Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 67(3-4), 243-270. doi: 10.2143/JECS.67.3.3149534 © 2015 by Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. All rights reserved.

MUKACˇEVO, OF THE RUSYN PEOPLE

Constantin Simon

The city of Mukačevo (Rusyn: Mukačevo, Hungarian: Munkács, Ukrainian: Mukačeve or Mukačiv), from which the draws its own name, is now a small town on the Latorica (Hungarian: Latorca) river, located in the Transcarpathian of today’s . Separated from the rest of the Ukrainian republic by the Carpathian mountains, it faces , to which it belonged for most of its long history. Today, Mukačevo is overshadowed in importance by the younger city of Užhorod,1 the regional capital just on the Slovak border, and also the residence of the Greek .

A Visit to Mukacˇevo

About fifteen years ago, when I last visited the cathedral of the Holy Cross in Užhorod, it had been newly appropriated by the Greek Catholics from the Orthodox who had held it during the Soviet period. Much had not changed, except the antimension (corporal) on the main , since both confessions were employing similar rites. But I did notice some subtle alter- ations. Once again, the side were in full use, a rarity today in western churches. The mass or liturgy which had just been cele- brated on one of them resembled nothing I had previously seen in the Byzantine world and followed a latinized form of service long since disa- vowed by the Uniats themselves. All, including the proskomedia (Byzantine

1 The name Užhorod is a modern invention of the nineteenth century and popularized during the time the region was part of Czechoslovakia during the last century. The ­Hungarian form Ungvár is actually the older name of the city, previously used by the Slavs themselves and derived from the name of the river Ung or Ug which flows through it. The name of the town adds the river name Ung to the Hungarian word for fortress (vár), therefore the fortress or castle on the Ung. See A. Petrov, Karpatorusskija meževyja ­nazvanija (Carpatho-Russian Boundary Toponyms) (Praha, 1929). On the history of Užhorod or Ungvár, see the introduction to Antal Hodinka, Adalékok az ungvári vár és tartománya, és Ungvár város történetéhez (Contributions to the History of the Castle of Ungvár, its Territory, and the Town of Ungvár) (Ungvár, 1917).

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offertory), took place on one altar and all followed the directions given in a huge missal secure in its stand. Finally I looked up to the picture over the altar and saw a familiar representation of the Sacred Heart. But then I noticed. The heart itself had been erased by the Orthodox and the mark- ings of the defacement were still plainly apparent. But it had been newly painted over the erasure by the cathedral’s present Greek Catholic masters who apparently encourage such pious activities among their faithful. While personally I have nothing against Sacred Heart devotions and find them rather comforting when confronted with the aberrations of Latin rite mod- ernism which have taken hold over many of the churches of the Latin West, they are not appropriate in the Byzantine East. But their presence indicated the rather murky ecclesial identity of the Greek Catholic Rusyns of the diocese of Mukačevo,2 who have for centuries straddled the abyss dividing East and West.

Rusyns or Ruthenians

From its beginnings, the diocese of Mukačevo has been associated with the Rusyns or Ruthenians, an eastern Slavic people who formed the majority of its faithful. Although the word Ruthenian originally was used by western writers to identify all Eastern Slavs, including the Russians, it was later applied especially by the Vatican to those Eastern Slavs, who were once subjects of the kings of Poland and Hungary and later of the emperor-kings of Austria-Hungary. During the Soviet period, all Eastern Slav inhabitants of the Transcarpathian region of the Soviet Ukrainian Republic were offi- cially classed as Ukrainians. Other historical circumstances led portions of the faithful of the diocese to identify with the Slovaks, Hungarians or Roma- nians. But the majority continues to identify itself today as Rusyn, the Slavic

2 The classic study of the diocese of Mukačevo is that undertaken by Antal Hodinka, A Munkácsi görög-katholikus püspökség története (The History of the Greek Catholic ­Bishopric of Munkács) (Budapest, 1909), as well as his collection of documents published as A munkácsi görög-szertatársu püspökség okmánytára (A Collection of Documents Pertain- ing to the Catholic Greek Rite Bishopric of Munkács) (Ungvár, 1911). Unfortunately, to my knowledge they have never been translated into English and the original Hungarian makes for limited readership. An extremely ukrainophile presentation is offered in the three volumes work by Stepan Pap, Istorija Zakarpattja (A History of Transcarpathia) (Ivano-Frankivs’k, 2001) but many of this author’s conclusions are questionable.

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equivalent of Ruthenian, although other variants of the same name are also sometimes used (Rusyn, Carpatho-Rusyn, Carpatho-Russian, Carpatho- Ukrainian), each with its own ethnic shading. The Carpathian basin is home to a variety of ethnicities and historically includes Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, Croatians, Serbs, , and Roma, in addition to the Rusyns, and some other lesser minorities. Each has its own version of the history of the region. In addition, Rusyns have traditionally espoused one of several (autoch- thonic Rusyn, Russian, Ukrainian, or Hungarian) ethnic identities each of which seeks to interpret history in its own fashion and often imposes that often conflicting version on all others. Close neighbours are often not very good neighbours and this hold nowhere as true as in eastern Europe. Here, history is painted in black and white rather than in shades of grey.

Origins: Genesis of a People

The ancestors of the Rusyns3 can be traced to Slavic peoples who began to appear in the valleys of the Carpathians in small numbers during the fifth and sixth centuries. Their presence is related to the question of the original homeland of the Slavs and the incursion into eastern and central Europe of nomadic peoples from Central Asia. Most scholars agree that the centre of the original homeland for all Slavic peoples was the region just north of the Carpathians in what are today eastern Poland, south-western Belarus, and north-western Ukraine. In the 440s, the crossed through the Slavic

3 On the Rusyns themselves, see Antal Hodinka, A kárpátalji rutének: lakóhelye, gaz- daságuk és multjuk (The Carpatho-Ruthenians: Their Home Territory, Economy and Past) (Budapest, 1923); Irinej Kondratovič, Istorija podkarpatskoe Rusi (A History of Sub­ carpathian Rus’) (Užgorod, 1930); Vasil’ Pačovskij, Istorija podkarpatskoe Rusi (A History of Subcarpathian Rus’) (Užgorod, 1920); Vera Fedeleš, Učebnik istorii podkarpatskoj Rusi (A Textbook of the History of Subcarpathian Rus’) (Mukačevo, 1922); Grigorij Kupčanko, Ugorska Rus’ i ei russkie žiteli (Hungarian Rus’ and its Russian Inhabitants) (Veden’, 1897); Ioann Duliškovič, Istoričeskija čerty ugro-russkich (Historical Outlines of the ­Hungarian Russians) (Ungvar, 1875; Alexander Bonkáló, The Rusyns (New York, 1990), and the articles in the voluminous Karpatorusskij sbornik (A Carpatho-Russian Anthology) (Užgorod, 1930). On their folk-culture and mythology see the fascinating study compiled in the 1920s by the noted Russian ethnographer Pierre Bogatyrev, Actes magiques, rites et croyances en Russie subcarpathique (Paris, 1929).

