In October, Orthodox churches honor the memory of the righteous Dmytro, Metropolitan of Rostov, whose uncorrupted remains were found in the fall of 1752. Metropolitan Dmytro was an outstanding figure of the Orthodox Church, a theologian, writer, and enlightener, who followed the line of the educated clergy initiated by Petro Mohyla. His life and quests occurred in the time when Moscow had trampled not only on the sprouts of Ukrainian statehood but also on the independence of Ukrainian church.
The future metropolitan was born in 1651 in the hamlet of Makarov into the family of a Cossack sotnyk (captain) on whose donations St. Cyril’s Monastery headed by Hryhory Tuptalo was built in Kyiv. The newborn was christened Danylo. His godmother according to some accounts was Moldavian Princess Maria Radziwillowa, Tymosh Khmelnytsky’s sister-in-law.
From his early childhood, Danylo was distinguished by his intellect, inquisitiveness, and inclination to read books, which was in those times almost inseparably linked with the church. Hence Danylo took his monastic vows in St. Cyril’s Monastery and became Monk Dmytro. There is the description of a beautiful picture that hung in the cell of the later Metropolitan Dmytro, depicting a young Dmytro asking his father and mother to bless his monastic choice. Interestingly, his parents are portrayed wearing those times’ Cossack clothes.
While still a young monk, Dmytro was distinguished for his unusual eloquence, which enchanted his listeners. After being initiated as a hieromonk at the age of 25, Dmytro traveled from one monastery to another, delivering his own sermons in churches, and soon he won fame as a preacher. The golden tongued Dmytro was in high esteem with Kyiv Metropolitan Lazar Baranovych, also a distinguished author. As the Russian church historian, Archpriest Smirnov, writes, “Lithuania and Little Russia quarreled over him, inviting him to come and preach.” Finally, Hetman Samoilovych persuaded Hieromonk Dmytro to settle in Baturyn, where he was elevated to hegumen (Father Superior). Metropolitan Lazar then joked prophetically, “Your name is Dmytro, so I also wish you a (bishop’s) miter. Let D-miter get a miter.”
Hegumen Dmytro opened a new page in his life when he moved to the Kyiv Pecherska Lavra Monastery of the Caves. It is here that he began to edit and prepare for publication the important ecclesiastical hagiography, Chetyi-Minei, a lives of the saint to be read in church and at home daily. Petro Mohyla had planned to do this, but he failed to find enough time for this. Editing his lives of the saints, Dmytro used various sources, such as old Kyiv publications, monastic manuscripts from Mount Athos, and various Western collections. “What is especially important,” wrote nineteenth century historian Mykola Kostomarov, “is that Dmytro took a truly critical attitude to the materials he used.”
By that time, the Hetman’s throne had been assumed by Ivan Mazepa, who also liked the talented, educated, and highly industrious hegumen. The Pecherska Lavra print shop began to print Minei in installments. In this connection, Moscow Patriarch Joachim expressed great displeasure: he wanted Moscow to have the honor of publishing the Minei. Hetman Mazepa managed, however, to smooth things over. Moreover, he brought Hegumen Dmytro with him to Moscow.
As the eighteenth century began Peter I’s reforms gained momentum. The Tsar wanted to surround himself with talented and educated people in all offices. Western Little Russia (Ukraine) was at that time the inexhaustible supplier of brains for the empire. For example, Kyiv-Mohyla alumni Stefan Yavorsky and Feofan Prokopovych were among the most active participants in the Tsar’s “restructuring” of the church. Hetman Mazepa, a high protector of Archimandrite Dmytro, was also in great esteem at the Moscow court, owing not least to his broad European education.
Little wonder, then, that in 1701 Dmytro was transferred to Moscow by the Tsar’s ukase, where he was elevated to bishop, then archbishop, and made Metropolitan of Siberia. Dmytro was then 50 years old, which was in those times considered an old age; he often felt poorly and fell ill in the Moscow climate which he though very severe. And then by the grace of the Tsar he confronted Siberia. Meanwhile, all his plans or, to be more exact, all his life pivoted around the completion of Minei, which absolutely necessitated his wide collection of books. It was out of the question to take it on to Siberia. Thus Archbishop Dmytro offered passive resistance to the Tsar’s will: he decided not to go to his new place of appointment and feigned serious illness. Tsar Peter himself went to visit the new archbishop, was courteous, and allowed him to stay behind in Moscow.
