Latin religious poetry in Orthodox Kyiv, 1685–1736: mediating Europeanness at the Mohyla Academy

The article examines 287 religious poems and fragments found in five Kyiv-Mohyla poetics manuals published between 1685 and 1736. These texts reveal how the Academy adapted Latin, Jesuit, humanist, medieval, Polish, and Church Slavonic traditions to shape Orthodox literary and intellectual life. Used to teach genres, metre, rhetorical skill, translation, and imitation, the poems were more than classroom exercises: they helped Kyiv engage with European literary culture while maintaining and redefining its Orthodox identity. Their study shows how Mohylian writers creatively mediated between confessional priorities and European forms.