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homeland and burst into central Europe, bringing with them Slavic peoples, some of which settled in areas of what later became known as Carpathian Rus’. A century later, the Avars crossed into the Danubian Basin, where they created a khanate and subjected to their rule, among others, the Slavs of the Carpathians. Among the tribes living in the original Slavic homeland were the White Croats, who began to settle the valleys of the Carpathian slopes. Between 896 and 898, the Magyars or ancient Hungarians crossed the ­Carpathians settling in Pannonia. From their new home, they eventually built the state called Hungary. According to traditional historiography, when the Magyars first crossed the Carpathians, they seizedthe White Croat fortress of Hungvar (Ungvár and today Užhorod) and defeated the semi-legendary Prince , who was subsequently transformed by patriotic writers into one of the first heroes of Rusyn history. The fortress of Mukačevo is the first citadel to be mentioned by an anonymous court chronicler of Hungarian King Béla IV, in his description of the route taken by the Magyar tribes across the in the Carpathians, to eventually occupy fertile Pannonia:

‘Et cum illuc pervenissent, locum, quem primo occupaverunt, Muncas nominaverunt eo, quod cum maximo labore ad terram, quam sibi adoptabant, pervenerant.’ (And when they came to that place, the first of which they occupied, they called it Muncas, since they had come to that land, which they took for themselves, only after much struggle.)4

The ancient Magyars called the fortress Muncas or Munkács, after their word munka meaning work, a word which itself ultimately derives from the Slavonic muka, and which in those languages is associated with heavy toil or torture. Anonymous however referred to the eventual building of a fortress and not to the diocese, the origins of which are much less clear. Despite their military victory, the Magyars were initially unable to take complete control of today’s Carpathian Rus’, which during the tenth and for most of the eleventh century remained a sparsely settled borderland (Latin:

4 P. Magistri, qui Anonymus dicitur, Gesta Hungarorum in Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum tempore ducum regumque stirpis arpadianae gestarum (The Acts of the Hungarians in Authors Writing About Hungarian Matters at the Times of the Princes and Kings of the House of Árpád) (Budapest, 1937), p. 51.

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terra indagines; Hungarian: gyepü) between the kingdom of Hungary to the south and the kingdom of Poland and the Kievan Rus’ principality of to the north. The question of whether the Slavs had settled the region en masse before the arrival of the Magyars has its defenders and detrac- tors but has less meaning today than in the past.5 In the absence of any outside political control, Slavs from the North (Galicia) and East (Podolia) continued to settle in small numbers in parts of the Carpathian borderland. These new settlers, like the Slavs already living in Carpathian Rus’, were by the eleventh century known as the people of Rus’, or Rusyns. The term Rusyn also meant someone who was an Eastern Orthodox Christian of the as opposed to a Roman Catholic of Latin rite. When speaking of this period, medieval writers referred to a Marchia Ruthenorum, or Rus’ March, which later Rusyn historians considered the first Rus’ state in the Carpathians. It is most likely, however, that this Marchia Ruthenorum was not located in Carpathian Rus’, but somewhat farther south. Similarly, Imre (Emerich), the son of King Saint Stephen, Hungary’s first Chris- tian King, appears in German chronicles as a Ruizorum (prince of the Russians or Rusyns). But experts disagree whether this would refer to the Rusyns of today, or to the Viking Rus’ as they were known in the medieval West, or even to the Croatian relatives of Imre’s consort.6 Rusyn migration from the north and east, in particular from Galicia, continued until the sixteenth century and even later. The sixteenth century witnessed another emigration into Carpathian Rus’, from Vlach shepherds in the south. Although of Romanian origin, they were quickly assimilated by the Rusyns. Their name came to denote a profession (shepherd) and legal status (-free person) rather than a nationality (Romanian). The early origins of the Carpatho-Rusyns are complex and are not, as often asserted, exclusively associated with Kievan Rus’, from which it is said

5 The Slovak author Joseph Škultéty, Sketches from Slovak History (Middletown, 1930), p. 63, held that the Carpathian areas had been already settled by Slovaks and that the Rusyns were relative newcomers basing this on toponymic evidence. But here national prejudice is not to be excluded. 6 See Aleksei L. Petrov, Medieval Carpathian Rus’. The Oldest Documentation About the Carpatho-Rusyn Church and Eparchy (New York, 1998), pp. 49-50. This is a translation of the original work in Russian Drevnejšija gramoty po istorii karpatorusskoj cerkvi i ierarchii, 1391-1498 g. and published at Prague in 1930.

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their name Rusyn derives. On the other hand, because their Eastern Chris- tian derived from Orthodox Byzantium, Carpatho-Rusyns main- tained cultural and religious ties with the Kievan Rus’ principality of Gali- cia to the North, Moldavia/Transylvania to the South, and with other Orthodox lands in today’s central Ukraine and Russia. farther East. Car- pathian Rus’ was not, however, under the political hegemony of Kievan Rus’ or of any other East Slavic political entity during the Middle Ages or at any time until the second half of the twentieth century. Instead, Car- pathian Rus’ has historically been within political and cultural spheres that are firmly part of central Europe. The Carpathian region became an integral part of the Kingdom of Hungary during the Middle Ages and was never accorded any special territorial or federative status. After the Ottoman inva- sions and the fall of Hungary, most of the area was absorbed by the Habs- burg Empire. After the introduction of Dualism, the area became once more a part of the Kingdom of Hungary. Relations between Magyars and Rusyns were positive (the Greek Catholic especially was favourable to Hun- gary) until the last decades of the nineteenth century, when deliberate efforts were made by the government to magyarise the local Slavic population. But even then the majority of Rusyn clerics quite willingly cooperated with their Magyar masters rather than opposed them. After the First World War, the region fell to the new state of Czechoslovakia, which incorporated it as a semi-autonomous (Podkarpatská Rus’). During the Second World War, the area briefly returned to Hungary, but later was incorpo- rated by the victorious Soviet Union into the Soviet Ukraine, as the Tran- scarpathian Region, its most westerly area. After the fall of the Soviet Union, it remained a part of independent Ukraine.

Greek Catholic Eparchy of Mukacˇevo: Beginnings

The Greek Catholic Eparchy of Mukačevo is the oldest eparchy among Byzantine-rite Christians originating from the old Kingdom of Hungary and the mother-diocese of those which derived from it, either through division – Prešov (Eperjes) in , and Hajdúdorog in Hungary, or emigration – the Greek Catholic diocese of Križevci (Körös) in Croatia, and the Greek (Byzantine-Ruthenian) Catholic Metropolia in the United States. Until the early nineteenth century, it included over 800 in Abov (Abaúj),

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Bereg, Boršod (Borsod), Gemer (Gömör), Hajdu (Hajdú), Maramoroš (Máramaros), Šaryš (Sáros), Sotmar (Szatmár), Sobolč (Szabolcs), Spiš (Szepes),­ Turna (Torna), Ugoča (Ugocsa),Ung and Zemplyn (Zemplén) counties. The origins of the eparchy are disputed.7 Some scholars argue that the eparchy was created by Sts. Cyril and Methodius or by their disciples in 863.8 These theories are relatively new and do not predate the end of the nineteenth century. According to them, Cyril or Methodius founded seven Greek rite in Pannonia, the last of which was supposedly the diocese of Mukačevo,9 even if it is not mentioned by this name in the sources. Such a theory is without any historical foundation, although it is still defended