This was the end of the 50 year- old Dmytro’s Little Russian part of his life. He continued his work in Moscow, where Metropolitan Stefan Yavorsky, custodian of the Patriarch’s throne at the time, had created all the necessary conditions. And in 1702, again by the Tsar’s order, Dmytro was granted a diocese and became Metropolitan of Rostov. (It was typical in those times for the Tsar to appoint bishops in the Moscow church.) Coming to Rostov (now in Yaroslavl oblast), Metropolitan Dmytro immediately showed the place of his eternal rest in the local cathedral: he was sure he would never go elsewhere and die there: “This is my rest. I will stay here for centuries to come.”
A significant event in the Metropolitan’s life happened in Rostov: he finished his long work on the monumental hagiography he had begun over twenty years earlier in Ukraine. The Minei was published completely in 1705 at the Kyiv Pecherska Lavra, in Dmytro’s lifetime. Over the next centuries, this book was reprinted many times and was much in demand. In 1905 the Russian adaptation of Chetyi-Minei was published by the Moscow Synod, and in September 1999 the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate held a presentation of a reprint of the twelve volume edition originally produced at the Kyiv Pecherska Lavra.
In the Rostov diocese, Metropolitan Dmytro faced special challenges and difficulties. Having acquainted with the ecclesiastical leadership of the diocese, he was shocked and even frightened by their ignorance and complete absence of the inner sense of honor. Something had to be done to improve the situation, and Metropolitan Dmytro took to ecclesiastical enlightenment activities. In particular, he regularly wrote so- called ostorohy (instructions) for priests, in which he laid down standards of behavior for, as we would say today, a clergyman in the church and in everyday life.
Soon the new Metropolitan founded, at his own expenses, the Rostov Seminary, whose three classes embraced up to 200 pupils. The Metropolitan took constant and active part in the teaching process: he taught, supervised, and was always present at examinations. In the summer, he maintained the seminarians in his village: he read them the Holy Scriptures and Church Fathers, explaining and commenting on the texts. He was as kind-hearted a teacher as he was a person; the students in fact adored him.
The seminary Metropolitan Dmytro founded in Rostov was the first seminary in the Tsardom of Muscovy.
All his life to his last days, Metropolitan Dmytro continued to write and preach sermons. The latter gained wide currency in the late eighteen century both in Ukraine and Muscovy, becoming a favorite book of several generations of our ancestors then known as Little Russians. A great crowd always came to listen to the Metropolitan. The sermons that have reached us are written in the Old Church Slavonic language with a pronounced Ukrainian accent and are marked by their vivid images and depth of feeling. Mykola Kostomarov thought, “Dmytro’s sermons stand far above those of his predecessors and contemporaries, for they were the fruits of true inspiration, rather than scholastic exercises, they reflect the author’s gifted and kind self... His texts abound in many historical and pseudo-historical stories and anecdotes, they were always interesting to listeners, clear, and easy to read.”
Some of the sermons are still relevant, as, for example, consider this: “People have come to church as if to pray, but meanwhile they chat about their purchases, war, journeys, banquets, and money; they condemn others, ridicule their neighbors, and revile their good name. There is no God here. Arise and leave!.. For many of you are Christians in name only, while you live like cattle and swine!
“Perhaps we can see Christ in our in monasteries? But everything has been spoiled there also. Or can we see Christ among the common people? But where are there more villains than among the common folk? They have forgotten God in their everyday business and concerns and given up prayer. Or shall we see Christ among the highly placed, our boyars and judges? But you cannot even approach them. There is neither truth nor mercy in our cruel time, so there is no Christ among us!”
Metropolitan Dmytro devoted a considerable part of his sermons to what he always regarded as a sore point: the clergy’s own ignorance and lack of spirituality, and he scourged them for this with all the might of his eloquence. Consider these excerpts from Dmytro’s sermons on this subject.
“Let us look,” Metropolitan Dmytro said, “at a clergyman and ask him: with what intent and desire did you achieve your status? For the honor and glory of God or for your own honor and glory? And we will find more than one person who, instead of praying for people, have taken up their calling only to profit themselves. They came here not to serve the salvation of human souls but to make their subordinates serve them. Many serve Jesus not for the sake of Jesus but for the sake of a piece of bread.”
