The President and Fellows of Harvard College The Greek Catholic Church in Galicia, 1848-1914 Author(s): JOHN-PAUL HIMKA Reviewed work(s): Source: Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1/4, Ukrainian Church History (2002-2003), pp. 245-260 Published by: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41036853 . Accessed: 03/03/2013 09:30 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 on Sun, 3 Mar 2013 09:30:43 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The GreekCatholic Church in Galicia, 1848-1914 JOHN-PAUL HIMKA In 1848, according to eparchial schematisms,there were 1,587 Greek Catholic parishes in Galicia embracing2,149,383 faithful.1The archbishopof Lviv and metropolitanof Halych was MykhaïlLevytsTcyi, who was alreadyquite advanced in age and made his residence in the village of Univ. The day-to-dayadministra- tionof Lviv eparchywas entrustedto suffraganbishops: HryhoriiIakhymovych (1841-1848), Ioann BokhensTcyi(1850-1857), and Spyrydon Lytvynovych (1857-1858). On 5 September 1848 Iakhymovychbecame bishop of Przemysl (Peremyshl),succeeding Ioann SnihursTcyiwho had died in the previous year. However, for most of 1848-1849 Iakhymovychremained in Lviv to take part in the momentouspolitical events of those years of upheaval.2 The year 1848 markedthe startof a new period in the historyof the Greek Catholic Church in Galicia. No substantiveinternal changes occurred within the Church in thatyear, but 1848 was a turningpoint because withit began the Greek Catholic Church's fatefulinvolvement in Ruthenianpolitics.3 The year 1848 was, of course, one of revolutionthroughout Europe and it had immense repercussionsfor the Greek Catholic Ruthenianpopulation of Galicia. In thatyear the Rutheniansformed their first political organization,the Supreme Ruthenian Council (Holovna Rus'ka Rada), and published their firstnewspaper, Zoria Halyts'ka;most importantly, in 1848 serfdomwas abolished,thus freeing the mass of theRuthenian population for the tremendous social and culturaladvancement thatwould markthe remainingdecades of Austrianrule. The Greek Catholic clergyplayed a leading role in Ruthenianpolitics during the revolutionof 1848-1 849.4 Membershipin the Supreme RuthenianCouncil was restrictedto Greek Catholics. The council firstmet in the consistoryof St. George's Cathedraland laterin theGreek Catholic seminary.Its branchesoutside Lviv were organized to coincide with Greek Catholic diocesan deaneries. The HarvardUkrainian Studies XXVI (1-4) 2002-2003: 245-60. This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Mar 2013 09:30:43 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 246 HIMKA presidentof thecouncil was Bishop Iakhymovych,one of thevice presidentswas the canon Mykhail Kuzemsicyi,and one of the secretariesthe canon Mykhail MalynovsTcyi.Of 66 council members,19 were priestsand 10 theologystudents. The council announced as its primarygoal the acquisition of equal rightsfor the Greek Catholic Church.Of 25 Rutheniandeputies elected to the constituent Austrianparliament (Reichstag), 8 were priests.The involvementof the Greek Catholic clergyin Rutheniannational politics duringthe revolution was so pro- nouncedthat many spokesmen of therival Polish movementin Galicia dismissed the Ruthenianmovement as simply a clerical intrigue.Greek Catholic priests active in theSupreme Ruthenian Council workedfor the partition of Galicia into separatePolish and Ruthenianprovinces, supported the aspirations of thenewly emancipatedpeasantry to own forestsand pastures,and remainedunswervingly loyal to the Habsburg court. Afterthe defeat of therevolution, during the decade of neoabsolutism,political lifecame to a standstill.Such Ruthenianpolitical representation as existedin the 1850s was limitedto the higherclergy of the Greek Catholic Church in Lviv. In 1850, largelythrough the initiativeof Bishop Iakhymovych,the Ruthenians obtainedthe emperor's agreement in principleto theestablishment of a thirdepar- chy in Stanyslaviv(but thiswas to remaina dead letteruntil the 1880s). In 1852 theysucceeded in reopeningthe Greek Catholic seminaryresidence in Vienna, which had been closed in 1848. In 1859, when Count Agenor Goluchowski, the governorof Galicia who was soon to become ministerof the interior,tried to impose the Latin alphabet on the Ruthenians,Greek Catholic ecclesiastics, includingBishops Iakhymovychand Lytvynovych,were instrumentalin preserv- ing thetraditional Cyrillic alphabet. During