7 The classical but doubtful statement regarding the history of the eparchy defending its antiquity and its presence before the arrival of the Hungarians in Pannonia is found in Schematismus cleri graeci ritus catholicorum dioecesis munkácsensis ad annum Domini 1896 (A Catologue of the Catholic Clergy of the Greek Rite of the Diocese of Munkács in the Year of Our Lord 1896) (Ungvarini 1896), p. 7. It reads: Dioecesim Munkácsensem anti- quissimam in Pannonia esse, eamque adventu Hungarorum extitisse, nemo ut verosimillium in historiis versatus inficias ibit. (That the diocese of Munkács is the oldest in Pannonia, existing before the coming of the Hungarians, no one competent in history would deny the probability of these facts.) 8 This theory was a favourite one of Greek Catholic Rusyn authors who thus hoped to strengthen the particular and antecedent claims of their church against the ukrainophiles who wished to stress a common origin of Christianity with the of Vladimir of Kiev in 988. For such an author see Vasil’ Pačovskij, Istorija Podkarpatskoj Rusi (The History of Subcarpathian Rus’) (Užhorod, 1920), pp. 31-33. 9 The classical statement of this theory is found in Schematismus cleri graeci ritus catholi- corum dioecesis munkácsensis ad annum Domini 1896 (Ungvarini, 1896), p. 7. The original reads Arch. Eppus aelogradi (sic! = Velogradi) Carillus (sic! = Cyrillus) ordinatur cui addun- tur in Pannonia septem alii suffragenei Eppi … quibus simul indicatur, omnes illos Eppos, Catholicos quidem, graeco tamen ritui addictos fuisse, cum et Metropolita eorum Cyrillus – ut constat – ritus graeco catholici assecla fuerit, atque hinc vix dubie una colligitur, in numerum Pannoniacarum illarum Dioecesium, quibus praememorati septem suffragenei Eppi prae- fuerunt, Munkácsensem quoque Dioecesim – sive hoc sive alio nomine eotum venerit – referan- dam esse. (Cyril, the of Velehrad, ordered that in Pannonia there be added seven suffragan … at the same time it is notes that all these bishops were Catho- lics, but attached to the Greek rite, together with their Metropolitan Cyril – as it is stated, of the Greek rite, and from hence without doubt one of these attached to the number of those dioceses in Pannonia over which those seven bishops would preside, and this would refer to the Diocese of Munkács, whether it is called by this or by another name.) The same theory in an almost outrageous form (a personal baptism of Rusyn chiefs by Methodius himself) is defended by Stepan Pap, Počatky chrystyjanstva na Zakarpatti (The Beginnings of Christianity in Transcarpathia) (Philadelphia, 1983).

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today by some Slovak and Ukrainian authors. Regardless of the details of foundation, it does seem that there was some kind of Christian presence in the Carpathians well before the end of the ninth century. Others suggest that that the eparchy was created either in 1360 at the time when the semi-legendary Fedor Koriatovyč,10 Prince of Podolia, allegedly founded the Mukačevo of St Nicholas on ’ Hill (Černeča Hora), or in the first half of the fifteenth century (between 1439 and 1445), when the so-called Luka administered the monastery. Antal Hodinka, the author of the prestigious The History of the Diocese of Munkács, published in 1910, placed the origins of the diocese around the year 1458. Other contemporary scholars point to documents referring to a bishopric at Mukačevo already in 1391. Still others claim there was a bishop at Mukačevo as early as the eleventh century. In the past, some experts tried to argue that the diocese was founded originally as a Catholic diocese by Isidore, Metro- politan of Kiev,11 who passed through Buda fleeing from to . But almost all authors agree that it functioned as an Orthodox eparchy until the union with Rome. The earliest surviving written evidence about the eparchy dates from 1491, when a certain Ioann is clearly designated as its first bishop (1491-1498). Mukačevo was a monastic eparchy, that is, its seat was the Monastery of St Nicholas near Mukačevo, whose superiors or archi- mandrites were simultaneously bishops. In other words, the eparchy or dio- cese formed around the monastery. The eparchy’s and bish- ops were until the end of the seventeenth century elected by a monastic council (sobor), then consecrated by bishops from the surrounding area, all of whom were in communion with the Orthodox ecumenical of . Thus the eparchy was founded on the monastery and its bishop was at first the monastery’s .

10 The legend of Koriatovyč, who supposedly arrived with 40,000 settlers from Podolia is a tempting one for ukrainophile historians since it would prove ties between the Hungar- ian Rusyns and Kievan Rus’. It must be rejected, however, in the face of scholarship which has seriously questioned its authenticity. See Petrov, Drevnejšija gramoty, pp. 55-60. 11 Greek Catholics claiming their belonging to Catholic Hungary particularly liked this latinophile theory since it would prove that Mukačevo started its existence as a ­Catholic and not as an Orthodox diocese. The theory was proposed by György Papp, A Munkácsi püspökség eredete (The Origin of the Diocese of Munkács) (Miskolc, 1940). It is discussed and rejected by Pap, Istorija Zakarpattja, I, pp. 418-420 as well as by the Slovak Jesuit Michal Lacko.

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Orthodoxy was tolerated and even bolstered by Hungary’s Árpad kings, who themselves promoted cultural, matrimonial and political links with ­Byzantium and the Slavonic East. Their Anjou and Habsburg successors however did not favour non-Catholic forms of Christianity.

The Union of Užhorod

The Movement towards union with the Roman See came in the wake of the Protestant Reformation and the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation. Since the end of the sixteenth century, the local Orthodox population ran the risk of conversion to Protestantism, since the Mukačevo region had come under the control of Transylvania, ruled by Hungarian Protestant princes. Particu- larly influential were the feudal lords of Mukačevo themselves, especially those members of the powerful Rákóczy family, who had become ­Calvinist. To avoid conversion to Protestantism, some of the bishops of Mukačevo pursued negotiations with Rome. They also had the example of the Union of Brest of 1596 in neighbouring Poland. A more powerful motivation was the poor social and legal status of the Orthodox clergy. In contrast to the Catholic clergy, the Orthodox clergy had the legal status of vassals and were, like ­peasant-serfs, required to fulfil feudal duties. Even the bishop of Mukačevo was legally dependent on the landlord of the Mukačevo estate and was forced to suffer indignities imposed by the landlord’s representative, the captain of the Mukačevo castle. The clergy of the Mukačevo eparchy were in general uneducated and the faithful completely passive. They knew neither the ton- sure nor the soutane, marks of the elevated clerical state in Roman Catholic Europe. Catholicism offered emancipation and a social position equal to the Catholic clergy and likewise cultural and educational opportunities. How western Christians viewed the Orthodox Rusyns may be seen in the example of the inroads made by the Society of into territories settled by the Rusyn population. Jesuits first encountered the Orthodox Rusyns during the first half of the seventeenth century. In 1646, they were able to establish a residence first at Humenné (Homonna) and later a college at Užhorod. The college, however, was founded to educate the sons of Hungar- ian magnates and not of their Rusyn serfs. Nevertheless it soon became a centre of Jesuit missionary activity among the non-Catholic Christians of the area. The Jesuits, however, had little experience with the Rusyns

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and confusing ethnicity and religion they considered them as just another heretical sect. A letter of 1616 with customary zeal even boasted of their triumphs in converting the Rusyns to Latinism:

‘ex Lutheranismo, Calvinismo, aut Ruthenismo, exacti ducenti quadraginta septem.’ (two hundred forty-seven (souls) pulled out of Lutheranism, Calvinism and Ruthenianism.)12

But the actual first steps toward union with Rome were undertaken not by the Jesuits but by their benefactor, the landlord of the Užhorod estate, the Roman Catholic magnate György III Drugeth. His family had come to Hun- gary from in the fourteenth century together with King Charles Robert of Anjou (Carobert), had become Calvinist during the Reformation and had eventually returned to Roman Catholicism. Drugeth acted according to the principle of cuius region ejus religio and so wished to catholicise the Rusyns. Wishing to proclaim a localised and partial church union with Rome, he called on the assistance of the Hungarian Roman Catholic bishop of Eger as well as of the already Uniat bishop of Przemyśl in neighbouring Poland, Afanasii Krupets’kyi. This union with Rome was to be proclaimed on Pente- cost Day 1614 at the Krásny Brod Monastery, today in Slovakia. A crowd of Orthodox faithful, however, expressed their discontent and dispersed­ the 50 priests who had arrived at the monastery. The Orthodox bishop of Mukačevo as well as the Transylvanian princes likewise opposed any dealings with Rome and this attempt at converting the Rusyns to Catholicism ended in failure. A second attempt at union came during the 1630s, when the Orthodox bishop of Mukačevo, Vasylij Tarasovyč, engaged in clandestine talks for two years with the Roman Catholic bishop of Eger, György Lippay. At the last moment these plans were uncovered by an opponent of the union, the prince of Transylvania and landlord of the Mukačevo estate, György I Rákóczy, who arrested Tarasovyč and released him only following repeated requests by the , the emperor, and other Catholic and Orthodox hierarchs. Toward the end of his life, Tarasovyč returned to and settled again in Mukačevo, where in a strange turn of events he ensured that the Parfenij Petrovyč, apparently of Serbian origin and himself inclined towards union with Rome, would succeed him as bishop.