“Careless priests are too lazy to visit the poor sick to hear their confessions and anoint them, they only go to visit the rich, while the poor die without the sacraments... I dropped by a village near Rostov and ask the priest where he kept the life-inspiring Christian sacraments. It turned out the priest kept the holy sacraments not in the church altar but at his home among fleas, cockroaches, and crickets with whom he himself and his household lived in peace.”
“Our church has come down from the schism so much that it is hard to find a true son of the church: in almost every town they invent a new, separate faith.”
In addition to sermons, Dmytro wrote many other books, such as A Brief Catechism, The Cell Chronicles, A Chronicle of Tsars and Patriarchs, Catalogue of Rus Metropolitans, and others. The Metropolitan also wrote dramas on subjects of religious history. Ascribed to him, among other works, is The Drama and Comedy of the Nativity, once very popular.
The life of the Rostov Metropolitan Dmytro was full of worries about his flock, as well as of work on books, seminary teaching, and charitable work. He practiced personal austerity. In particular, Dmytro is said to have been an ardent devotee of fasting, eating only once a week during Lent. Contemporaries unanimously noted his kindness, ingenuity and simple manners. Two years before his death, the Metropolitan made a bequest, where he wrote, among other things, “I have been collecting nothing but books since I was eighteen until now that I near the hour of my death; I have had neither gold, nor silver, nor extra clothes. Let nobody take pains after my death to search for any secret treasures.”
Metropolitan Dmytro died in 1709, seven years after moving to Rostov. The end of his life was sad: he had been ill for a long time, almost blind, and could not read, which he regarded as a tragedy. On November 27 the Metropolitan was found dead in his monastery cell in a kneeling, praying, pose. His friend Stefan Yavorsky came to Rostov for the funeral. Leaving for Moscow, he took the late prelate’s many books, which he then gave to the Holy Synod’s book archives. And 43 years after Metropolitan Dmytro’s death, his uncorrupted remains were found, and he was canonized as a saint of the Moscow Church.
Epilog. The epoch in which Metropolitan Dmytro lived and worked witnessed the events which determined the destiny of both the Ukrainian and Russian churches for centuries to come. And we see from his example a strange phenomenon special to many outstanding representatives of our people: Dmytro did not seem to notice those events. At least he left no commentaries or notes. Here are two examples.
In the late 1680s, Kyiv Metropolitan Hedeon, Prince Chetvertynsky, was ordained by Moscow Patriarch Joachim, rather than the Patriarch of Constantinople, as was the common practice since the times of Rus’s conversion in the tenth century. This means that in 1686 the Kyiv Metropolitan See was in fact withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople and came under the Moscow Patriarchate. Only after 1917 did the Ukrainian church begin its initial attempts to escape Moscow’s tutelage. Dmytro Tuptalo does not mention the events of 1686, although he was certain to have known about them by virtue of his position.
The other significant change relates to the life of the Muscovite church with which Dmytro had already been closely associated by then. The question is Tsar Peter’s abolition of the post of Patriarch of Moscow, in essence, the abolition of the Patriarchate as a form of church governance. After Patriarch Adrian died in 1700, there was no election of a new patriarch, for the Tsar did not want it. The church was ruled for twenty years by the so-called custodian of the throne, a post held by Stefan Yavorsky, Metropolitan of Riazan. In 1721, “Russian bishops thought it advisable,” wrote historian Petro Smirnov, “to replace, in accordance with the Emperor’s will, the patriarch’s one-man rule by the collective rule of a Holy Governing Synod.” Under the statute, Synod sessions were always attended by the Emperor’s representative, the Ober-Procurator, referred to as the sovereign’s eyes. The Stefan Yavorsky became the first president of the Synod. The Synod’s theological regulations were drawn up by Feofan Prokopovych, also a familiar face from Kyiv. As is known, the next patriarch after Adrian was elected only in 1918. Oddly enough, this was also missed by the prolific Metropitan- cum-litterateur-cum-publicist.
Looking closely at our history, one can easily find many extremely important historic events, which our people and their spiritual pastors failed to notice, as, for example, the gradual abolition of all Pereyaslav Accords or prerogatives of the Ukrainian SSR.







