UNION AS A RESULT OF CHURCH CRISIS
At the end of last year, the Institute of Church History of the Lviv Theological Academy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church published the book, Crisis and Reform: The Kyiv Metropolitan See, Constantinople Patriarchate, and Genesis of the Union of Brest written by the academy’s rector, Father Borys Gudziak. In his foreword, the author writes that in the course of research for the book he wanted to understand “what meaning the Union of Brest had for that period in history and environs, what made it possible and why.” He was also interested to note “quite a number of features in common in the life of the church in Ukraine then and now.” The young scholar’s book is, without exaggeration, an outstanding event in Ukrainian scholarly life, an optimistic demonstration that a new generation of Ukrainian historians is taking shape, armed not only with what the author describes as “intellectual interest,” but also extensive scholarly knowledge, objectivity in making inferences, and an enviable ability to “feel at home” in past realities (rather than to adjust them to today’s dimensions and criteria).
Writing a newspaper article on a monograph so interesting and voluminous (over 400 pages), dealing with events dating from the sixteenth century, is far from easy, especially when this book is packed with events, characters, and striking contrasts. On the one hand was the Catholic and Protestant West with its church reforms, book-publishing boom, and revising outmoded norms of life. On the other was the amorphous, unstructured, stagnant Orthodox way of life along with the decline of Greek and Church Slavonic education. The Greek Church was in Ottoman bondage, and the Kyiv Metropolitanate was taking orders form the Polish crown. The author believes that this contrast was one of the factors giving impetus to the Brest Union.
Crisis and Reform is extremely informative: history, statistics, prominent figures, books published at the time, details from everyday life, and different versions: the book is literally overflowing with all this. Well it should, considering that the bibliography comes to over fifty pages, citing works in many languages. The evidence about the period, compiled by the author, is too large for the body of the text, and much had to be relegated to notes that also make irresistible reading. Further on we will touch — alas, fleetingly — on several themes of this new book
Dr. Gudziak starts his Crisis and Reform by presenting historical proof that the idea of a religious union with Rome was nothing new or unexpected in sixteenth-century Rus’. Kyiv metropolitans, faithful as they were to the patriarchs of Constantinople, established contacts with the Western Church. In particular, Kyiv bishops took part in three Western church councils in Lyons (1245), Constance (1418), and Florence (1439). At the latter, Kyiv Metropolitan Isydor signed the Union with Rome, stressing the equality of the Eastern and Western rites. After returning from Italy, he solemnly proclaimed the Union at St. Sophia’s Cathedral in Kyiv (1441), 150 years before the Church Union of Brest. At the time, Kyiv hierarchs held that “there is no difference in Christ between the Greeks and Romans, as they are essentially the same and all baptized in the name of Jesus Christ must live in accordance with their own tradition.”
It so happened that after the fall of the Byzantine Empire (1453) Greek theology and education registered a sharp decline, making no progress at all. A contemporary Greek wrote bitterly at the time, “After losing the empire we lost our learning. Having lived amongst the barbarians so long, we have become barbarians ourselves.” Under the Ottoman Empire there were “neither academies, nor professors, nor books.” The Eastern churches and patriarchates became the playthings of the Muslim regime, losing all their influence and prestige.
The crisis in the Orthodox world coincided with remarkable progress in the Catholic and Protestant churches; Europe had stepped on the road of radical reform, eager to solve problems and meet the demands of the epoch. In contrast, Orthodoxy lacked the impetus and leadership to do anything about rejuvenating the Church. Eloquent evidence is found in publishing. In 350 years, beginning in the fifteenth century, some 5,000 books were printed in Greek. In the German lands, in the sixteenth century alone, the number exceeded 150,000; some 8 million were put out by 500 Venetian printers in fifty years of that same century. Such statistics show beyond doubt the dynamism of intellectual life, literacy, and the overall cultural process in the East and West.
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries made no happy entries in the chronicles of the Kyiv metropolitanate. Father Borys paints a gruesome picture of the crisis gripping the Kyiv metropolitan see, coinciding in time with the Union of Lublin, which began a mass conversion of Lithuanian and Ukrainian aristocrats to Catholicism. In the fifteenth century, none of the Kyiv metropolitans resided in that time-honored venue of Orthodoxy (they all lived in Lithuania). A traveler wrote in 1595, “Cattle, mares, dogs, and pigsties defile what was once Kyiv’s golden-domed St. Sophia Cathedral; rain water penetrating through leaky roof has destroyed much of its richly decorated interior.”
The Ukrainian (Ruthenian) hierarchy was then actually passive; religious posts were venal and even heritable, and widowers conducted church services. Religious culture and training of clergymen were on a downward curve, as was the people’s living standard. “Hunting for church estate, inability to cooperate or take a middle course resulted in a situation where the top Ruthenian clergy thought nothing of inviting Polish and Lithuanian bureaucrats to interfere in the internal affairs of the Church. This has undermined the metropolitan’s and bishops’ prestige.” In the Polish Kingdom, the Eastern Orthodox Church was considered second-rate and ridiculed. “While the artistic and literary attainments of medieval Rus’ could be described as perhaps superior to those in Poland at the time, in fifteenth and sixteenth century Polish literature, theology, and the overall creative process showed versatility and depth in sharp contrast to the ‘quietude’ of the then Ruthenian culture,” writes the author.
