Immaculate Conception(s): the Virgin, the Purity of the Political Body and the Building of a Pietas Kiovensis in Early Modern Ukraine

A lecture by Maria Grazia Bartolini, Associate Professor of Medieval Slavic Culture and Linguistics, University of Milan.

Moderated by Michael S. Flier, Oleksandr Potebnja Professor of Ukrainian Philology, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University.

IN-PERSON and ONLINE via Zoom Webinar (live). Registration is required to attend online. 

About the Lecture

The lecture examines how Ukrainian Orthodox intellectuals creatively defined, appropriated, and popularized the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, looking at the different religious, political, and ecclesiastical interests that intersect in their textual and visual representations of the Immaculate Virgin. What can the use of this controversial doctrine tell us about the broader changes in religion and theology that pervaded the territories of the Kyiv Metropolitanate during the second half of the seventeenth century, which historians of other regions have examined from the perspective of “confessionalization”? In tracing the varied contours of the discourse of immaculacy, the author tests the explanatory possibilities of two propositions. First, she argues that the idea of purity encapsulated in the doctrine is to be interpreted in a larger political frame — as a reflection of the Kyiv Metropolitanate and the Hetmanate as political entities deeply entangled in religious, confessional, and political problems. Second, she argues that in the last decades of the seventeenth century, there is a transference of Immaculist iconography and symbols to subjects other than the Virgin Mary. This shift invariably takes place in rhetorical contexts charged with political meanings, bringing together abstract theological propositions, devotional practices, and local and supernational politics. This speaks to the existence of what the author terms a “Pietas Kiovensis” (Kyivan piety), a specific set of beliefs, doctrines, and rituals that was distinctive of Kyivan Orthodoxy, and in which the Immaculate Conception played an important role.

About the Speaker

Dr. Maria Grazia Bartolini is an Associate Professor of Medieval Slavic Culture and Slavic Linguistics at the University of Milan. She received her Ph.D. in Slavic Language and Literatures from the University of Milan in 2010 and Dr. Habil in Slavic studies in 2017. She has a BA degree with honors from Bologna University. Her research focuses on the religious culture of early modern Ukraine, with special attention to the intersection of preaching, memory, and visual arts in seventeenth-century Ukraine, the political and social aspects of homiletic and hagiographical texts, and the reception of Christian Neoplatonism in the East Slavic region. Her articles on memory, meditation, and visual imagery in early modern Ukraine were awarded the Early Slavic Studies Association (ESSA) Best Article Prize in 2017 and 2020 and an Honorable Mention from the American Association for Ukrainian Studies in 2021.

──────────────────

This event is organized by Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) as part of the Seminar in Ukrainian Studies event series.

Persons with disabilities who wish to request accommodations or who have questions about access, please contact Hanna Leliv, HURI Events Logistics Coordinator, at hleliv@fas.harvard.edu at least two weeks in advance of the session.

Watch videos of past HURI events on our YouTube Channel and subscribe to our email list to receive announcements about events and other activities.