The Origin of the Legend about “Gus Ionysh” in the 16th Century Manuscript

Abstract.  During the second half of the 16th century, “heretical” movements began to spread within the Kiev metropolis. The new teachings required the creation of special polemical texts, the study of which allows us to see the development of the intellectual life of the Orthodox-Catholic borderland. An anonymous work against the “guses”, preserved in three handwritten codices, became a major polemical text of this time.
This work contains an unusual legend about the heresiarch Gus Ionysh, which distorts the biography of Jan Huss, pointing to his beggarly origin and profession of a goose shepherd. The article provides a textual analysis of the legend of Gus, the purpose of which was to identify possible sources and the need to form of a pejorative legendary narrative around the heresiarch. Using the comparative method, the absence of direct
literary sources of the legend was proved in the presence of folklore motifs in the work. A structural analysis of the text revealed the similarity of the legend of Gus with the “Discourse on the Hussar” from the Verse Prologue: while preserving the composition of the narrative, the plot of the “Discourse” was inverted, which led to the formation of the antipode of the iconographer, who was an iconoclast. When contextualizing this legend, we can find the typical method of forming a legend around the heresiarch, whose purpose was to form a “historical” argument in the polemic against heretics. The introduction of folklore elements into the biographical information about Gus made it possible to create a more pejorative image of the founder of the new doctrine.

Keywords: Orthodox bookishness, Jan Hus, folklore, “heretical” movements, 16th century