12 Michael Lacko, Unio Užhorodensis (The Union of Užhorod) (Roma, 1955), p. 34.

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The experience of Tarasovyč convinced Parfenij that the union could not succeed in a land ruled by a Protestant prince, and so he turned to Užhorod, which was still under the protection of the powerful Drugeth family. ­Protected by the widow of János Drugeth, Anna Jákusics de Orbova, and her , the Roman Catholic bishop of Eger, György Jákusics, and with the help of a Basilian monk from Galicia, Havryil Kosovyts’kyi, Parfenii was able to convene in Užhorod (24 April 1646) a meeting of sixty-three Ortho- dox priests. Parfenij and several priests prepared an agreement which came to be known as the Union of Užhorod,13 according to which, the Uniat Church in Hungary would retain its Byzantine rite and Eastern liturgical traditions including a married clergy; its bishops would, as before, be elected by a council (sobor) of monks and diocesan clergy and only later confirmed by the pope; and its priests would receive all the rights and privileges accorded to Roman Catholic clergy. Initially, only Orthodox priests from Spiš, Šaryš, Zemplyn, and Ung counties accepted this so called Union of Užhorod, which was confirmed by the new bishop of Eger, Benedikt Kisdi, only in the spring of 1648. It was publicly announced in September of the same year at a council of Hungary’s Roman Catholic bishops held in Trnava (Nagyszombat). For his services on behalf of the union, Parfenij was eventu- ally elected bishop of Mukačevo in 1651. It is indeed curious that no original signed document or authenticated copy of a document has ever been found in any archival collection testifying to the declaration of the Union of Užhorod. The fact of such a union is merely referred to in a petition dating from 1652 in which six asked Rome to confirm Petrovyč as bishop of Mukačevo. This confirms the fact that the Vatican was slow in recognising Petrovyč’s episcopacy since he was still in 1646 and even later considered a dissident or Orthodox bishop. His confirmation came quite a bit later in 1655. The reluctance of Rome in fact hampered the spread of the Uniat movement to the more easterly of the eparchy. But this fact touches on the enigmatic figure of Petroyč himself and his somewhat vague ecclesiastical position between

13 On the Union of Užhorod see Ludvik Nemec, ‘The Ruthenian Uniate Church in its Historical Perspective’, Church History, 37/4 (1968), pp. 365-388, and especially Paul Robert Magocsi/Ivan Pop, Unia/Church Union, Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture (Toronto, 2005), pp. 515-517, with the accompanying bibliography.

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the churches. Known in Latin documents as Petrus Parthenius, Petrovyč, in spite of his Roman leanings and notwithstanding the fact that he was the principle actor in the meeting which declared the Union of Užhorod, received his episcopal ordination in 1648 (that is, two years after the decla- ration of Union with Rome) at Alba Julia (Gyulafehérvár) in Transylvania from the hands of a Romanian Orthodox bishop with Orthodox bishops from neighbouring Moldavia assisting. Historians explain this confusion by citing the fact that for the secular power, Mukačevo, which he was supposed to serve as bishop, was still an Orthodox diocese at the time, although this was soon to change. Since Petrovyč was appointed to rule it, he was to receive ordination as an Orthodox bishop, despit his own personal Roman leanings. The Protestant, anti-Habsburg, and anti-Catholic princes of Transylvania naturally opposed the further spread of the Uniat movement. Only Gyorgy I Rakoczy’s widow, Zsofia Báthory, supported Parfenij in his plans to spread Catholicism. In 1664, the Orthodox priests and villages in Bereg and Ugoča counties joined the union, as a result of Parfenij’s efforts. But an Orthodox bishopric was able to survive at the Uhlja Monastery in Maramoroš county until 1721, when that region finally accepted the union. Until then the faithful of Mukačevo were divided between Uniat Catholic and Orthodox allegiances. After that the whole of the area occupied by the Carpatho- Rusyns became Uniat or Greek Catholic. Many latinisations crept into the liturgical and canonical life of the eparchy, mostly out of a desire to emulate the more prestigious Latin rite and the customs of aristocratic Hungarian society. Unfortunately, they had did little to increase the faithful’s under- standing of liturgy, but merely imported the paraphernalia of an implosive baroque devotionalism. While the doors of the iconostasis remained open for the entire service and the veil hiding the sanctuary was torn down, hand- bells, lace albs and western style painting filled the churches. Married clergy, however, continued to be the rule and the close and almost obsessive inter- of clerical families was common.14 But at the same time, sympathy

14 As a rule, candidates for the priesthood married only the daughters of priests. They, were, themselves the sons of priests. Peasants were despised as ignorant and uncouth and considered beyond the pale. Neither did they speak the same language. Priestly families spoke only Hungarian amongst themselves. The peasants spoke various Rusyn dialects. C. Simon, ‘I Ruteni: Passato e Presente’, La Civiltà Cattolica, 141/3 (1990), pp. 400-412.

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for Orthodoxy and concern for the liturgical abuses simmered among the peasantry and was later to bubble forth in the Orthodox movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Canonical Erection

Even after the declaration of union with Rome, the situation within the Mukačevo eparchy remained unsettled as a result of conflicting religious and political factions. For instance, following the episcopate Parfenij Petrovyč (1649-1665), a supporter of the Union, various parts of the eparchy were still being administered by Orthodox bishops – Ioanykij Zeikan (1658- 1687, intermittently), the wandering Iosyf Vološynovs’kyi (1670-1673), Porfirii Kul’čyc’kyij Ardan (l68l-l686) – as well as by Uniat Catholic bish- ops – Dymytrii Monastelli (l685-1688) and Mefodii Rakovets’kyj (1687- 1689). In an attempt to bring order into the eparchy, the Catholic of Hungary, Leopold Kollonics, convinced Rome to appoint a Basilian monk from Italy of Greek origin, Joseph de Camelis, as bishop (1690- 1706). In keeping with law, established by the Fourth Lateran Coun- cil of 1215, stipulating two bishops may not rule within the confines of one diocese, de Camelis and his immediate successors – Ioann Hodermars’kyi (1707-1715), Iurij Genadij Bizanci (1716-1733), Symeon Ol’šavs’kyj (1734-1738), Havriil Blažovs’kyj (1738-1742), Mychail Manuil Ol’šavs’kyj (1743-1767), and loann Bradač (l767-l772) – were officially only vicar gen- erals (auxiliary bishops), jurisdictionally subordinate to the Roman Catholic bishop of Eger. After several efforts made by these bishops, the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa issued a in 1771, subsequently approved by Rome, that ­created a jurisdictionally independent Mukačevo eparchy no longer subor- dinate to Eger. Canonists had also questioned the origins of the eparchy, so at the same time it was canonically re-established (this was actually a bit of juridical fiction) as a Greek Catholic diocese. Both Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II did much to raise the prestige of Greek Catholics in their dominions, replacing the term Uniat with Griechisch-Katholisch and the odi- ous Poppe with the respected Pfarrer. But the years spent as vicar generals of Eger prevented any attempts at unifying the Greek Catholics of Hungary with those of Austrian Galicia and kept contacts at a minimum. The bishops

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of Mukačevo had become firmly integrated into the hierarchical structure of the Kingdom of Hungary. During the national revival of the nineteenth cen- tury as well as during the period of Czechoslovak rule during the twentieth, the political and cultural sympathies of several incumbents of the see of Mukačevo lay not with the awakening Slavs but with the aristocratic ways of the old Hungarian Kingdom. This led to adverse criticism and the claim that the Greek was no longer the church of the Rusyn people.

