Kyiv Archimandrite
ORIGIN
Innocent Gisel was born to a German reformist (Protestant) family in East Prussia. As a young man, he quit the Protestant community, contrary to his father’s desperate protests, and settled in Volyn where he converted to Orthodoxy, then persecuted in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and taught at a local brotherhood school. Before long, he moved to Kyiv and took his vows at the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra Monastery of the Caves, spending what free time he had at Petro Mohyla’s library. Eventually, he entered the Kyiv College and took a full course of training, receiving an education that was encyclopedic at the time (e.g., theology, history, jurisprudence, philosophy, languages, in-depth studies of works and concepts of ancient and medieval Christian, Judaic, and Muslim philosophers).
Gisel ‘s diligence and disposition to scholarly work drew Petro Mohyla’s attention and he paid for trip to and further study in Europe. As was traditional, Gisel attended lectures at several universities in Germany and England.
KYIV COLLEGE
Returning to Kyiv, Gisel was appointed rector of the Kyiv College, with Petro Mohyla’s blessings (1646) and contributed greatly to its progress. The curriculum included Christian sciences, ancient heritage, and certain scholarly attainments of the Renaissance. The College was an educational establishment as well as research center. The teaching staff instructed universally accepted European concepts and worked out problems relating to logic, psychology, etc. Rector Innokenty Gisel always opposed blind worshipping of authorities, he believed that scholarly conclusions had to be made using rational arguments, studying natural phenomena. The college’s teaching staff formed a cultural elite recognized all over the Orthodox world.
Lecturing on philosophy, Gisel expressed his conviction that God is omnipresent, that He has everything to do with every living being, with everything surrounding man, thus being in direct contact with the material world (some regarded this as heresy). He argued that earthly and heavenly matter was homogeneous, although he denied substantial changes in heavens. Gisel regarded movement mostly from the quantitative rather than mechanistic point of view; he understood movement as any kind of transformations in the material world, particularly within society.
Gisel was never an armchair researcher, constantly participating in debates with Catholics, delivering sermons and assisting colleagues with the publication of their works. His was felt keenly for everything happening in Ukraine. After defeating the Poles, Bohdan Khmelnytsky triumphantly entered Kyiv at the head of his troops in 1648. He was met in front of the Golden Gate by residents and clergy led by the new Metropolitan Sylvester Kosov and Kyiv College Rector Innokenty Gisel .
In 1656, Gisel left the College, being ordained Archimandrite of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, a post he would hold until his death 1683. He was also in charge of the monastery’s printing house, but the rich library remained his favorite retreat, and he delighted in adding to the stock.
BOOK PUBLISHING
Book publishing flourished in Ukraine in the late seventeenth century. Contrary to the ravages of war, its thirteen print shops — nine Ukrainian, three Polish, and one Jewish — continued to function. The Ukrainian print shops in Kyiv, Novhorod-Siversky, and Chernihiv were the busiest. Of twenty books put out in Novhorod-Siversky, fifteen were by Ukrainian authors. In 1679 alone, the print shop released over 6,000 copies of various textbooks for primary schools. The books were kept in the tangled baroque style, using “synthetic” Slavonic that had nothing to do with spoken Ukrainian, yet market demand surpassed the print shop capacities — and this was true of religious editions as well as primers.
Innokenty Gisel was one of the most dedicated, energetic, and successful publishers of the period, especially as Archimandrite of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. He published his works (including Synopsis, Kyievo-Pechersky Pateryk...) and those by his contemporaries, among them sermons by Lazar Baranovych, Antony Radzyvilovsky...
CREATIVENESS
Gisel constantly worked in the scholarly domain, writing papers on theology, philosophy, and history. In his theological works, Gisel endeavored to reconcile Orthodoxy with common sense “whereby it is possible to accept something new [in church life], provided it does not contradict Orthodoxy and is also useful.” He urged the reader to heed things new and not to “scorn” that which can be borrowed from foreign (i.e., those adhering to a different faith) or Greek teachers, for truth and common sense could be found there as well (“as gold can also be found in a swamp”). His approach was in glaring contrast with the views of the contemporary clergy, for whom the very notion of new would long remain a generally negative characteristic. In the history of philosophy, Gisel was known as the author of the Opus totius philosophiae, a collection of lectures read at the Kyiv College in 1654-47. It is the only such textbook surviving the ravages of time and it had a noticeable impact on the academic tradition at the turn of the eighteenth century.
