Kyiv and Moscow Churches: “Together Forever”
BEFORE
The Kyiv clergy made it clear they did not want to join Muscovy even at the Council of Chyhyryn, before Pereyaslav. Their spokesman was Archpriest Fedir Hursky of Cherkasy, a noted theologian and orator. Envoys from three neighboring countries had arrived at Chyhyryn, bringing gifts. The Polish gifts were wrapped in a carpet, the Turkish in fine silk, and those from Moscow in sackcloth. Pointing at them, Father Fedir said, “These gifts signify the future of our people. What they are wrapped in will embrace our people if they succumb to the temptation. The gifts from Moscow are wrapped in sackcloth and so our people will wear sackcloth after joining Muscovy. This omen is more significant and prophetic than all the prophets in the world.”
Why did the Little Ukrainian clergy act against Khmelnytsky’s will? Ivan Ohiyenko wrote, “Our Church at the time was very different from the Moscow Church; we had our own Church traditions, rites, even certain beliefs, like baptism, wedding, funeral, and some holidays. Moscow called heresy everything having the slightest distinction from their religious practices.” The Ukrainian religious hierarchy always looked down on their Moscow counterparts, knowing that they lived in misery, being robbed and otherwise humiliated. The Moscow clergy remained disfranchised, even their bishops and metropolitans had no rights. “Only slaves live in the Moscow Tsardom, even their noblemen are punished by being whipped in public places,” wrote Meletiy Smotrytsky.
SYLVESTER KOSIV
Metropolitan Sylvester Kosiv of Kyiv was among the most active opponents of a political and Church union with Moscow. He was erudite, having studied at the Zamosc Academy, an energetic individual, one of Petro Mohyla’s associates, a resolute and outspoken champion of Western culture, bibliophile, and theologian. He took part in the organization of the Lavra Monastery’s school and was its first principal.
(N.B.: Characteristically, the idea of a school on monastic premises and completely under monastic control was not popular with the Kyiv residents, Cossacks, and the related secular clergy, as they all wanted only “schools funded by the brotherhoods, not by anyone else.” Sylvester Kosiv later recalled that Kyiv burghers and Cossacks even planned to destroy the Lavra school and do away with its teachers and Petro Mohyla, and that it took quite some effort to talk them out of it. Anything like that would be unthinkable in Moscow.)
Together with Petro Mohyla and Isaiah Kozlovsky, Sylvester Kosiv drew up and edited the first Ukrainian Orthodox Catechism; he was also the author of a new version of the Kyiv Pechersk Patrology. There he for the first time commented on the old concept of baptism having been done five times in Rus’, stressing the longevity and continuity of the Rus’ Christian tradition “since apostolic times.”
DISOWNING ALLEGIANCE TO RUSSIA
In 1654, Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Cossack Host swore allegiance to Russian Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich. After the Moscow envoys, led by Boyar Buturlin, left Pereyaslav for Kyiv to swear in the local Cossacks, burghers, and clergy, the Ukrainian hetman sent his General Chancellor Ivan Vyhovsky to Kyiv ahead of the Moscow delegation, knowing that Kyiv Metropolitan Sylvester Kosiv and the clergy wanted no part of the Moscow crown. He was afraid the metropolitan might not even accord the Russian dignitaries the welcome due under protocol, and that he would refuse to swear in the Kyivans. Vyhovsky reached Kyiv ahead of the Moscow cortege and immediately sought an audience with Metropolitan Sylvester Kosiv. Ukrainian writer Ivan Nechui-Levytsky thus describes the meeting between Ivan Vyhovsky and the Metropolitan:
“In response to Vyhovsky’s message, the Metropolitan said, ‘Yes, I heard that the envoys would be in Kyiv this noon. However, neither I, nor the clergy of Ukraine intend to swear allegiance to the tsar. The Hetman should not even bother discussing this. As long as our Church remaing under the Patriarch of Constantinople, we shall uphold our autonomy and our rights. Patriarch Nikon of Moscow will want us to act differently; he is a simple and ill-educated man, he is tough and he wants to have his way. He will break our autonomy and throw our bishops and priests down his basements where he tortures his own clergymen. Tell our esteemed Hetman that he should not even consider our allegiance [to Moscow]... Word has also spread that Moscow Patriarch Nikon wants to baptize all of us in Ukraine anew, because we were baptized by ablution; as if pouring water on one’s head or thrusting the head in water makes any difference. The grace of our Lord is bestowed also by ablution, because it is just a form of the sacrament. Because of this Moscow regards us as though we were not Orthodox. It is bad to deal with ill-educated people.”
