Ecclesiastical and Cultural Developments

As in the case of politics and socioeconomic development, the focus of ecclesiastical and cultural activity in Ukraine also shifted eastward in the early 17th century. In Galicia and Volhynia, the proximity to Poland, where the Catholic Counter-Reformation reached a high point, exposed the Ukrainian Orthodox centers there to constant and debilitating pressure.

Initially, the ancient Kievan Cave Monastery served as the catalyst for the Orthodox revival in the newly colonized lands. During the 1620s, its archimandrite, Elisei Pletenetsky, a Galician nobleman by background, assembled a group of learned churchmen, mostly Galicians, such as lob Boretsky, Kassian Sakovych, Zakhariah Kopystensky, Pamba Berynda, and Lavrentii Zyzanii. After purchasing a printing press, Pletenetsky launched an ambitious publishing program that, within the span of fifteen years, produced about thirty books, mostly of a religious nature. This output was more than the combined total of all the other printing presses in Ukraine. In 1615, inspired by this example and financed from a bequest from Ielyzaveta Hulevych, a wealthy Orthodox noblewoman, the noblemen, burghers, and clerics of Kiev organized a brotherhood associated with the Bohoiavlensky Church.

A unique feature of this brotherhood was its close links with the Zaporozhians. Apparently, these contacts were first established through the intermediary of Iosyf Kurtsevych, the abbot of the monastery in Terekhtemyriv, the site of the Cossacks’ hospital, arsenal, and treasury. By 1610, these ties had become so strong that the Cossacks publicly announced: “We stand behind Orthodoxy and the clergy that has not betrayed our ancient faith.” Under Sahaidachny’s leadership, the Zaporozhians joined the Kiev brotherhood in 1620 and, more important, provided the support needed to consecrate a new Orthodox hierarchy. The latter event was of the utmost importance. Since the Union of Brest in 1596, at which time most of their bishops had joined the Union, the Orthodox had been leaderless. When Teofan, the patriarch of Jerusalem, ordained several bishops and consecrated lob Boretsky as metropolitan of Kiev, the Orthodox of Ukraine once again had an ecclesiastical leadership. As expected, Catholics and Greek Catholics were infuriated by what they considered to be an illegal act. But, because the Polish government needed Cossack support for the wars, it did not intervene and the legitimacy of the new Orthodox hierarchy was eventually recognized.

The events of 1620 greatly exacerbated the Orthodox/Greek Catholic feud. In addition to differences over dogma and ecclesiastical procedures, the two competitors became embroiled in a bitter conflict over church properties. So violent were the quarrels over who owned the churches, monasteries, and lands attached to them that hundreds of clerics on both sides died in confrontations that often took the form of pitched battles. The most famous of these incidents was the assassination in 1623 of Iosafat Kuntsevych, the Greek Catholic archbishop of Polotsk, by an Orthodox mob that had become enraged by the archbishop’s attempt to confiscate two Orthodox churches. Distressed by the fratricidal struggle, several Orthodox churchmen – most notably the archbishop of Polotsk, Meletii Smotrytsky, and the rector of the Kiev brotherhood school, Kassian Sakovych – attempted to arrange a compromise that would “bring together one Rus’ with the other.” Although several common councils were held in Kiev and Lviv in 1628, these attempts at reconciliation failed.

Frustrated and disillusioned with their recalcitrant Orthodox compatriots, both Smotrytsky and Sakovych eventually went over to the Greek Catholics. Meanwhile, other Orthodox churchmen turned to the tsar of Muscovy for aid. This was not an unprecedented step. Already in the 1570s, the Lviv brotherhood had been in touch with the Orthodox Muscovites, and early in the 17th century numerous Ukrainian Orthodox monks had moved to Muscovy to escape Catholic persecution. In 1625, Metropolitan Boretsky, convinced that the future of the Orthodox under Polish rule was hopeless, petitioned the tsar to accept Ukraine under his overlordship. Moscow, however, was cautious. Fearful of irritating the Poles, it sent funds and words of encouragement to the Ukrainians, but remained noncommittal about standing up for their rights.

