Wilno was a city of many cultures. The centers of religious culture – Ruthenian (Orthodox and Uniate) monasteries, churches and fraternities – became the basis for the Ruthenian book publishing. The hubs of religious culture in "Civitas Ruthenica" were 15 parishes and temples, among which in the 16th century the cathedral church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as well as the church, monastery and brotherhood of the Holy Trinity stood out. It was around the Holy Trinity Orthodox complex that the center of the Ruthenian religious revival was formed. In the 17th century there were two such hubs: the Uniate one of the Holy Trinity and the Orthodox one of the Holy Spirit.
As a result, 128 monuments of Russian religious culture were published in Wilno during the 16th to the first third of the 17th century. The vast majority of them are editions printed in Cyrillic, the rest are 27 Polish-language books, one Latin-language book and one Greek-language book. Ten books have not survived. Most of the books were published in the well-known Mamonych printing house, as well as in the publishing houses of the Holy Trinity and the Holy Spirit Orthodox Brotherhoods.
Almost all genres of the Cyrillic religious book are presented in the Wilno book publishing of the period under consideration. In terms of volume, the Wilno book publishing significantly exceeds the combined quantitative indicators of publications in other centers of the Ruthenian religious revival of the time (Zabludiv, Lviv, Ostroh, Kyiv, Kutein, Mohyliv). Given the range of other Ruthenian centers, where many religious books were also published, it is correct to conclude that the needs of the Kyiv Orthodox Metropolis were fully met by almost all categories of religious literature.
Emphasis should also be placed on the use of the vernacular in the Wilno publications, in addition to Church Slavonic. The functioning of the two languages in the Orthodox area was a striking linguistic feature. Given the widespread demand for "the vernacular" in religious literature, it brought religious texts much closer to the general public and, therefore, could be a factor in the process of confessionalization.
Wilno polemical works of both camps are classics of the Ruthenian literature of this genre. Wilno was unequivocally the Russian center of interfaith controversy.
The declared high level of development of the Ruthenian religious culture in the period under consideration is based primarily on the study of Wilno texts. Focusing and comprehensive analysis of the little-known work of Hypatius Pociej on the Brest Convocation (1597) (the original text of the monument is given in the appendix), as well as the funeral panegyric of Leon Krevza on the funeral of Josaphat Kuntsevich (1625) allowed to justify the conclusion that the Ruthenian authors created a masterpiece in format and content. In general, all Ruthenian polemical literature of the Brest cycle, as well as funeral preaching, are examples of high literature in theology.
The formulated paradigm of codification of the religious culture of Kyivan Ruthenian Christianity is quite correct and relevant in relation to the colossal layer of monuments of religious culture, published and distributed in the Kyiv metropolis. We are talking about the publication of most categories of Ruthenian Cyrillic books, which had different functionality, generally meeting the needs of parishes in the conduct of religious worship.
In the outlined mainstream, the study generally confirms the historiographic view of the heterogeneity of the culture of the Polish-Lithuanian state, in which the Benedictine Europe and the Cyrillic Europe were in a constant contact. Thus, the concept of a cultural polymorphism in Eastern Europe acquires a fully expressive outline.
The paradigm of relations between the main religious cultures of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth identified in the study as "conflict or understanding" can be resolved in terms closer to the concept of "competition", which is a most characteristic marker of the era of tolerance.