A Change of Residence

Until 1766, all bishops of Mukačevo had their residence at the monastery on Černeča Hora just outside Mukačevo, and from 1766 within the city of Mukačevo itself. During the episcopate of Andrej Bačyns’kyj (1772-1809), the eparchy retained its historic name but its seat and residence of the bishop was moved to Užhorod (1780), where it remains to this day. The bishops of Mukačevo received the local Jesuit church and library from the imperial authorities, after the Society of Jesus had been suppressed on Austrian territory. By the end of the last century, the town of Mukačevo which grew up next to the fortress, was populated by ethnic Magyars and Jews with hardly a trace of Slavic presence. The local Slav Greek Catholics inhabited the villages and hamlets scattered throughout the mountainous and largely infertile landscape. The bishops of Mukačevo ruled a huge but sparsely populated diocese. Following the death of Bishop Bačyns’kyj the Mukačevo eparchy experi- enced its first division: 192 parishes were removed from its western counties (Abov, Boršod, Gemer, Spiš, Šaryš, and part of Zemplyn) to create the Greek Catholic eparchy of Prešov (Eperjes) in 1818. Five years later, 72 parishes from Szatmár county in the south were transferred to the Greek Catholic Romanian eparchy of Oradea (Nagyvarad), and in 1853 another 94 parishes were trans- ferred to the Romanian eparchy of Gherla (Számosújvár). Finally, in 1912, 68 parishes from the south-western part of the Mukačevo eparchy were trans- ferred to the newly created Magyar speaking eparchy of Hajdúdorog. By 1914, the eparchy of Mukačevo was reduced in size and limited to the territory of the Carpathians and far eastern Slovakia, all of which after the First World War became part of the new state of Czechoslovakia. But its faithful were and continue to be multi-ethnic. In 1949, just before the

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suppression of the diocese by Soviet authorities, it counted 400,000 faithful. The majority were ethnic Rusyns (Ruthenians), but there were also Greek Catholic Hungarians (28,000), Romanians (16,000) and Slovaks (3,000).

An Orthodox Movement

Throughout its history, the idea of the Church Union in the form of the Greek Catholic Church and its eastern traditions was challenged by both secular and ecclesiastical authorities. As we have already pointed out, peri- odically the Byzantine rite was subjected to latinising influences, the Church Slavonic liturgical language disputed as well as periodic attempts to replace the Cyrillic with the Latin alphabet as well as the Julian with the Gregorian calendar. Despite such problems, Catholicism also played a positive role. Rusyn priests were exposed to the culture of Western Europe and were able to study in the seminaries and universities of the Habsburg Monarchy and Rome. All this provided the basis for the development of a limited clerical and secular Rusyn intelligentsia. In the second half of the nineteenth century, economic and other motiva- tions prompted the Greek Catholic hierarchy to become an instrument of the Hungarian Kingdom’s state policy of national assimilation. This in turn alienated an already oppressed peasantry, who constituted the majority of believers. Needy peasants grumbled about the koblina and rokovina, which they were forced by law to pay the local Greek Catholic priest. Rusyn peasants were on the whole extremely poor. They still at the end of the nineteenth century lived in tiny wooden moveable huts without much ven- tilation, which permitted the needed mobility to seek out pasture lands but made for hideous conditions within the enclosure where man slept aside beast. They nourished themselves with oats, mushrooms and beans and sometimes were forced to make do with a repulsive bread containing acorns, beech nuts, and bran. When an artist in the rather prosperous Hungarian- speaking town of Hajdúdorog painted a rather pretentious Virgin on the iconostasis, the local women found it hard to pray before this arrogant society dame of Pest. In 1919, the Treaty of Trianon dismembered historical Hungary. The Carpathian region found itself a part of the new state of Czechoslovakia and was granted a large degree of autonomy. Besides self-government as part of

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a federative state, the territory received a new name: Podkarpatská Rus’. In the wake of the Second World War, the region was again divided. In 1938, the area around Užgorod was once again annexed to Hungary, while an independent republic was proclaimed in the town of Chust, which called itself the Carpatho-Ukraine. This situation lasted only briefly. In March 1939, the entire region was brought under the control of Hungary. It remained under the rule of Admiral Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya, the regent of the vacant Hungarian , until the autumn of 1944. The Red Army expelled the Hungarians and eventually proclaimed the incorporation of Transcarpathian Ukraine into the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. Unsettled political conditions provided the backdrop of the history of the diocese of Mukačevo. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the development of the local Orthodox Church, which emerged in a position of rivalry rather than that of collaboration with Greek Catholicism. As we have seen, little remained of Orthodoxy after several centuries of aggressive Roman Catholic Habsburg rule. The Orthodox Movement for the restoral of the old religion which emerged at the end of the last century was something of an anomaly. Rusyn national awakeners had enjoyed limited contact with Russian panslavists who hoped to gain the region for the Tsar and Orthodoxy. Far more important was the influence of former American immigrants who returned home after having converted to Russian Ortho- doxy in the United States. Finally, a new and somewhat unprecedented wave of magyarisation drove a wider wedge between the higher clergy who generally supported the Hungarian government and the peasants who saw in Orthodoxy a form of national salvation. This movement culminated in the show trials of Iza and Máramaros (1904-1913) and the widespread persecution of the Orthodox in the wake of open hostilities between Austria Hungary and Russia at the beginning of the First World War. Orthodoxy was restricted and some Orthodox even died for their faith in the dreadful conditions of the Talerhof concentration camp. After the First World War, Greek Catholic relations with the new Czechoslovak government were initially strained. Many of the eparchy’s priests were accused of being partisans of Hungary and Bishop Antonij (Antal) Papp left his seat in Užhorod and settled permanently in Hungary after refusing to swear the required oath of allegiance to the new Czechoslovak state. Other problems concerned church dues and priests’ salaries, which remained

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unregulated until the passage of special laws in 1926. Nevertheless, the Greek Catholic Church retained its dominant position until the arrival of Soviet forces in 1944 and the imposition of Communist rule throughout the region. Orthodoxy, on the other hand, was nurtured by the anti-Roman agnostic Masaryk regime of Czechoslovakia. Prague preferred it to Greek Catholi- cism which as we have just seen the new government felt was tainted by its previous Magyar and especially Hapsburg associations. As a result, a coun- ter-reactive movement among Rusyns, which again called for a return to the old religion,15 reached a high point in the 1920s, throughout all parts of the Carpathians. During the period of Czechoslovak rule, the Mukačevo epar- chy faced a serious challenge, as nearly one-third of its parishioners left to join the Orthodox Church. The number of converts to Orthodoxy grew from 1,000 at the end of the First World War to 90,000 in 1930. Rowdy street fighting was a feature of the ecclesiastical scene of the time as Ortho- dox and Uniat factions fought over the occupation of churches, destroyed or desecrated each other’s property, or physically attacked their opponents. Both sides proved that any peaceful solution lay far in the future and that Christians were ready to blaspheme and despise their brethren. In spite of government support, the Orthodox suffered from internal ­divisions and factionalism. Both Constantinople and the contested jurisdiction over the Carpathian region. Eventually the Serbs won with the help of direct government intervention. Until the arrival of Hungarian troops, Serbian bishops ruled the Carpathian flock. After the region once more became part of Hungary during the Second World War, no bishop was allowed to occupy the Orthodox see of Mukačevo- Prešov. Greek Catholicism was again preferred and the Orthodox were induced to re-join it. Michail Popov, a priest of Don Cossack origin but loyal to Hungary, was appointed the new administrator, and the last of the Serbian bishops (Vladimir Rajić) died in a concentration camp.16

