Slavic Colloquium: Maria Grazia Bartolini - The Politics and Epistemology of Demonic Apparitions in Early Modern Ukraine (1620–1688)

In an event co-sponsored with Early Modernity Beyond the West, CMEMS and CREEES, Professor Maria Grazia Bartolini will talk to us about The Politics and Epistemology of Demonic Apparitions in Early Modern Ukraine (1620-1688). 

RSVP for the Maria Grazia Bartolini talk

In this lecture, Maria Grazia Bartolini analyzes the phenomenon of demonic apparitions in early modern Ukraine, showing how it intersected with more general intellectual concerns with epistemology, religious difference, and Church authority. Bartolini situates early modern Ukrainian demonological discourse within the framework of the major religious, cultural, and political disruption that affected Ukraine between 1596 and 1686. She argues that the confessional struggles that followed the Union of Brest, the period of civil war known as “The Ruin,” and the eschatological expectations of the year 1666 contributed to a perception of increased diabolic activity but also to the problem of recognizing the possible discrepancies between reality and non-reality. If "Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light"(2 Corinthians 11:14), how could one distinguish true visions from illusory phenomena? Furthermore, if there were more than one Church, how could one distinguish between true and false doctrine? Faced with what Stuart Clark calls the “cognitive chaos” of demonism, Ukrainian Orthodox literati tried to come to terms with a world that had become deeply problematic, one in which competing theological discourses and widespread political conflict brought about unprecedented instability. 

 Dr. Maria Grazia Bartolini is Associate Professor of Medieval Slavic Culture and Slavic Linguistics at the University of Milan. 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 monographs include Piznai samoho sebe (2017), a study on Hryhorii Skovoroda and Christian Neoplatonism, which was awarded the 2019 Ivan Franko International Prize; and The Eye of the Mind: Vision, Memory, and Meditation in Seventeenth-Century Ukrainian Preaching (forthcoming in 2026). 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. 

We look forward to meeting you and to discussing early modernity in Ukraine together!