The Conflict Between the Secular and the Religious Clergy in Eighteenth-Century Western Ukraine Author(S): JOHN-PAUL HIMKA Source: Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The President and Fellows of Harvard College The Conflict between the Secular and the Religious Clergy in Eighteenth-Century Western Ukraine Author(s): JOHN-PAUL HIMKA Source: Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1/2 (June 1991), pp. 35-47 Published by: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41036408 . Accessed: 07/10/2014 12:21 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and The President and Fellows of Harvard College are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Harvard Ukrainian Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 72.181.144.214 on Tue, 7 Oct 2014 12:21:41 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Conflictbetween the Secular and theReligious Clergy in Eighteenth-CenturyWestern Ukraine JOHN-PAULHIMKA In thelate eighteenthcentury a conflictbetween the secular clergy, backed by theepiscopate, and theBasilian religious order was one of thedominant featuresof ecclesiasticallife in WesternUkraine.1 The conflictgenerated a dauntingbody of documentationas themonks and bishopstook their cases to Rome, Warsaw, and Vienna and as the authoritiesto whom they appealed triedto sort out the meritsof the respectivearguments. The conflictconcerned property rights, with the Basilian order and the episcopateat odds overcathedrals, estates, and even marketplaces.It con- cernedepiscopal jurisdiction, with the bishops workingto reasserttheir authorityover the order.It concernedthe selectionof bishops,with the Basilians arguingthat only theycould providecandidates for episcopal office.And it concernedthe administrationof eparchies,as the Basilians opposed the establishmentfrom the secularclergy of cathedralchapters. These issueswere all logicallyconnected, as thepresent article will demon- strate.The conflictbroke out in the 1740s and was essentiallyresolved, in thesecular clergy's favor, in the1780s. The firsthistorical account of the dissensionwas providedby Mykhail Harasevychwho was notprimarily a historianbut a consistorialofficial in theearly nineteenth century. He was stillclose enoughto theconflict for his AnnalesEcclesiae Ruthenaeto be permeatedby a partisananti-Basilian spirit.The Annaleseven contain a specialsection entitled "Damna s. unioni a PP. Basilianisillata. Angustiaecleri saecularis,"2but passages directed 1 An earlierversion of thispaper was presentedat the conference"From Kievan Rus' to ModernUkraine: A Millenniumof Growth"sponsored by theUkrainian Research Program at theUniversity of Illinois,June 1988. 1 wouldlike to thankthe Social Sciencesand Humanities ResearchCouncil of Canada fora grantto studythe GreekCatholic Church, 1772-1918, a researchproject from which information in thisarticle was drawn.I have profitedfrom the adviceof Sr. SophiaSenyk and IaroslavIsaievych. 2 MykhailHarasevych (Michael Harasiewicz), Annales Ecclesiae Ruthenae(Lviv, 1862),pp. 520-39. It is interesting,however, that in 1801, as a memberof a crownlandcommission, Harasevychsupported the Basilians against a groupof Polishnobles who tried to removethem fromthe Przemysl (Peremyshl') gymnasium, which had been entrustedto theircare. Mykhail Malynovs'kyi(Michael Ritter von Malinowski),Die Kirchen-und Staats-Satzungen bezüglich des griechisch-katholischenRitus derRuthenen in Galizien(Lviv, 1861),pp. 416- 17. This content downloaded from 72.181.144.214 on Tue, 7 Oct 2014 12:21:41 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 36 JOHN-PAULHIMKA against the Basilian ordercan be foundin many places in the work. Harasevych'spartisan effort had a majorinfluence on subsequenthistoriog- raphy.Mykhail Malynovs'kyi, who editedand publishedthe Annales and who was also a consistorialofficial (but of a later generationthan Harasevych),wrote his own historicalstudy of the UkrainianChurch in which the Basilians were treatedin exactly the same spiritas in the Annales.3The foremosthistorian of the UkrainianUniate Church, Iuliian Pelesh,was awarethat Harasevych's work was marredby partisanshipand bigotry4with regard to theBasilians, but he foundit impossibleto liberate himselffrom Harasevych's viewpoint. Except fortwo sentencespraising theBasilians for educational work, Pelesh's accountof the Basilians is at leastas damningas Harasevych'sand is presentedin languageno morere- strained.The major nineteenth-centuryPolish historianof the Uniate Church,Edmund Likowski, also acceptedHarasevych's negative view of theBasilians. In fact,it