the 1850s theGreek Catholic clergy also establishedhundreds of Ruthenianparish schools, wherecantors provided peasants witha primaryeducation. MetropolitanLevytsTcyi, who had been elevated to the cardinalatein 1856,5 passed away on 14 January1858. HryhoriiIakhymovych replaced him as arch- bishop of Lviv and metropolitanon 23 March 1860. In the same year Toma PoliansTcyireplaced Iakhymovychas bishop of Przemysl. The tenureof MetropolitanIakhymovych was short(he died on 29 April 1863), but eventful.It saw the restorationof constitutionalpolitics, as the Habsburg monarchysought to reformitself in thewake of defeatin theItalian war of 1859. One symptomof the new orderwas a revival of the Ruthenianpress in Galicia. The newspaper Slovo began to appear in January1861. At firstit enjoyed the moraland financialsupport of MetropolitanIakhymovych, but his attitudecooled to thepaper when itbegan to criticizethe Greek Catholic higherclergy. Electoral politicswas also revived,and a numberof Greek Catholic priestsacquired seats in theGalician diet,including Canon MalynovsTcyi.The greatissue of the 1860s was the restructuringof the monarchy.The Ruthenianleadership, which was This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Mar 2013 09:30:43 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions GREEK CATHOLIC CHURCH IN GALICIA, 1848- 1914 247 concentratedin the Lviv consistory,submitted a series of (ultimatelyfruitless) memorandato the emperorand his ministersreiterating the Ruthenians'desire to see Galicia partitioned,stressing their loyalty to the centralgovernment, and importuningthe governmentnot to favorthe Poles. The early 1860s also saw the beginningsof a sharppolitical cleavage within theRuthenian movement between Russophiles and Ukrainiannational populists (narodovtsi).6The higherGreek Catholic clergy considered both movements extremist,the Russophiles because theygravitated toward Russian Orthodoxy, and the national populists because they flirtedwith liberalism and admired the Ukrainianpoet Taras Shevchenko in spite of anti-Catholicpassages in his writings. Linked to, but not entirelyidentical with, the nascent Russophile movement was a movementwithin the clergy to purifythe Ruthenianrite of Latinizations.7 The more radical of these ritual puristssought to bring liturgicalpractices in the Greek Catholic Church closer to conformitywith practices prevailing in the Russian OrthodoxChurch. The radical puristspublished theirviews in the newspaperSlovo, which soon developed a palpably Russophile orientation.The political strugglewith the Latin-ritePoles fuelled the passions of the purists, who began to differentiatethemselves emphaticallyfrom the Latin clergy by growingbeards, donning Orthodox-stylevestments and headgear,and making demonstrativeuse of the three-barredcrosses thatRoman Catholics generally associated withOrthodoxy. These developmentscaused concern in Rome. The Vaticanremembered that a ritualpurification movement had preceded the conversion of the Belarusian and Right-Bank Ukrainian Church to Orthodoxyin 1839. The infatuationof elements of the Galician clergy with thingsOrthodox suggested the danger of anotherdefection to schism.Moreover, the Vatican was perturbedby theincreas- ing influencethat nationalism was acquiring among the Greek Catholic clergy. The greatestenemy of thepapacy at thattime was the Italian movement,and the Vatican was on principleopposed to every species of nationalism,let alone one thatseemed capable of drawingthe clergy into schism. The Galician administra- tion was also disturbedby the movementfor ritual purification, and in 1862 the presidiumof the Galician vice-regency(namisnytstvo, Statthalte rei) instructed Metropolitan Iakhymovychto be on guard against priests altering liturgical practicesbefore the changes had been legally sanctionedby the Church. In 1862 the Vatican divided the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith into two units,one of which was the Oriental Congregation,with responsibilityfor the affairs of theEastern-rite Catholic Churches(it laterbecame a completelyseparate congregation). Among thefirst tasks that the Oriental Con- gregationundertook was thepreparation of a legal agreementbetween the Greek and Roman Catholic bishops in Galicia on mattersof contentionbetween them, This content downloaded on Sun, 3 Mar 2013 09:30:43 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 248 HIMKA includingchange of riteand the determinationof the