So unsettling and destructive was the struggle between the Orthodox and Greek Catholics that finally, in 1632, the Polish government stepped in and imposed a compromise. The Orthodox hierarchy was officially recognized and the disputed properties were divided between the two churches. One of the main architects of this compromise was the newly elected metropolitan of Kiev, Petro Mohyla, often regarded as the leading Orthodox churchman of 17th-century Ukraine. A scion of a leading Moldavian family, Mohyla, like many of his countrymen, received his early education in the Lviv brotherhood school. After completing his university studies in Paris, he returned to Ukraine to pursue an ecclesiastical career. In 1627, at the age of 31, he became the archimandrite of the Kievan Cave Monastery and five years later was appointed metropolitan of Kiev.

Taking advantage of the relative calm that ensued after 1632, Mohyla introduced badly needed reforms in the Orthodox church and its cultural and educational institutions. With the aid of a group of learned theologians and writers, sometimes called the Mohyla Atheneum, he systematized Orthodox dogma and ritual and prepared the first Orthodox catechism for publication.

Ukrainian high culture, that is, the culture of the small, educated elite, continued to be dominated by religious themes. Most books, such as Zakhariah Kopestensky’s Palinodiia or Kyril Stavrovetsky’s “Mirror of Theology,” sought to demonstrate the correctness of Orthodox views and to prove that Orthodoxy represented the one and only way for man to attain salvation. Even the “best-sellers” of the times, which were destined for popular consumption, dealt with such topics as the lives of saints or catalogued miracles that occurred in the Kievan Cave Monastery. For the most part, these works were written in the difficult Church Slavonic that still served as the literary language of Ukraine. However, there were signs that the simpler Ukrainian vernacular was also gaining ground among the literati. Pamba Berynda, for example, spent thirty years compiling his Lexikon, which provided Ukrainian equivalents for Church Slavonic words. Another innovation in Ukrainian literature during this period was the growing popularity of poetry, especially panegyrics.

While religious issues and Western models stimulated the Kievan cultural elite, the culture of the masses continued to reflect the impact of the agricultural life-style and conditions of the frontier. Folk songs, many of ancient origin, expressed the peasants’ concern with nature, their work in the fields and their personal relationships. They praised such simple virtues as hard work and honesty, while deriding immoral or selfish behavior. The epitome of folk creativity during the 16th and 17th centuries was the duma or folk epic. Dumy were recited to the accompaniment of the bandura (a lutelike instrument) by wandering minstrels during market days or religious holidays, in Cossack encampments or village squares. By and large, these lengthy versified tales concentrated on the two major conflicts confronting Ukrainian frontier society: the struggle with the Turks and Tatars and the resistance against the oppression of the szlachta.

Frontiersmen were not uncommon in early modern Eastern Europe. Cossackdom developed along the Don River in Russia as well as along the Dnieper in Ukraine. Roughly analogous social groups evolved in Hungary, Croatia, and other Christian land on the unsettled frontier with the Ottoman Empire. But nowhere did these “peripheral” classes come to play such a central role in their respective societies as did the Cossacks in Ukraine. Of course, one could expect frontiersmen to be all-important in a frontier society like Ukraine. And the Polonization of the Ukrainian elite drew the Ukrainian Cossacks into a role that was fulfilled elsewhere by the nobles.

The growing importance of the Cossacks was accompanied by renewed vigor in Ukrainian religious and cultural life. Once more Kiev became a major center of Orthodoxy. For the city’s religous/cultural elite, much of which was associated with the Mohyla Academy, it was, as Ihor Ševčenko put it, “a time when spirits were uplifted and minds were expanding.” On the one hand, the Orthodox revival helped to stem the tide of Polonization. On the other hand, it infused Ukrainian culture with the Western elements that slowed Russification in a later period. Thus, after coming perilously close to assimilation into the dominant Polish culture and society, in the early modern period Ukrainians produced more of the distinctive features that distinguished them from their neighbors.