As it was, the metropolitan and fathers superior of monasteries led a long procession to meet the Moscow envoy and they all proceeded to St. Sophia’s Cathedral through the Golden Gate. “After conducting a collective prayer, the Metropolitan swore in the Cossacks and citizens, struggling to suppress his grief while the clergy cried openly,” wrote a contemporary chronicler. The metropolitan and the clergy swore no allegiance and Boyar Buturlin and the other envoys did not like it. After the divine service the boyar asked the Metropolitan reproachfully why he was opposed to the joining of Ukraine to Russia and why he sought no blessings from His Majesty the Russian Tsar. Moscow voivodes would complain later that the metropolitan threatened them, saying that what they saw was the beginning of the end, that they would soon see what lay in store for them.
ACTING ON THE SLY
In the spring of that fateful year 1654, a religious delegation headed by Inokenty Hizel visited Moscow, asking the tsar to let the Ukrainian clergy remain under the Patriarch of Constantinople (“as we belong there by the will of the Lord expressed by Saint Andrew, and by the canons of the Holy Fathers”), so that the clergy could retain their status as long as they lived, and that their successors could be freely elected by both clergymen and laymen; so the tsar would not send clergymen from Moscow to take important religious posts in Ukraine; so no Ukrainian clergymen would be forced to move to “Great Russia.” Religious freedom, they argued, was above all other freedoms and rights. The tsar granted their minor requests and left the key ones unanswered.
The resistance of the metropolitan and Kyiv clergy caused Moscow to go about the joining of the Kyiv Diocese to the Moscow Patriarchate very carefully. After all, Little Russia was not a territory conquered in a war (as was White Russia) and the issue was federation. Those in the Kremlin had this in mind, even if for a short while. With time even Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky stopped insisting on joining the Kyiv Diocese to Moscow, for he must have seen his eastern ally’s insincerity (some historians assume). Moscow Patriarch Nikon, however, was determined to get hold of the Kyiv Diocese. In April 1654, he started being addressed as “the Patriarch of all Great and Little Russia.”
Metropolitan Sylvester Kosiv died in 1657 (Bohdan Khmelnytsky would follow him shortly that same year) and Moscow immediately embarked on a number of serious measures to have the Ukrainian clergy, in the words of Voivode Andrei Buturlin, “obedient and under the blessed control of His Holiness Patriarch Nikon of Moscow,” so the “Little Russians” would seek the Patriarch’s permission first and elect their metropolitan afterward. The new Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky, however, insisted that the Kyiv Metropolitan be elected in keeping with the old rules, not as decreed by the tsar. Bishop Dionisy Balaban of Lutsk was elected Metropolitan of Kyiv December 9, 1657, as the hetman’s protege, “without a decree from his Royal Majesty the Tsar and without blessings from His Holiness the Patriarch.”
UKRAINIAN CHURCH: LOSS OF INDEPENDENCE
The Kyiv Diocese remained independent for 32 years after the Council of Pereyaslav. The formal act of joining it to the Moscow Church was the approval of the next Kyiv Metropolitan, Bishop Gideon of Lutsk, Prince of Sviatopolk- Severensky, by the Moscow Patriarch, not by the Patriarch of Constantinople, as had been practiced since the baptism of Rus’. It happened under Hetman Ivan Samoilovych and Russia was ruled by Tsarevna Sofia, sister of the two small tsars Ivan and PСtr. Yakim was the Patriarch of Moscow.
Hetman Samoilovych did his best to have Bishop Gideon elected Metropolitan, while the influential clergy, wishing to keep the Ukrainian Church independent, did not even attend the election ceremony (1685), as everybody knew that the candidate was Moscow-minded. Given the circumstances, the elections had to be postponed under the canon, yet the hetman’s envoys did not allow the postponement. Gideon was elected and he immediately agreed to accept “the archpriest’s staff from none other but the Patriarch of Moscow.” This was a breach of the oath every bishop swore to the Patriarch of Constantinople. As it was, Gideon went to Moscow where he was ceremoniously ordained Metropolitan at the Assumption Cathedral, in the presence of the royal family, where he solemnly pledged to serve the Moscow Patriarch and fater the Holy Synod. Moscow had finally done it.