In 1669, Gisel published a sizable book titled Myr z Bohom Liudyni [Man’s Peace with God], containing diversified information about contemporary life, history, habits, and traditions (after his death and after the Kyiv Archdiocese had been subordinated to Moscow, Patriarch Joachim condemned the book as malicious and dissenting, detecting in it “foreign” [i.e., Catholic] influence in interpreting certain religious matters; the book was banned).
SYNOPSIS
Gisel’s most distinguished work was The Kyivan Synopsis, or a Brief Account of the Beginnings of the Rus’ People, first published in 1674, followed by 25 editions, the latest in 1861. The author(s) made extensive use of Kyiv chronicles and Western sources, including Polish annals. The book proves to have been considerably influenced by the transition period and the new national mentality stimulating interest in history. The Synopsis is not merely a reflection of ancient chronicles, but, as some historians believe, also a rather tendentious albeit integrated excursus dealing with the past in order to figure out the present.
The Synopsis had a very strong impact on several generations of Ukrainian and Russian scholars, although it was permeated with the Polish-Ukrainian (Polish-Little Russian, as formulated at the time) historiographic tradition. Prior to the appearance in print of Mikhail Lomonosov’s Short Russian Chronicle (1760), it was used by institutions of learning all over Russia as the principle history textbook. Some contemporary Russian historians (e.g., S. I. Malovichko) believe that the Synopsis still influences Russian historiography, as a number of researchers have not discarded all those “mythologems and free-flying fantasies” (says Mr. Malovichko) that were “launched” into Russian historiography by the Synopsis. It began with Lomonosov, who regarded it as an important historical source (rather than just a book on history).
Russian historian Dmitry Ilovaysky (1832-1920) breathed new life in Gisel’s work on history. Relying on the Synopsis, he inhabited the Dnipro with mythical Roksolans (one of the alleged Slavic offshoots). Soviet Academician Rybakov also directed his theory to the old vein. According to Polish-Ukrainian historiography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he “found” Slavic ancestors in the Scythian-Sarmatian world and painted a hypothetical picture of some state formation emerging in Dnipro Ukraine, in the mid-first millennium, something being actively rejected by certain Russian historians, along with Gisel’s theory to the effect that Old Rus’ as a state appeared in Kyiv, not in Novgorod. What the Russian critics of the Synopsis dislike most of all is the chapter titled “About the Sarmatian People and their Vernacular,” reading that the origin of Muscovy is separate from that of Ukraine and White Russia (they condemn this as a “falsified Polish- Little Russian version of old Slavic history”). The book has almost nothing on the history of Moscow and Novgorod Rus’, and mentions it only in conjunction with liberation from the Tartar yoke. Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky also paid attention to Gisel’s book.
CHURCH AFFAIRS
Innokenty Gisel, born with the seventeenth century, witnessed a number of dramatic events at that stormy period. The restoration of Orthodoxy in Ukraine (after the 1596 Union of Brest), Petro Mohyla’s tenure as metropolitan, formation of the Kyiv College, and an outburst of cultural life in society, thriving book-publishing, Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s victories and defeats, the Treaty of Pereyaslav, Andrusiv truce — these far from exhaust the list of developments that decided Ukraine’s destiny. Innokenty Gisel was directly involved in everything concerning or affecting the Orthodox Kyiv Archdiocese.
