On the Rhetoric Manual Hortulus Tullianus

Many philological courses from 17th and 18th-century Ukrainian colleges remain unattributed or insufficiently explored. Sometimes, the content and material features of manuscripts provide data for their attribution. The analysis of the rhetorical manual Hortulus Tullianus, which was considered a 17th-century Kyiv-Mohyla rhetoric course, also gave grounds to attribute the record differently. The choice of topics, characters, and objects for the rhetorical examples indicates that the lectures were indeed written and used in the Ukrainian cultural space. This is evidenced by the detailed consideration of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, the mention of the Dnipro River, attention to the life of St. Mykola Sviatosha, and the presence of images of St. Andrew the Apostle and St. Prince Volodymyr. However, some examples in the text describe the late phase of the Northern War. Combined with the absence of Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s name, this fact suggests that the text was created between 1709 and 1721. The length of the text, the indicated period of the lectures’ beginning (spring), watermarks, and some other data suggest that Hortulus Tullianus is a rhetorical supplement to the poetics course, most likely dating from the mid-1710s and belonging to the heritage of Chernihiv College.The later use of these lectures at the College of Pereiaslav is a separate story. Mykhailo Isaievych’s rhetoric course of the 1740/1741 academic year almost completely reproduced the materials of Hortulus Tullianus. However, in Pereiaslav, these short rhetorical instructions served as a yearlong course. It is possible that the Pereiaslav lecturer supplemented the main presentation with examples of speeches and appendices that were not included in the body of the course and were offered for recording separately. The paper concludes with a detailed table of contents of Hortulus Tullianus.