MOSCOW — CONSTANTINOPLE
Kyiv and Moscow were equally aware that what had happened was a transgression of universally accepted ancient church canons prohibiting any church from ordaining clergymen belonging to a different church (as Moscow had ordained a metropolitan subject to the jurisdiction of Constantinople). Three days after Gideon Chetvertinsky’s investiture, Moscow Patriarch Yakim wrote a message to His Holiness Patriarch Dionisius and sent it with Deacon Mykyta Oleksiyev. He wanted Constantinople to give up the Kyiv Diocese. The Russian envoys were joined by Ivan Lysytsia, Hetman Samoilovych’s man who had been also instructed to ask (!) the Patriarch to let the Kyiv Diocese join the Moscow Patriarchate. Their mission was supported by the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire (he did it in order to maintain peace with Moscow). In the end, the matter was solved by generous gifts sent to the Eastern hierarchs, the ill-famous three caches of sable furs and 400 gold coins. In May 1686, Patriarch Dionisius officially transferred the Kyiv Diocese to the Moscow Patriarchate (shortly afterward an emergency Church Council relieved Dionisius of his post, primarily because he had let Moscow have the Kyiv See; that is why the Ecumenical Patriarchate still refuses to recognize the legality of joining the Ukrainian Church to the Russian Church).
MOVING DOWNHILL STEP BY STEP
For some time after the merger Moscow rulers and patriarchs declared the inviolability of the ancient rights of the Kyiv metropolis — the latter had always been de jure and de facto completely independent (considering the distance to the Patriarch of Constantinople). The Ukrainian Church, however, was gradually becoming dependent on its Moscow counterpart and the latter was making every effort to remove all signs of independence in Little Russia, destroying all distinctions from Moscow rites and procedures.
In the seventeenth century, the Ukrainian Church and the people, despite wars and instability, experienced a spiritual upsurge, as theological schools were being opened everywhere, many burghers were literate, numerous religious books and primers were being printed. Society was engaged in disputes over polemical works addressing topical problems. At times Kyiv’s Orthodox and Uniate bishops could be observed conversing peacefully. In fact, it was then the idea of reconciliating Rome and Constantinople was conceived.
Meanwhile, the Moscow clergy remained ill-educated and markedly intolerant, feeling convinced that everything it did, every rite it practiced was the only right thing to do, and that all the rest was heresy. A great many priests in Moscow could hardly read and write, and the Church was split. Only several decades earlier, the Moscow Church had asked Kyiv to help by sending experienced clerks to make corrections in church books where generations of semiliterate copyists had made a number of bad mistakes, even distorting the original text. At the time, Kyiv had also helped open the first Slavic Greek-Latin school in Moscow. Thus, those trying to prove that the joining of the Ukrainian Church to the Moscow Patriarchate in the seventeenth century was for the former’s good might as well save their breath. In actuality, it was a drama of civilizations for the whole Orthodox people, as it meant receiving a the lower, rather then the upper level of development, losing that impetus which Ukrainian culture had received from the West with its Renaissance, Reformation, Counterreformation, book-publishing, and science.
Shortly after the merger, the canonical equality of the Ukrainian Church was nullified. After the coming to power of Peter I, all important religious posts at the Kyiv See were filled as ordered by the Holy Synod in St. Petersburg (a state body of the Russian Empire which, from 1721 to 1918, would act in lieu of the Moscow Patriarch). The church brotherhoods ceased to exist and the Moscow accent was predominant in the church language; sermons were delivered in Russian; the church calendars now included purely Russian holidays; some ancient liturgical traditions of the Ukrainian Church were changed. Once and for all Orthodox clergymen were forbidden to receive training at Western universities. Instead, things like the length of a priest’s beard acquired considerable importance.
Metropolitan Sylvester Kosiv was known for his independent views and actions. Contrary to Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s will, he refused to swear allegiance to the Moscow tsar. No clergyman would have ever acted like that in Russia, as the Church was constantly under full control of the state, as during the worst Byzantine epochs. History knows only a few examples of a Russian Patriarch acting contrary to the tsar (as in the case of Metropolitan Fillip and Ivan the Terrible).
AFTERWORD
The Ukrainian Orthodox community is now split into several hostile churches; it is divided by the question that had worried the people here 350 years ago: Will there be an independent Church in Ukraine or it will remain part of the Moscow Patriarchate? While Metropolitan Sylvester and his associates tried to preserve the independence of the Church during the times of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, even if being politically dependent, today part of the Ukrainian Orthodox hierarchs hold fast to Moscow even though Ukraine is an independent country. What a strange course Ukrainian history takes now and then!
This feature incorporates passages from works by Joseph Lynch, Ivan Nechui-Levytsky, Ivan Ohiyenko, Volodymyr Solovyov, and Nataliya Yakovenko.