With the start of the rebellion in 1648, everything seemed to happen in favor of the Archdiocese. Khmelnytsky repeatedly declared that protecting Orthodoxy was one of the objectives of his struggle. He and his associates generously handed land and privileges out to monasteries and clergy. At that time, the church received 17% of all arable soil in Ukraine, with the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra becoming the largest landowner. Not surprisingly, that wealth, learned and experienced clergy, a huge flock of pious believers were a strong attraction to the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian tsar, and both of the latter were very much expansion-minded. Already in 1654, Moscow began to pressure for “uniting” the Ukrainian and the Russian Church, at first going about it cautiously (incidentally, the Moscow See detached itself from the Kyiv Archdiocese in the fifteenth century). The Ukrainian clergy was opposed to this and wanted to preserve its factual independence come what may (under the hetman, the Kyiv metropolitan was practically free to act as he saw fit and the Cossack officer corps did not interfere with church affairs; the clergy and the church-controlled peasants formed an autonomous segment of Ukrainian society; even in relations with the Polish king having a great many Orthodox adherents as his subjects, the Kyiv metropolitan could wage his own policy).
Innokenty Gisel was politically Moscow-minded; he wanted protection against Catholicism. At the same time, he was ardently against the Moscow Patriarchate putting the Kyiv Archdiocese under its jurisdiction. He did his best to prevent it, so the whole [Ukrainian] Orthodox Church, and the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, would remain under the auspices of the Patriarch of Constantinople, as it had been since 988 A.D. His stand was logically valid. To begin with, Constantinople was far from Kyiv and had lost its former prestige after the city had been seized by the Turks in 1453, so the Patriarch held nominal jurisdiction over the Kyiv Archdiocese, meaning that the latter was practically autocephalous. Another tangible argument against unity with Moscow was the condition of the Russian Church: sanguinary rift, rigid subordination to the tsar, and an ill-educated, often illiterate clergy (Gisel’s younger fellow countryman Dmytro Tuptalo visited Moscow and was horrified by the local ignorant shepherds lacking inner piety. He wrote later, “Many of them are Christians only by definition, living like swine”).
Another aspect that left the Kyiv hierarchs deeply concerned was the firm conviction, in Russian religious circles, that Moscow was the Third Rome, the Muscovites, the New Israel, and the Russian tsar the Ruler of Ecumenical Orthodoxy. Suffice it to say that the Muscovites regarded the Kyivans, with their susceptibility to European Renaissance trends, as verging on heresy.
Gisel did what he could to keep the Kyiv Archdiocese independent. In 1654, he visited Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich as a member of the Ukrainian hetman’s delegation. The Russian tsar reaffirmed all the age-old rights vested in the Little Russian monasteries and temples, and issued an edict forbidding the voivode [in Ukraine] to interfere with religious affairs. In fact, the tsar was impressed by the Kyiv Pechersk archimandrite so he urged him to move to Moscow, promising high religious posts. Innokenty Gisel politely declined (it is anyone’s guess what the consequences would have been, had he agreed; he could have suffered the same lot as Mikhail Trivolis Maxim the Greek [lay name: Mikhail Trivolis], who had been invited to Moscow by Prince Vassily Ivanovich and then banished to a monastery in retaliation for “heresy,” where he spent thirty years, until his death).
The Russian tsar’s promises proved short-lived and encroachments on the independence of the Kyiv Archdiocese continued. The situation was worsening, especially owing to Boyar Buturlin’s efforts. In church language, everything came down to which of the patriarchates would provide metropolitans for the archdiocese, Moscow or Constantinople. There were times when Lavra Hegumen Gisel and other clergymen threatened the authorities with locking the doors of their monasteries if Moscow was allowed to place metropolitans in Kyiv (“A metropolitan from Moscow will be here only after they drag us out of the monasteries by neck and feet... we would die rather than allow a Moscow metropolitan here...”).
After the death of Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1658), Russia actually went back on all its promises and demanded that the Kyiv Archdiocese be subordinated to the Moscow Patriarchate. It was in 1686. Two years later, the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra was placed under the direct command of the Patriarch of Moscow, with all its buildings and premises, estates, treasures, and famed typography. This happened after Archimandrite Innokenty Gisel’s passing (1683).
Plutarch wrote about Cicero traveling to Greece, then completely under Roman control, in order to polish his philosophic knowledge and orator’s skill. Once he visited the celebrated Greek orator Apollonius and delivered a speech, hoping the Greek scholar would give him useful recommendations. Cicero finished speaking and Apollonius told him sadly, “You have my praise and admiration, Cicero, and Greece my pity and commiseration, since those arts and that eloquence which are the only glories that remain to her, will now be transferred by you to Rome.”