playedan importantrole in his explanationof why the UniateChurch was in such a debilitatedstate when Poland was parti- tionedat the end of the eighteenthcentury. He arguedthat the Basilians weremore responsible for the decay of theUniate Church than was thePol- ishgovernment.5 Wladyslaw Chotkowski, who wrote before the First World War,had a negativeappraisal of theGreek Catholic Church as a wholeand includedthe Basilians in his condemnation.6 The conflictbetween the secular and the religiousclergy in Western Ukrainehas notbeen the subject of specializedstudy by laterscholars,7 and 3 Malynovs'kyi,Die Kirchen-und Staats-Satzungen,e.g., p. 226. Althoughthe titlepage bearsthe date 1861,the book was actuallypublished late in 1863 or in 1864. 4 His phrasewas: "eine zu ungeschminkteParteilichkeit und Unbilligkeit."Iulian Pelesh (JulianPelesz), Geschichteder Unionder ruthenischenKirche mitRom von den aeltesten Zeitenbis aufdie Gegenwart,2 vols. (Würzburgand Vienna,1881), 2: 480. 5 EdwardLikowski, Dzieje Koiciota Unickiegona Litwiei Rusi w XVIII i XIX wiekuuwa- zane giównie ze wzgledu na przyczynyjego upadku,2 vols., 2nd ed., BibliotekaDziel Chrzescijañskich(Warsaw and Cracow,1906), 1: 258-67. 6 WladyslawChotkowski, Historya polityczna koéciota w Galicyiza rzqdówMaryi Teresy, 2 vols. (Cracow,1909), see esp. vol. 2, pp. 432-33, 470. Chotkowski'swork had a pronounced anti-Ukrainiantone. See Ivan Krevets'kyi,"Halychyna v druhiipolovyni XVIII st. Ohliad novykhvydan'," Zapysky Naukovoho tovarystva imeny Shevchenka (hereafter Zapysky NTSh)> 91 (1909): 43. 7 See Mykhailo Vavryk, "Bibliohrafichnyiohliad istorii Vasyliians'kohoChyna za 1935-1950 rr.,"Zapysky ChSWI AnalectaOSBMy ser. 2 (Rome), sec. 2, vol. 3(9), no. 1/2 (1958): 237-76; and idem, "Bibliohrafichnyiohliad istorii Vasyliians'kohoChyna za 1950-1970rr.," Zapysky ChSWI AnalectaOSBM, ser. 2, sec. 2, vol. 7(13) (1971): 334-424. The conflictbetween the Basiliansand the secularclergy is not treatedin a Polish scholar's recentbook on the order:Maria Pidlypczak-Majerowicz,Bazylianie w Koroniei na Litwie. Szkoiyi ksiazkiw dziaialnoécizakonu (Acta UniversitatisWratislaviensis, 779) (Warsawand Wroclaw,1986). This content downloaded from 72.181.144.214 on Tue, 7 Oct 2014 12:21:41 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS CLERGY 37 theanti-Basilian views of the nineteenth-and earlytwentieth-century his- toriansstill prevailby default.The presentarticle is not an attemptto reversethe prevalentview and take up the cause of thosewho lost their struggleat the end of the eighteenthcentury - the documentaryevidence does notallow this- butan attemptto rewritethe history in a syntheticand less tendentiousmanner and withmore attention to the innerconnections amongthe various aspects of thedispute. It also makesuse of publishedand unpublishedsources from the Vaticanarchives that were unknownto the earlierhistorians; these sources, however, do not alterthe general outline of the picturepainted by Harasevychand his successors.The article proceedsin chronologicalfashion, beginning with the backgroundto the disputethat broke out in the 1740s; continuingwith the efforts of Bishop Leo Sheptyts'kyito curbthe Basilians,first under Polish rule until1772, thenunder Austrian rule; and endingwith the defeat of theBasilians in the era ofJosephinism. Shortlyafter the majorityof the Ukrainianand Belorussianhierarchs acceptedunion with Rome (1596), effortswere made to reformand revive monasticlife. MetropolitanIosyf Veliamyn Ruts'kyi was the outstanding figurein thisrevival; the culmination of his effortswas theconsolidation of thedisparate monastic communities into the Basilian order, organized partly along the lines of Westernreligious orders (1617).8 The orderdeveloped slowly in the tumultuousseventeenth century but grew rapidlyin the eighteenth(there were only 160-180 Basiliansin the1670s but about 1,150 in the 1740s).9Basilians appeared in WesternUkraine only at the turnof theeighteenth century, when the eparchies of Peremyshl'(Przemysl), Lviv, and Luts'kfinally accepted the union with Rome (in 1692, 1700,and 1702, respectively).The West UkrainianBasilians developedquickly, however, and in 1739 formedtheir own "Ruthenian"congregation in Lviv (more properlycalled theCongregation of theProtection of theMother of God). When in 1743 the Rutheniancongregation formally joined with the "Lithuanian"(Holy Trinity)congregation, it was nearlydouble the size of 8 Thereis an excellentaccount of Ruts'kyi's motivesand intentionsin foundingthe Basilian order:Sophia Senyk,"Rutskyj's Reform and OrthodoxMonasticism: A Comparison;Eastern