THE FUTURE OF CHURCH IS IN THE HANDS OF ITS HIERARCHY

The present crisis in Ukrainian Orthodoxy is connected with the activity of this churchman by a long chain of causes and results. There is no point in seeking the reasons for the crisis only in modern life: they are concealed in the shadows of history, created by generations of Ukrainian Orthodox church figures. Mainly because of their policy, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church not only lost its importance, but also become dependent on Moscow. The first step in this direction was made by Metropolitan Peter.

The future Orthodox primate was born in Volyn and took monastic vows at a very early age. In time he grounded a new monastery upon the Rat River and became known for his righteousness. Prince Yuri, grandson of Danylo of Halych, wanted him to be the Metropolitan of Halych. However, Patriarch Aphanasius of Constantinople appointed him to Kyiv. The first thing the newly appointed Metropolitan did was to visit the Golden Horde, because back then any Constantinople appointment had to be approved by the Tatar khan. Peter was approved, and this rather interesting historical document has survived to our day. It shows how much the Horde was interested in support from the Church in the territories it had occupied. It read: "Let no one in the land of Rus' insult the Church, Metropolitan Peter, and his people. Their towns, monasteries, oblasts, villages, land are free from all taxes and fees, because these people support our warriors by prayer... Whoever does not submit will die."

Peter came to Kyiv shortly after Tatar invasion, when the whole country was in smoldering ruins. By the time he came, Kyiv had not managed to recover after the assault by Khan Baty which princes and much of the population had fled from it. In 1300 after one Tatar raid, Peter's predecessor, Metropolitan Maksym the Greek moved to Vladimir-on-the Kliasma, where he soon died. The desolation of the Kyiv land influenced Peter very badly — he moved North, to the city of Vladimir and then to Moscow, where Ivan Kalita was in power. According to nineteenth-century historian Mykhail Karamzin, "the Metropolitans left Kyiv so as not to be witnesses to and the victims of the unbearable Tatar tyranny." Moscow met Peter with hospitality: Kalita understood perfectly the prestige his obscure city could gain as residence of the Kyiv Metropolitan. Moscow respected Peter very much; the founding and construction of Uspensky Cathedral in the Kremlin is connected with him. After his death, Peter was canonized and included in the list of most respected Rus' Orthodox churchmen.

As we see, with Saint Peter Kyiv finally lost its political and church importance. Was the decision to move to Moscow fatal and unavoidable under conditions of that time? How can we, people of the twentieth century reproach people of past times according to modern criteria? No precise answer can be given to these questions, but history makes it possible to compare similar situations and individuals.

The situation in Kyiv in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries reminds me of Rome in late antiquity when the center of the empire shifted from Rome to Constantinople, making the Eternal City a suburb. Like Kyiv, Rome was abandoned to her fate and the tender mercies of the advancing barbarians. However, the Roman Popes did not leave the city for the new capital, but led the efforts to protect the city and Church from the invaders. In 452, when Rome was surrounded by the horde of Attila the Hun, Pope Leo I went out to see him. With gifts and eloquence he managed to prevent the city's being sacked. Of course not all Popes were that fearless, but Rome remained their residence and the center of Western Christendom, what would grow into Roman Catholicism, even in the hardest times.

Our own history also has had its heroes. Kyiv Metropolitan Makary 500 years ago left safe Lithuania for Kyiv and was murdered by a steppe tribe. Petro Mohyla also chaired the church in difficult times when the Orthodox were divided by the Union of Berest, and there was a chance the Ukrainian Orthodox Church could disappear. The major part of the Ukrainian gentry converted to the Greek Catholic Church (retaining the Orthodox rite but turning away from Constantinople to Rome). Petro Mohyla of Moldovan princely origin had a clear path to success and happiness in the Polish court. However, he chose a different road and moved to Kyiv, dedicating his life to reviving Ukrainian culture and its Orthodox Church.

But let us return to the fourteenth century primates. Volyn-born Peter launched establishing Moscow as a Russian Orthodox center of the whole of Rus'. The next metropolitan after Peter, Pheognost did not even visit Kyiv — from Constantinople he went to the Tatar khan for approval and then on to Moscow. The princes of the Church seem to have lost all concern for the old capital and its culture, seeking only personal safety and Northern protection. In this way they started a chain reaction, which lead in the seventeenth century to the total submission of the Kyiv Metropolis to its offspring, the Muscovite Church. Until that time Kyiv had been ecclesiastically subordinated directly to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and was autocephalous. The major part of Ukrainian bishops were against unifying with Moscow, but Metropolitan Gideon Chetvertynsky, elected by a church council of 1685, in fear of repression and against tradition agreed to accept investiture from the Moscow Patriarch, although Kyiv metropolitans had accepted it from the Ecumenical Patriarch since the conversion of Rus in 988. The independence of the Kyiv Church disappeared for a long time.

Today, once again the future of Ukrainian Orthodox Church is in the hands of its hierarchs. What shall they choose? Will again seek the Khan's approval and special status in his state? Or will it become the guardian angel of society and face our own Attila now with sword in hand at our gate?