper, and illustrate first of all the small poetic forms. The spiritual poems constitute about a fifth part of all poetic examples. From the spiritual poetry, 16 verses are written in Latin and only three in Polish, mostly moral and didactic.
The following thematic groups of religious poems are established: on God, Jesus Christ (5 verses); about the saints incl. the Virgin Mary (6); on the characters of Bible, the sacraments and religious attributes (5); the moral and didactic verses (3). The anonymous author of the Kiev poetics Fons Castalius (1685) has presented to the audience of his lectures the spiritual poetry on a variety of religious topics.
Among the religious poems are works of the well-known poets and anonymous authors, popular works and the texts which are appearing for the first time. We find some of them in the later manuscripts of the Jesuit College in the Western Ukraine and the Kiev-Mohyla Academy.