The life and death of Antony Hrekovych
An artifact, formerly distorted for a certain ideological speculation, can later become an instructive symbol that will help society reawaken. The picture that portrays the killing of priest Antony Hrekovych, painted twenty years ago for the Museum of the History of Kyiv, has assumed today a far greater importance for the Ukrainian spiritual situation than the customers could imagine.
The Kyiv City History Museum was opened in 1982 to honor the hypothetical 1500th anniversary of our capital. To prepare the exposition, the authorities drew experts from all over the Soviet Union, for they attached great importance to museums as an instrument of ideological education of their own citizens and as proof of culture for foreigners. It was decided to entrust painting a series of canvases on Ukrainian medieval history to Leningrad artists. Firstly, this embodied the official poetic image of “the sensation of a reunited family.” Secondly, still in force was the awesome thesis Volodymyr Shcherbytsky had proclaimed a few years before at a Communist Party of Ukraine Central Committee Plenary Meeting, “The state of affairs in ideology has been adversely affected by the unprincipled and reconciliatory attitude of some functionaries to the manifestations of ethnic and communal self-glorification... We must do our utmost to enhance political vigilance and resolutely thwart any attempts to propagate nationalist views...” The organizers carefully selected and sifted the themes that supported the idea of the Ukrainian nation’s eternal desire to “reunite” with Moscow, while Russian artists were a guarantee that the pictures would be free from any secret signs of “ethnic and communal self-glorification.”
However, historical facts always allow more than one interpretation. One of the pictures intended for permanent display portrayed the last minutes before the Kyiv rabble brutally killed Greek Catholic priest Antony Hrekovych. In Soviet times, guides would tell schoolchildren that the Ukrainian populace hated the Uniats who were trying to Catholicize them, that Hrekovych was a rabid representative of them, who oppressed in all possible ways the common people, and that loyalty to Orthodoxy was the expression of fraternal feelings toward Moscow. The wittiest went even further, interpreting the killing of a clergyman as indication of anti-church sentiments and the awakening of class consciousness.
Yet, something in the visual field of the picture put young spectators on their guard. The guide’s glib words contrasted with Boschean rage-contorted faces of the triumphant mob ostensibly seeking justice and giving short shrift to a priest, neither pathetic nor frightened, who says a prayer or reads a sermon to them.
Now that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has been legalized and its head, the Most Reverend Myroslav Ivan Cardinal Liubachivsky, has returned to his fatherland after this country had gained independence, the guides read more balanced texts. Now they also note the positive results Ukraine got from the 1596 Union of Brest: leaving intact the eastern liturgical rite and the Ukrainian language, this promoted education under the conditions of Latinization and Polonization. They also prefer not to stand too long by the canvas depicting the martyrdom of Antony Hrekovych.
The true sense of the already- forgotten Leningrad artist’s picture became apparent on the eve of Pope John Paul II’s visit to Ukraine last year. Despite all kinds of religious and political speculations surrounding the visit, it touched a powerful wave of positive interest in the nation’s spiritual life and traditions. Now the life and death of Antony Hrekovych can serve us not only as an instance of fratricidal conflicts that so often occurred in Ukrainian history but also as a symbol of the multitude of spiritual ways along which our people went in search of the truth and self-identification.
It is not known when Antony Hrekovych, destined to be the first martyr of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, was born. He was an Orthodox monk who accepted the Church Union. The official line that our historical science followed since the times of tsarism associated acceptance of the Union with such things as Polonization of Ukraine and careerist pro-Western priests. But now that historical processes are no longer being vulgarized it is worthwhile to share the opinion of the Ukrainian-origin Polish researcher Tadeusz Zychewicz, “The Union was not from the profit motive. Those social climbers who sought a more exalted position did not convert to Roman Catholicism, for they knew only too well that almost none of the Poles could understand such thing as Ruthenian church Catholicism... The Union was not a forcibly- imposed home-brewed scheme, as some think today. Moreover, it had too many powerful opponents ranging from Ostrozski to the Cossacks, while the Polish governmental and church protection was too feeble. Many Catholics even fought against it. If, contrary to this, the Union lived on and still spread, this means it possessed a vital force of its own, for otherwise no torch could have kindled it.”
In 1609, Ipaty Poty, one of the fathers of the Brest Union which united the Ukrainian church with Rome, still keeping intact the eastern liturgical rites, sent Hrekovych to Kyiv “to supervise proper order in the churches of God.” As head of the Ukrainian church hierarchy, Poty bore the title of Kyiv Metropolitan but still resided in Vilna.
