Ivan Ohiienko and Fiol Schweipolt: saved from oblivion
This year Ukrainians everywhere are marking two red-letter dates: the 125th birth anniversary and the 35th death anniversary of Ivan Ohiienko (1882-1972), an outstanding scholar, political figure, champion of Ukrainian independence, and founder of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. From 1951 until his death he was Primate (Metropolitan) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada. He also researched the history of Ukraine and its church until his last days.
Academics and Orthodox hierarchs of Ukraine, Poland, Canada, the US, and other countries are now honoring the memory of Ohiienko.
Ivan Ohiienko left a huge scholarly legacy, which has still not been thoroughly studied and published. He spent a considerable part of his life in exile, constantly changing his place of residence and roving throughout the world, carrying with him his invaluable (and always growing) archives. Almost all his works deal with Ukraine and its people, language, and scholarly and literary heritage. His books are noteworthy for their readability (Ohiienko wrote for all Ukrainians, not just scholars) and their in-depth analyses of historical events, personalities, conflicts, causes, and ends.
One of Ohiienko’s main interests was historical sources, which he tried to make accessible to all Ukrainians. He writes, “We have a great quantity of ancient sources on the history of the Ukrainian Church, but most of them have not been published and studied. For instance, the Kyiv Central Archive has more than a million acts, many of which are of a religious nature, but all these acts have not been explored, let alone described.” This is why Ohiienko ascribed the utmost importance to locating and studying sources, such as acts, historical works, old printed books — anything that had the slightest connection to Ukraine was invaluable to the scholar.
Ohiienko’s historical works contain many pages of bibliographic works, including foreign-language sources. Although the language of Ohiienko’s works is simple and easy to understand, every conclusion to a text is based on literally dozens of pieces of evidence that the author had found in the archives the world over. In contrast to many other “patriots,” he was interested in not only ethnic Ukrainians but people of any nationality who one way or another had influenced the development and culture of Ukraine, thus laying the groundwork for our country’s future.
One focus of Ohiienko’s interest was a medieval German printer, who was the first to use the just- invented printing machine for printing in Cyrillic, not Latin. This was Fiol Schweipolt whom Ohiienko described so vividly in the introduction to his book A History of Ukrainian Book Printing.
Fiol Schweipolt, by nationality a German born in the 15th century, spent a considerable part of his life in Poland, particularly Cracow, the capital of the Polish Kingdom at the time. The city was famous for its university. The burgeoning of the arts and sciences contributed to the early emergence of book printing here: as early as 1473-77 there was a print shop in Cracow, which published numerous theological works in Latin.
Schweipolt was a multifaceted and gifted man: he worked as a mining engineer and jeweler, and then took over a print shop. It is this print shop, owned by Fiol, which first published in Cyrillic such Eastern Slavic religious books as Horologion, Octoechos, and the two Triodi.
Ohiienko’s attention was immediately drawn to Fiol, who published those first church books soon after Johannes Gutenberg designed the first printing press. At the time, few countries and ecclesiasts could rejoice at being able to use (or simply understand) such a fantastic novelty as the printing machine. One hundred years later the famous Bible of Ostroh was published in 1580-81. Who contracted Fiol to print these liturgical texts? Some scholars opine that the individuals who commissioned these works had links with the Kyiv Ecclesiastical Province or one of its eparchies. Whatever the case, they were Orthodox people because Fiol’s books were written in Old Church Slavonic, and the prologues even feature the contemporary Ukrainian language. Experts believe that these publications were designed (rather modestly) on the basis of Slavic manuscripts, particularly those used in Sub-Carpathian churches. That Fiol’s books were intended for the Orthodox Church is proved by the presence of the Nicea-Constantinople version of the Symbol of Faith, which is used in Orthodox churches.
Seventy-nine copies of Schweipolt’s publications are stored in the libraries of Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Moscow, Vilnius, Cracow, etc. As part of his research, Ohiienko tracked down almost all every book that mentions the name of Schweipolt and his publications.
Schweipolt hailed from the German province of Franconia (“the Land of the Franks”). He visited Cracow in about 1479 and was soon admitted to the guild of goldsmiths, where he embroidered fabrics with gold and silver threads and adorned them with precious stones. In 1489 King Casimir IV granted the master a privilege for the mine water-pumping machine that he invented, and a little later Fiol became interested in printing. Before getting down to book printing as such, Fiol had to establish a solid logistical basis: purchase a machine, procure paper and dyes, start a type-casting line, and hire masters who could understand religious texts and had a command of several languages as well as the Cyrillic alphabet. Scholars believe that Fiol found them at Cracow University; they could well have been Ukrainians, who were beginning to study in Cracow and other cities. Fiol also acquired a publishing and printing trademark, which has survived to the present.
Fiol printed books for only a brief period of time. In November 1491 he was arrested and his books were banned. Some researchers think that the Slavic books he had published were a pretext for prosecution, while others believe that Fiol was accused of heresy, a widespread phenomenon at the time. But he was acquitted by the court, which ruled that the charges laid against him were false. As a result, the Inquisition pronounced the master a “faithful and devout Catholic.” Interestingly, the Roman Catholic Church in no way protested against the founding of a Slavic print shop and the publication of Slavic texts (the persecution of Orthodoxy would come later).
From then on, Fiol was very cautious and decided to publish Orthodox liturgical books anonymously and circulate them in Muscovy, not in Poland or Lithuania, even though during King Casimir’s rule religious attitudes were quite tolerant because the king relied on both the Catholic and the Orthodox churches; and the state was in no hurry to close the Slavic printing shop.
Fiol Schweipolt died in 1525. After publishing the first Slavic books, he was awarded the honorary title of Book Printer of Cracow. It was Ivan Ohiienko who discovered this name for the Ukrainians of our time.