15 For the Orthodox view of the movement cf. Pavel Marek/Volodymyr Bureha, Pravo- slavní v Československu v letech 1918-1953. Příspěvek k dějinám Pravoslavné církve v českých zemích, na Slovensku a na Podkarpatské Rusi (The Orthodox in Czechoslovakia in the Years 1918-1953. A Contribution to the History of the Orthodox Church in the Czech Lands, Slovakia, and in Subcarpathian Rus’) (Brno, 2008). 16 Paul Robert Magocsi, The Shaping of a National Identity. Subcarpathian Rus’ 1848-1948 (Cambridge-London, 1978), p. 186.

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After the annexation of the territory to the Soviet Union, jurisdiction over the Orthodox passed, with government approval, from the Serbian Ortho- dox Church to the Patriarchate of Moscow (1945). A new bishop, Nestor (Sidorjuk) of Uman’, was appointed Bishop of Transcarpathia by Patriarch Aleksij I and acclaimed as the only rightful Bishop of Mukačevo by the Soviet authorities, thus abrogating the authority of the Greek Catholic ­bishops. The persecution and liquidation of the Greek Catholic Church in the Carpathian region followed. During Soviet rule, the Moscow Patriar- chate replaced the Greek Catholic Church, which was forced into the under- ground, as the only legal form of permitted by the state. It was granted a large portion of Greek Catholic Church property. But even authors who have little reason to love the agree that although the Patriarchate of Moscow stood by, the actual liquidation of the church was accomplished by the Soviet government and its military agents, especially the military officers Mechlis and Tjul’panov.17 Soon after the Moscow Patriarchate attained its position of religious hegemony in the region, its usefulness as a tool of the state faded and it was subjected to the same restrictive legislation which characterised its precarious co-existence with Soviet power since the Bolshevik Revolution.

Destruction

During the first half of the arduous twentieth century, the Greek Catholic diocese of Mukačevo was directed by bishops who while satisfactory, expanded all their energy on combating the Orthodox movement and had little time for anything else. Two of them (Antal Papp and Miklós Dudás) favoured the Hungarian orientation while the others (Julius Firczák, Peter Gebé, Alexander Stojka) generally supported the Rusyn national movement. Carpathian Rus’ as well as most of the western Ukraine was spared the worst of the Stalinist purges which decimated the church on Soviet territory during the 1930s. Ironically, while the Orthodox of the Soviet Union found some relief after the Second World War, those Christians and especially Catholics in the newly occupied areas, including the eparchy of Mukačevo,

17 Athanasius B. Pekar, The History of the Church in Carpathian Rus’ (New York, 1992), p. 146.

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faced a persecution, which although not as fierce as that of pre-Second World War Stalinism, was something they had never previously encountered and was aimed at the complete destruction of their local church. So it hap- pened that in 1949, the Communist regime in Soviet Ukraine’s Transcar- pathian Region declared the Union of 1646 null and void and formally abolished the Greek Catholic eparchy of Mukačevo. Those priests who refused to join the Orthodox Church were arrested and imprisoned. Feodor (György Tivadar) Romža (1911-1947), an alumnus of the Roman Pontifical Russian College was the last Greek Catholic bishop of Mukačevo after the Soviet occupation and the details of his death in a rigged road ­collision are rather well known. On 25 1947, as the bishop’s ­carriage was passing the village of Iványi-Ivanovci, a Studebaker carrying soldiers hit Romža’s vehicle, destroying it. The bishop and his companions were thrown from the carriage. Passengers of the army vehicle attacked the bishop with combat gloves coated with metal. Romža survived the attack and was taken to hospital. The bishop suffered multiple fractures and a broken jaw, which prevented him from swallowing. But he later seemed to improve until he received a visit from a Doctor ­Bergman, the chief physician, accompanied by his assistant, a girl known simply as Odarka who spoke with a Galician accent, indicating that she came from the western Ukraine, already under Soviet occupation. She claimed to have fought with the banderovcy – an anti-Soviet terrorist unit active in the Western Ukraine. In fact, she was an agent of the NKVD. It was she who administered the poison, a type of curare native to South America, which killed the bishop. Later investigation showed that the murder was planned by the highest state echelons. The officer in charge of the operation was Pavel Sudoplatov, of the Defence Ministry, but his orders came from a chain of eventually ascending to Chruščev and Stalin. The poison was probably obtained by Grigorij Marjanovskij, an official in charge of the laboratory manufacturing toxic substances for the NKVD. Romža had sus- pected for some time that he would be killed and made provisions for his succession. His death has all the signs of a true martyrdom and he was beatified in 2001.18

18 C. Simon, ‘New Martyrs’, Studi sull’Oriente Cristiano, 10 (2006), pp. 99-192, p. 191.

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In 1945, Romža secretly ordained Alexander Chira (1945-1983) bishop and appointed him . Chira, however, never celebrated openly as a hierarch. In spite of the blandishments of Soviet authorities, he refused to leave the Roman Catholic Church. In his memoirs, Chira described one of these encounters:

‘Discontent with Chira’s answers, Turjanica (a Soviet agent) slapped his palms together and bawled: “So, your path is already marked out for you. But let me ask you once more. Give the matter some thought. You are still young. You have a good reputation in the Carpathian Region. There is a place for you in the Orthodox Church.” Chira answered: “First allow me to point out that I am older than you are. Secondly, I have been riding on horseback. I will not get down from the horse and slide onto the back of an ass.”’19

His words tell us much about how Greek Catholics and Orthodox viewed each other in the Carpathians. There was little respect and still less love between the two groups. But we must recall that Catholics had long been taught from primary school that leaving the Catholic Church or transferring one’s allegiance to another faith was tantamount to apostasy and eternally punished in hell fire. All this may strike us as strange and certainly harsh but it was the ecclesiology of the time. In 1949, Chira was arrested and sentenced to twenty-five years confine- ment in a Soviet labour camp, deprivation of civil rights and the confisca- tion of all property. He worked in the Siberian camps of Tajšet, Kemerovo and Omsk on construction projects. In 1956, he was permitted to return to Transcarpathia. But since he soon began work as an underground priest, he was expelled from the Ukrainian Soviet Republic and deported to Kazakhstan. In Karaganda, he was forced to work as a coal miner. Eventu- ally, he was able to do pastoral work in the Latin rite among Volga Germans, exiled to Central Asia during the Stalinist terror. But it was only in 1978, at the dedication of a church, that Chira wore his mitre in public and revealed that he was a bishop. Once a year, Chira visited relatives in Užhorod, where, despite the danger, he ordained priests and even consecrated bishops for

19 István Bendász and Dániel Bendász, Helytállás és tanúságtétel (Responsibility and ­Witness) (Ungvár-Budapest, 1994), p. 136.