Some contemporary thinkers in the West tried to find out why Orthodoxy had fallen into decay. Petro Skarha, for one, a Jesuit from Wilno [current Vilnius] supporting the idea of joining Orthodoxy to the Roman Catholic Church, believed that the development of the literary Ruthenian language was blocked by Church Slavonic. “The Greeks and Ruthenians did themselves a great disfavor by introducing Church Slavonic; no one will ever become a scholar using that language. Even now no one understands it well enough. There has never been a nation, and nor shall there ever be one using it.” In the Latin West (Poland included), reform ideas quickly spread precisely due to literary works being printed in the vernacular, ideas that would change the Old World; ideas that were nonexistent on the broad Ruthenian lingual and cultural plane. The best-learned Orthodox figures, like Prince Kostiantyn of Ostroh, tried to foster the process of Orthodox enlightenment, carrying out reforms in the life of the Church single- handedly. But theirs was a drop in the ocean of illiteracy.
In the late fifteenth century, with both the Kyiv principality and Byzantium stepping down from the historical arena, contacts between the Kyiv see and Constantinople Patriarchate also noticeably weakened, even though they had never been marked by anything particularly active before. The Constantinople Patriarchs had actually no influence on Orthodox Rus’ institutions, church life, or clerical discipline. In fact, all the Kyiv see wanted from Constantinople was formal approval of each newly elected metropolitan. Kyiv-Constantinople ties weakened because neither side saw any need to strengthen them. This estrangement resulted in part of the Eastern Orthodox community, among them Prince Kostiantyn of Ostroh, looking to Roman Catholic Church as a stronger vertical chain of religious command.
In the 1590s, Ruthenian hierarchs began finally to realize that the Kyiv Church was weak theologically, intellectually, culturally, ideologically, and administratively. Church council records of the period show that bishops began to “think of schools, education, hospitals, and other good things.” Problems of church administration, liturgical practices, publishing, and education were discussed. Some even suggested that “since the patriarchs are held captives by the infidels, there is nothing they can do for the Church, much as they might desire,” so it was best to unite with Rome lest they fall prey to further “troubles and schisms.”
Crisis and Reform offers a thorough analysis of Union documents, particularly “33 Articles Relating to Union with the Roman Church,” executed by the hierarchs of the Kyiv see. The author illustrates the dramatic circumstances of forming, signing, and finally adopting the Church Union of Brest. Father Borys writes that, compared to sixteenth century hierarchs who knew no foreign languages, the articles are an outstanding historical document, considering the inflow of materials only recently made public knowledge in conjunction with the Union’s quatercentenary.
Interestingly, not one of many historical documents relating to the preparation and signing of the Union of Brest mentions the Moscow Church. Dr. Gudziak writes that “against the background of political and religious squabbles in the Polish Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita ), Muscovy was the Ruthenian bishops’ least concern.” It was considered neither a threat nor a source of support. Moreover, it was as though for the people of Kyiv at the time Moscow was something akin to terra incognita.
Even more interesting is the fact that, at the time of signing the Union of Brest, neither the Kremlin, nor the Moscow Patriarchate laid any claims to the Kyiv Metropolitanate. Nor did they respond to the signing of the union. It seems to have passed unnoticed. Religious polemics aimed against the union began in Russia after the Time of Troubles, following the Polish Catholic invasion supporting the two False Dmitrys. It was only in 1620 that the Moscow Church Council explicitly condemned the Union of Brest as a Ruthenian-Roman religious alliance (later, the Moscow Patriarchate would amply make up for such tardiness).
This very brief account forms the main scholarly subject matter of the Crisis and Reform, and there are a host of other interesting things in the book, primarily people of that epoch. For example, Prince Kostiantyn of Ostroh, one of the last magnates of the Rzeczpospolita that remained true to their ancestral Orthodox creed. He considered himself a descendant of the Rurik dynasty and his prestige, power, and wealth (he was Poland’s second biggest landowner after the king) allowed him defy the kingdom’s foreign policy course; he would ally with whoever he chose. He was a humanist, enlightener, a man with a keen mind and remarkable tolerance. To whom “both religions, Roman Catholic and his own, were equally good.” Yet his life story is packed with dramatic events. His belonging to the “schismatic” church lessened his political influence, in particular negating any chance of his ascending to the Polish throne. His two sons converted to Catholicism, while both daughters married Protestant magnates. The school and printery he founded never reached the scope and influence he had hoped for. And the union with Rome did not follow the course the prince thought correct. He dreamed of something ecumenical (to use modern parlance). Without doubt, the first complete Slavonic version of The Bible (known as the Ostroh Bible), put out by his print shop (4,000 copies), financed and otherwise supported by him, is the prince’s most significant creative legacy.
As an aside, Father Borys’s book refutes a widespread modern religious- political legend about the Moscow see being unrecognized by the Orthodox community between its foundation in 1448 and the formation of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1589. It was allegedly unrecognized and thus uncanonical. In reality, Muscovy was the only Eastern Orthodox state where Eastern patriarchs regularly sent monks for alms or travel themselves, as in the case of Patriarchs Joachim and Jeremiah shortly before the Church Union of Brest. There were constant relationships between the churches of Constantinople and Moscow. In 1561, Patriarch Josaphat recognized, in return for generous “donations,” the title of tsar that Ivan the Terrible had assigned himself in 1547. After killing his son, the Russian ruler promptly dispatched envoys (laden with gifts, of course) to the Eastern patriarchs, begging them to pray for his soul. All this took place before the formation of the Moscow Patriarchate under Fiodor I [the weak-minded son of Ivan the Terrible] in 1589.
Let me on quite a sad note. Father Borys Gudziak convincingly proves, relying on documents, that one of the reasons for the Brest Union was the decaying religious culture of the Kyiv Metropolitanate and the overall stagnation of Orthodoxy compared to thriving churches in the West after the Reformation. But has the Church Union healed the ills of Ukraine? Has the Ukrainian Uniate Church and its adherents joined the Western Christian community over the past 400 years as an equal partner? Has it made its own significant contribution there? Only to an extent, it seems.
