Zyzanii, Lavrentii

Zyzanii, Lavrentii [Zyzanij, Lavrentij] (Tustanovsky), b 1550s or 1560s in Tustan, near Halych, or Potylych, near Zhovkva, Galicia, d after 1634 possibly in Korets, Volhynia. Orthodox priest, teacher, writer, translator, and grammarian; brother of Stepan Zyzanii. He taught in Orthodox brotherhood schools in Lviv (to 1592) (see Lviv Dormition Brotherhood School), Brest (from 1592), and Vilnius (from 1595). In 1596 he published in Vilnius a Slavonic grammar, compiled on the basis of Adelphotes (1591), and a Slavonic primer. The primer included a lexicon of 1,061 Church Slavonic words explained in the Ukrainian vernacular; in effect, it was the first printed Church Slavonic–Ukrainian dictionary. Zyzanii's translation from Greek of Andrew of Caesarea's commentary on the Book of Revelation was published in Kyiv in 1625. In 1620 Zyzanii completed an Orthodox catechism in Ukrainian; it was printed in an altered Church Slavonic translation in Moscow in 1627, and was soon ordered burned by the Muscovite patriarch Filaret as heretical, but it was retained by the Old Believers, who reprinted it in Hrodna in 1783, 1787, and 1788 and in Moscow in 1874. Zyzanii's lexicon was reprinted by Mykhailo Vozniak in Zapysky Naukovoho tovarystva im. Shevchenka (vol 102 [1911]) and in separate facsimile editions edited by Vasyl Nimchuk (Kyiv 1964) and Jaroslav Rudnyckyj (Ottawa 1986). A facsimile edition of his grammar was edited by Nimchuk and published in Kyiv in 1980. M. Botvinnik's monograph about Zyzanii was published in Minsk in 1973.