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the underground Greek Catholic eparchy of Mukačevo, including the unas- suming Ioann (Ivan) Semedi (1921-2008)20, who functioned at first in the underground and after perestroika as the . Semedi later spoke about how he was made a secret bishop:

‘When Nicholas Muranyi offered Ivan Semedi the chance to become bishop … . Semedi later said that as he heard this proposal, all of his clothing immediately became wet. Whether from sweat or fear, he himself could not tell the difference – so extreme was his sense of emotional agitation …’21

Just before its suppression, the Diocese of Mukačevo possessed 289 parishes and numbered 350 priests.22 With the coming of Soviet power, Greek Cath- olic churches were turned over to the Orthodox Eparchy of Mukačevo for its use; other Greek Catholic property (the episcopal palace in Užhorod, the seminary, schools, and landed estates) was confiscated by the state. Despite the repression, the Greek Catholic eparchy of Mukačevo continued to sur- vive during the Soviet era as an underground church with a secret hierarchy. The actual persecution of clergy began only with the death of Romža. Until 1948, only about thirty-five priests were arrested. They were usually taken into custody on trumped up charges and sentenced to five, ten or twenty-five years of forced labour and the confiscation of their property. A few were executed or assassinated.

20 During the waning years of Soviet power, Transcarpathian Greek Catholic priests were secretly informed by Rome of the appointment of Ivan Semedi, as bishop. Semedi, a Rusyn, had finished his priestly preparation before the Soviet occupation. He had been ordained and was working in the bishop’s chancery when the suppression forced him into the underground. He tried finding work at the state university and in a bookshop but was refused when details of his priestly past came to light. Later, he tried studying music and finally was trained as a lorry driver. Eventually, he gained the trust of his employers and quietly worked as an auto mechanic. At the same time, he devoted himself to pastoral work as an underground priest – baptising, conducting and saying mass for the faith- ful – all behind closed doors. Semedi functioned as an underground bishop for over ten years, in constant fear of arrest and banishment. But Semedi was never sent to prison or a labour camp as were many others. In 1991, he was confirmed by the as ordinary bishop of the Greek Catholic Diocese of Mukačevo and given two auxiliaries: Ivan Margityč and Josyf Holovač. 21 Ivan Žiroš, ‘Važka doroha do chramu’ (A Hard Road to Church), Orbita, 32-157 (30.7.1998), p. 6. 22 József Botlik, Hármas kereszt alatt (Under the Triple Cross) (Budapest, 1997), p. 286.

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One example was that of Peter Paul Demjanovič (1869-1945), the priest in the town of Rachov, the first victim of the persecutions. Accused of having given false testimony by a Soviet judge, Demjanovič was sen- tenced to death by firing squad. A local teacher, later decorated by the local government, had sworn that Demjanovič had expressed the wish that all Communists be hanged. On Good Friday, he was executed by a woman prison guard while lying ill in bed. Since he was already dying, he was unable to leave his bed to receive his sentence. The persecution began in earnest only at the beginning of 1949. The first to be arrested included the parish priests of the prosperous city churches. According to the calculations of one author,23 a total of ninety-three priests suffered imprisonment for their faith. About sixteen of them died while ­serving their terms in prisons and labour camps. Another forty-six priests remained in the underground but did not serve prison terms. A further 117 priests found themselves in Czechoslovakia after new boundaries were declared after the Second World War. Ten others left for Hungary, twelve for the United States, and four for . Most of the priests were officially sentenced to prison terms on the basis of political charges which had been concocted by the state. At the beginning, those who agreed to become Orthodox was very few, but their number grew as more and more arrests were made. While in January 1949, only two priests declared themselves ready to join the Russian Orthodox Church, by February there were thirty-one candidates. By June 1950, conversions ceased. Statistics show that about 131 priests passed to the Russian Orthodox Church. Two other priests lost their faith and became atheist agitators. One of these was surprisingly a former member of the Basilian order. Another priest became a Calvinist minister in the United States. The most flamboyant convert to Orthodoxy was Irinej Kontratovics (1878-1957) – a priest who had written several ethnological studies and a history textbook for use in the secondary schools of the region which promoted the Rusyn con- cept of ethnic identity. Kontratovics was able to ingratiate himself with all the regimes which ruled the Carpathian region during his lifetime, enjoying as much success with the Hungarians as he later did with the Soviet regime. By 1949, he had agreed to convert to Orthodoxy. He later served as the administrator of the Orthodox Diocese of Mukačevo.

23 Bendász, Helytállás, pp. 156-160.

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Complete statistics regarding the fate of Transcarpathian clergymen, both those who remained Greek Catholic and those who accepted Ortho- doxy have recently been published in Hungarian.24 But the book reveals more than it wishes. Treating converts to Orthodoxy, who made their decision under terrible duress, as apostates to the Christian faith, as this thin volume does, shows a terrible lack of Christian charity, not to speak of ecumenical awareness, since it was published decades after Vatican II. During the waning years of Soviet power, Transcarpathian Greek Cath- olic priests were secretly informed by Rome of the appointment of Ivan Semedi as bishop. Semedi, a Rusyn, had finished his priestly preparation before the Soviet occupation. He was quietly working as an auto mechanic. This was hardly unusual. Most priests, having returned from confinement in Siberia or Central Asia, were forced to earn a living in factories. At the same time, it was decided to secretly prepare candidates for the priesthood. Only one of the still active Greek Catholic priests, Elemér Ortutay, an ­ethnic Hungarian, possessed a theological degree and had taught at the seminary. Ortutay worked at the Užhorod tile factory after spending eight years in the polar mines of Vorkuta. Already elderly and retired, Ortutay began to secretly prepare candidates for ordination, at considerable risk to himself, since his activities were closely monitored by the KGB. At least seventeen priests studied in secret and were ordained.25 Another circumstance which aided the survival of the Greek Catholic Church in the Carpathian region was the fact that the Roman Catholic Church of the Latin rite, with 81,000 faithful of mostly Hungarian ethnic- ity, continued to exist under the usual restrictions throughout the Soviet period. National tensions were much less pronounced in the Carpathian region between Rusyns and Hungarians than in the western Ukraine between Ukrainians and Poles. Ethnic Hungarians and magyarophones among the Greek Catholics were the first to attend services of the Latin rite, although with time many ethnic Rusyn Greek Catholics followed their example. So both Latin and Greek Catholic liturgies continued to be cele- brated.26

24 Ibid. 25 Elemér Ortutay, … Holnap is felkel a nap. Emlékeim (… Tomorrow Also the Sun Will Rise. My Memoirs) (Ungvár, 1993), p. 24. 26 Ibid., p. 288.

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After perestroika and the incorporation of Mukačevo into an independent Ukraine, Roman Catholics of the Latin rite were placed under the direct jurisdiction of the apostolic in Ukraine. In 1993, they were incorpo- rated into an and given a diocese of their own, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mukačevo, in 2002.

Restoration and an Ecclesia Sui Juris

In the late 1980s, as a result of the political changes in the Soviet Union, the Greek Catholic hierarchy came out from the underground, and in 1989 the Greek Catholic eparchy of Mukačevo was allowed to function as a legal entity with 209 registered parishes (in comparison to 289 with 440 churches at the time of its liquidation in 1949). Since all of their churches had been taken away, at the beginning, Greek Catholics were forced to celebrate their liturgy in the open, coping with freezing temperatures and under a dark wintry sky. Efforts were immediately made by the Greek Catholics to open a fully organised seminary and thirty-five perspective students were registered.27 A new Greek Catholic Seminary was finally opened in Užhorod in 1995 with funding mostly from Germany and the United States. Today, the ­seminary has about seventy or eighty students. Those who have shown promise are still being sent abroad for further studies to Rome, Piacenza, or Germany. Elderly priests who survived the persecutions were trained in pre-­conciliar institutions, knew little of contemporary Roman Catholicism’s positions on ecumenical questions, and were formed by the catacomb mentality in which they were forced to live. Younger priests were trained in difficult circum- stances and had little time to study theoretic theology. Many clerics longed for a return to pre-Soviet conditions: reconstructing the past at whatever the cost. They might well be helped by their brethren in the West, especially by the prosperous but dying Byzantine Catholic church in the United States, although the latter has striven to identify fully with North American culture. The gap seems too wide to fill.