Hrekovych thus became the metropolitan’s official representative in the old capital, where the Union encountered stubborn resistance. Cossack Hetman Tyskynevych immediately informed the Kyiv vice-mayor that, should any Orthodox be oppressed by the metropolitan’s envoy, he and the Cossack troops would offer all kinds of protection to those who will venture to “kill Hrekovych like a dog.” Mykhailo Hrushevsky, a confirmed opponent of the Union, noted that “...Hrekovych did not dare do anything to expand his patron’s sphere of influence.” The representative was so tolerant that he not only sanctioned the visit of Sofia’s Metropolitan Neophyte to Kyiv in 1612 and allowed him to conduct liturgies and ordain priests but also refrained from filing a complaint to the lay authorities about this willful trespass of the “canonical territory.” Yet, intimidation could not force Antony to give up conducting what he considered rightful services. Under his authority, St. Sophia’s Cathedral, Vydubytsky Monastery with Hrekovych himself as its archimandrite, and a number of other temples were placed under jurisdiction of the Greek Catholic church. Nor was the representative loath to bring to justice the Kyiv clergy if they breached canon law.
Archimandrite Antony’s meeting with Saint Iosafat Kuntsevych in 1614 became a turning point in the former’s life. This occurred a year after the death of Ipaty Poty, when his successor, Kyiv Metropolitan Veliamyn Rutsky, accompanied by Kuntsevych, arrived in Kyiv. Although Rutsky was also titular archimandrite of the Pechersk Lavra, he, like Poty before him, did not dare to visit it. The Lavra was an impregnable bulwark of anti-Uniate sentiments. Yet, Iosafat was not afraid to do so, for he believed in Christian unity. Although the monks met him as ruiner of the Orthodox church with alarming bell-ringing, curses and threats, the Lavra’s Orthodox Archimandrite Ezekiel Kurtsevych, a descendant of an old Ukrainian clan and a person of noble disposition, allowed him to conduct a sermon with the use of church books and ordered to welcome him with bread and salt as befits a guest. Failing to turn the monks to his side, Iosafat still managed to quell their hostility to such an extent that a large crowd of them saw him off to Rutsky’s residence. On the same night Hrekovych came to see Kuntsevych. This meeting left an indelible imprint in Antony’s mind. Rutsky justly extolled the preaching genius of Kuntsevych, “No one else could speak to the people the way he could, as if he had been born and chosen by God precisely for this. All would come to him, and nobody would go without consolation. Catholics and the Orthodox, heretics and all the others held him in high esteem for this ember of God.”
Inspired by Kuntsevych’s power of faith and confidence, Antony Hrekovych became bolder and took a more active part in Rutsky-spearheaded Greek Catholic expansion in Kyiv. This process provoked fierce resistance not only because it dealt with the faith and souls of the Kyiv flock, for Greek Catholicism kept intact the Orthodox rite and the traditions of so-called Ruthenian faith. Yet, the activities of Rutsky and Hrekovych inevitably raised the problem of the redistribution of monastery lands and church estates. Thus Hrekovych’s persistence caused the old threat to be carried out. In 1618 the Kyiv rabble supported by the Cossacks broke into the Vydubytsky Monastery and seized Archimandrite Hrekovych. He was dragged to the Dnipro, badly cut up, and thrown into the river. A Kyiv chronicler wrote, “They put him into the ice-cold water precisely in front of the Vydubytsky Monastery.”
The murder of Hrekovych was the first resounding crime that grossly revealed the rabid fanaticism of the sides warring over the Union. Acts of reciprocal intolerance rose ever since, and when the raging mob stabbed and shot down Iosafat Kuntsevych, the Bishop of Polotsk, and then sank his dead body in the Dvina, in 1623 near Vitebsk, it shocked the whole Polish Kingdom. The author of Exorbitancje Ruske wrote, “The king did not believe for a long time this was done by his subjects, he thought this was the work of frontier Muscovites.”
Even then, the best minds of Ukraine’s two warring churches were fed up with hatred and “killings of Ruthenians by Ruthenians:” they wanted to put an end to disunity. The outstanding religious enlighteners Melety Smotrytsky and Petro Mohyla developed a desire to establish a single national Ukrainian church.
Alas, this idea still remains unfulfilled. Since then, Ukraine has seen still more martyrs shed their blood and representatives of all denominations persecuted. “You can reject and repudiate Christ as much as you want, but you cannot reject martyrdom, for it can only be forgotten,” John Ruskin said over a century ago. The picture at the Kyiv City History Museum serves us as a warning against this dangerous forgetfulness. The awareness that those who differ from us can choose sufferings and exploits for their persuasions instills respect for different traditions and cures society of xenophobia, although this was not part of the Soviet ideological concept.
