School Poetry Devoted to Ioasaf Krokovs´kyi

The article illustrates and analyzes several poems dedicated to Ioasaf Krokovs´kyi (Krokovs’kyj), a key figure for the Mohylanian Academy and Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which only in the last years has become the object of scholarly attention. The poems are contained in three manuals of poetics taught at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, Idea artis poeticae (1707–1708) by Lavrentii Horka, Lyra Heliconis (1709), and Libri tres de arte poetica (1714). These and other poetics manuals manuals are a useful source not only for the reconstruction of the literary theory expounded in them, but also for the history of the Mohyla Academy and Ukraine in general. The analyzed poems allow us to understand how panegyric poetry was made to serve the main aim assigned to poetry in the Mohylanian circle, that is the education of pious men and loyal subjects. As it is easily comprehensible, the didactic function of praise was all the more effective when the praised individuals were well known to students, which favored identification with them. In this sense Ioasaf Krokovs´kyi, for his many actions in support of the Mohyla Academy and of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was certainly an eminent model worthy of emulation, as the analyzed poems make clear.