The Orthodox Revival

Despite its weaknesses, Orthodoxy was able to mount a response to the Polish Catholic challenge. Fighting fire with fire, the few Ukrainian magnates who remained committed to their traditional faith established Orthodox schools and printing presses on their estates.

Sparing no cost, in 1578 Ostrozky established a printing press, run by the peripatetic Ivan Fedorov, on his estate at Ostrih in Volhynia. Its most famous publication, the scrupulously edited Ostrih Bible, appeared in 1581. It was the first printed Bible to appear in a Slavic language. Ostrozky also founded schools in Turiv and Volodymyr, and, in 1580, he opened the so-called Ostrih Academy. Initially, it was staffed by learned Greeks whom the prince had invited. Later, their most talented Ukrainian pupils, such as Meletii Smotrytsky, also joined the faculty. The curriculum matched that of the best Jesuit schools. It consisted of Greek, Latin, and Church Slavonic and the seven “liberal arts,” which were divided into the trivium consisting of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics and the quadrivium composed of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.

Soon the Ostrih center of learning attracted such intellectuals as the nobleman Herasym Smotrytsky (who served as its rector), the priest Damian Nalyvaiko, the monk Vasyl Surazsky (who was a graduate of Italian universities), and the anonymous Ostrih Cleric. Among the foreigners who were associated with the academy were the noted author Krzysztof Bronski, the professor of astronomy from Cracow Jan Latos, and the learned Kyril Lukaris, who later became the patriarch of Constantinople. Inspired by the impact of this cultural center, an Orthodox contemporary wrote: “Our Orthodox faith has begun to shine like the sun again; learned men have returned to God’s church and printed books have multiplied.” Yet, despite the fact that the Ostrih Academy demonstrated that Ukrainians were capable of impressive intellectual endeavors, its base of support was weak. All depended on Prince Konstantyn Ostrozky. And when he died in 1608, his fanatically Catholic granddaughter, Anna, wasted no time in turning the academy over to the Jesuits. The brotherhoods (bratstva)

Luckily for the Orthodox, individual magnates of the old school were not the only patrons of Orthodox high culture. Even without its elite, Ukrainian society was too large and too deeply imbued with tradition not to generate other defenders of its religiocultural identity. It was in the towns where Ukrainians were frequently a hard-pressed but tightly knit minority that the new champions of Orthodoxy appeared. In contrast to the lone, aristocratic Ostrozky, they were groups of townsmen who banded together in organizations called brotherhoods (bratstva).

Historians speculate that these brotherhoods originated in medieval times for the purpose of maintaining churches, supplying them with candles, icons, and books. Probably influenced by guilds, they adopted an organizational pattern that included annual elections of officers, mandatory monthly meetings, payment of dues, and communal courts. They gained popularity and respect by engaging in such activities as caring for the widows and orphans of deceased members, supporting hospitals, and providing members with interest-free loans.

In terms of social composition, the brotherhoods generally consisted of common merchants and craftsmen. As their influence grew, rich merchants – in Lviv they usually made their fortune in the cattle trade – also enrolled. However, in some brotherhoods other social groups predominated. For example, in Lutsk the nobles seemed to be in the majority, while in Kiev it was the clergy. In a highly stratified society such as that of the Commonwealth, it is noteworthy that the brotherhoods accepted Orthodox members from all social strata. But their membership was never large. In Lviv there were no more than thirty members because that was the number of Ukrainian-owned houses that were allowed in the city. Meanwhile, in Lutsk the membership of the brotherhood was probably no more than fifteen. Nonetheless, these small, cohesive organizations proved to be remarkably effective in their endeavors.

One of their major concerns was education. In the late 16th century, the Lviv brotherhood founded its own school and, except for the learned Greek Arsenii, all of the teachers who taught there – and these included Zyzanii Tus-tanovsky, Kyrylo Stavrohretsky, and the future metropolitan, Ivan Boretsky – were locally recruited. The exacting, if somewhat unrealistic, standards that these idealistic youths – members of the older generation did not participate in this work – applied to their efforts is evident from the text of the school regulation (shkilnyi poriadok): a teacher was to be “pious, wise, modest, mild and not a drunkard, reveler, bribe-taker, and money-lover. Nor should he be easily angered, jealous, a clown, a gossip, a magician, a story-teller, or an adherent of heresies.”⁴ Emphasizing the great responsibilities that teachers bore, the regulations admonished them “to teach well and to punish the disobedient not tyrannically but so as to teach them a lesson.” So successful was the school in Lviv that other brotherhoods approached it with requests for advice and teachers; by the early 17th century, numerous brotherhood schools existed throughout Ukraine.

Another important aspect of the Lviv brotherhood’s activity, initiated even before the expansion of its school, was printing. When Ivan Fedorov arrived in Lviv, the brotherhood helped him establish a printing press. In 1574, his first book, “The Apostol,” appeared. It was a momentous occasion for it marked the beginning of printing in Ukraine. Fedorov returned to Lviv again in 1582, where he died the following year in great poverty. When foreign creditors threatened to take possession of his press, the Lviv brotherhood bought it and used it to make their city a center of Orthodox book publishing.

The proliferating schools and publications roused the previously passive and conservative Ukrainians. As hundreds of graduates, steeped in native traditions and also acquainted with Western learning, moved into towns and villages in search of a living as itinerant teachers, they carried with them, in addition to the modern knowledge, a new sense of self-confidence and militancy. Rather than succumb to the attractions of Polish Catholicism, Ukrainians became increasingly willing to defend the religious traditions that set them apart from the Poles. An example of these new attitudes was the strong and successful resistance that the Orthodox, led by the Lviv brotherhood, mounted in the late 1580s against Polish Catholic attempts to impose the Gregorian calendar upon them.

Clearly much of the credit for these changes belonged to the brotherhoods. Yet they also had their defects. Lack of funds was always a problem. Despite their proliferation, the brotherhoods never formed an umbrella organization and their links with each other were sporadic. Their levels of activity were erratic because even the work of the leading Lviv brotherhood depended on a few committed individuals. When the latter grew disillusioned, tired, or (as in the case of teachers) moved away to a materially more secure and rewarding position, the activity of the brotherhood often ceased for extended periods of time. Even more serious were the problems arising over the question of the brotherhoods’ right to interfere in church affairs. As might be expected, constant conflicts raged between them and the bishops over such issues as control over the resources of a rich monastery (an example was a fierce, protracted struggle between Bishop Balaban of Lviv and the local brotherhood) or a disagreement between the bishop and the townsmen over the interpretation of the Bible. The upshot of the matter was that the brotherhoods, instead of helping to rehabilitate the Orthodox church, often added to the anarchy within it.