Description
Book SynopsisA prominent religious figure, Meletij Smotryc´kyj was caught up in the struggle between Orthodox and Uniate beliefs. His polemics served as the cornerstone of the Orthodox response to the Polish-Lithuanian Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The works collected here offer unique insight into the elite of early modern Rus´.
Trade ReviewFrick's translations flow easily and gracefully while preserving Smotrykyi's Baroque complexity and rhetorical verve. -- Andrew Sorokowski * Catholic Historical Review *
Of course, it is a good thing to read sources in the original, but this translation is truly excellent. My spot checks against the originals revealed no gaffes; but that is to be expected from someone like Frick, who has written substantially in the past on Smotryc’kyj’s linguistic practices. Frick has also managed to find what seems to be the perfect twenty-first century idiom into which to render Smotryc’kyj’s seventeenth-century Polish. The style is fresh and economical, not wordy or inflated as in some other translations...Frick’s translation allows the contemporary reader to appreciate Smotryc’kyj’s considerable rhetorical gifts...[Frick] has done a tremendous service to scholarship by making so accessible these classic texts of the ambivalent Christianity in Ukraine and Belarus, on the border of the Catholic and Orthodox worlds. -- Jouhn-Paul Himka * Russian Review *