27 Ivan Myhovyč, Relihija i cerkvy v našomu kraï (Religion and the Churches in Our Land) (Užhorod, 1993), p. 39.

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In terms of jurisdiction, the eparchy was restored on the basis of historic tradition and , whereby it retains its status as a distinct church community (ecclesia sui juris) directly under the authority of the Holy See in Rome – a rather unique position in the Roman Catholic Church. This status was criticised by Ukrainian nationalists within and beyond the church, and it resulted in internal division among the hierarchs. A portion of the priests, who are pro-Ukrainian and were led by the Ivan Margityč (1921-2003), demanded that the eparchy of Mukačevo become part of the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Major Archbishopric, today based in Kiev but formerly and traditionally in historic Galicia.28 The other and larger portion of priests led by Bishop Semedi argued against changing the independent jurisdictional status of the eparchy. After investigating this problem the Vatican declared in 1993 that the juris- dictional status of the eparchy of Mukačevo would remain unchanged and that the auxiliary bishops existing at the time be given specific respon- sibility for the faithful of Rusyn and Hungarian background (Iosyf Holovač [1924-2000]) and of Ukrainian orientation (Margityč). Recognizing the multi-national composition of the eparchy the church services may be con- ducted in Church Slavonic, Ukrainian, or Hungarian. Finally, there remains the problem of how this ecclesia sui juris views itself against its Orthodox29 counterpart. As we have seen, the Carpathian territory

28 Such a solution makes sense politically, since the Transcarpathian region is today a part of the Ukraine, controlled by Kiev and no longer by Budapest or Prague. It fails, however, to take account of the diverse ethnic background of the faithful, their particular history, culture and even liturgical customs. L’vov, under Polish and later Austrian political ­domination had little historically in common with Mukačevo, a part of the Hungarian Kingdom for almost one thousand years. The noted Ukrainian activist Drahomanov famously remarked that Carpathian Rus’ was as far from us ideologically as Australia is in physical distance. Since earliest times, bishops of Mukačevo acted mostly on their own or as auxiliaries of the of Eger, and felt themselves an integral part of the hierarchy of the Hungarian Kingdom, a position which was confirmed by canon law. Transcarpathia had minimal contact with Austrian Galicia and even less with the embryonic Ukrainian movement. Nationally aware Rusyns fear uniting Mukačevo with L’vov or Kiev, a move which they consider tantamount to the absorption of their newly discovered ethnicity in a Ukrainian sea. Nineteenth-century Ukrainian national awakeners similarly warned against self-dissolution in a Russian milieu. 29 The term Orthodox needs further clarification. On the territory of today’s Ukraine, several Orthodox jurisdictions are present, only one of which is canonical, that one (the Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church) which is associated with the Moscow

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was exposed to Orthodox influence already during the nineteenth century and later during the Czechoslovak annexation. It is not surprising, that even after perestroika many villages stayed Orthodox and the number of Ortho- dox parishes (459) remains more than twice that of the total number admin- istered by the Greek Catholics (209).30 Disputes with the Orthodox over the ownership of churches soon began after the re-establishment of the Greek Catholic Church, but they were less violent than those in the western Ukraine where scenes of mayhem were common and the Orthodox reported the mishandling of their faithful and clergy as well as the pillaging of churches by enraged Uniat mobs. Perhaps this was due to the fact that the Rusyns are less aggressive by nature than the western Ukrainians and were more used to being bullied by their powerful overlords or to the fact that Orthodoxy was more widespread in the Carpathian region and Catholics and Orthodox had grown accustomed to each other. According to still another source, about 234 churches which were once Greek Catholic were given to the Orthodox. Of these, 67 were supposed to be used by both groups. On the other hand, the Orthodox were, however, unwilling to share at least 43 of these churches with the Greek Catholics.31 A few churches are still shared by the two groups, although this is usually a cause of conflict. When recently the Catholics planned building a church complex facing the newly built Orthodox cathedral in Užhorod, the Orthodox decided to erect another church facing the Greek Catholic cathedral in the same city and dedicate it to Aleksij Kabalyuk, a Rusyn national hero and Orthodox saint, but also a former Greek Catholic. In many cases, conflicts still rage regard- ing the use of churches. In general, the idea of common use of some village churches by both Catholics and Orthodox has been unsuccessful due to the lack of co-operation or even communication between the two groups. Older Greek Catholic priests usually take a hard line in regard to the Orthodox. The younger generation, better used to the Orthodox presence, is more accommodating.

Patriarchate. The others including the two other major ones (the so called Patriarchate of Kiev and the so called Ukrainian Autocephalous Church) are non-canonical and not recognized by any other canonical Orthodox Church. The other tiny groups resemble sects more than they do churches. 30 Myhovyč, Relihija, p. 84. 31 Botlik, Hármas kereszt alatt, p. 309.

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In 2002, Bishop Semedi retired and Šašik (*1952), a Slovak priest of the Congregation of the Mission, was appointed apostolic administrator in his place.32 Why the Vatican would choose a Latin rite Slovak priest, involved in the Neo-Catechumenate movement, and with little previous experience in the Byzantine rite for such a troubled diocese with a number of its own priests as available candidates, is anyone’s guess. At first the new bishop had difficulty reading the Church Slavonic liturgical books, let alone coping with the complicated ceremonial of the Byzantine Slavonic rite. ­Neither did he know any Hungarian. Yet, at least the Rusyn faction seems satisfied with him since he encourages the use of Church Slavonic and dis- suades clergy from introducing modern Ukrainian into the services. This, of course, does not endear him to his ukrainophile flock. Others are guarded about the bishop’s propensities for introducing liturgical changes borrowed from his own Latin rite and especially from the Neo-Catechumenate move- ment which has already begun to contaminate Byzantine rite services in neighbouring Slovakia. Today, there are at least three dioceses or eparchies of Mukačevo, The Greek Catholic one, which has been the principle object of our study, an Orthodox one attached to the Patriarchate of Moscow, and a newly founded Roman Catholic one. The Greek Catholic eparchy and the Orthodox epar- chy are both churches of the Rusyn people while the Latin rite Roman Catholics are chiefly Hungarians. The exact number of parishes and priests which the Greek Catholic ­Diocese of Mukačevo possesses is somewhat unclear since different sources offer different statistics. One source claims that in 1996 the church had 113 churches and 229 parishes. Eighty-one Sunday schools were operating and two . There were about 300,000 faithful, served by 116 priests. According to another source for the same year, 132 priests were active in 101 churches. According to a declaration of Bishop Semedi made in 1996, 264 Greek Catholic parishes had been registered but there were hardly more than one hundred parish churches. In more than half of the registered parishes, priests were still forced to celebrate in peoples’ homes or in the open air.

32 Šašik was at first appointed administrator apostolic ad nutum Sanctae Sedis and only later in 2010 ordinary of the Greek Catholic Diocese of Mukačevo.

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The most recent statistics, as of 2012, suggest that the eparchy has 417 par- ishes, 245 secular priests, and 20 religious priests. Certainly, the path of history traversed by the Rusyn people and their church structures was not an easy one. As the poet Pasternak put it – life is not a walk through a park.33 But like a wandering through a deep forest in the Carpathians, it has been a journey though deep shadows, but from time to time full of light and shade.

33 Žit’ – ne pole pereiti, in Russian. The original refers to a field rather than a park and is actually a Russian folk proverb.

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