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Founding conditions: controversial theology, Orthodoxy, Baroque era

The Kyiv College was founded in 1631 at the initiative of Archimandrite Petro S. Mohyla (ca. 1596–1647)[] by merging the school of the Kyiv Orthodox Brotherhood, which had been founded around 1615, and a school recently founded within the Monastery of the Caves itself. For his part Mohyla, who was elected metropolitan of Kyiv the following year, believed the foundation to have been one his main achievements. It was also a response to one of the principal challenges of his day. Clerical and aristocratic circles blamed the decline of the Orthodox Church in the territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which at the time included Kyiv, on poor education. Mohyla, himself the scion of a Moldavian princely dynasty, made significant contributions to the College from his personal fortune as well as providing the foundations of a library.¹

Before teaching could begin, however, there was considerable resistance to overcome, both among the Orthodox population at large and particularly among the conservative monks. Resistance also came from Zaporozhian Cossack² regiments active in Ukraine. These Cossacks increasingly came to regard themselves as defenders of Orthodoxy and maintained links with both ordinary monks and particular monasteries.³ These conflicts merit a brief discussion for the light they shed on the different views of the value of higher education held within the Orthodox Church. These contradictory views had first to be reconciled, and Mohyla's achievement, reflected in the College's founding philosophy, was to make forms of higher education palatable to the Orthodox world. In so doing, the Kyiv College laid the foundation for the emergence of a modern Orthodox theology. Part of this innovative approach – and accordingly viewed with suspicion by a good many contemporaries – was the visible adoption of Western forms of instruction and organisation. This remained controversial, but contrary to much past criticism, it would be too simplistic to speak of uncritical imitation.

In order to understand these debates and ultimately the founding idea of the Kyiv College, it is necessary to distinguish between knowledge of the faith, necessary to salvation, on the one hand and theological speculation on the other. While such a distinction was known in the West, the adoption of Western models of instruction and organisation called for the relation between these two elements to be redefined in accordance with the Orthodox tradition.

The first category, knowledge of the faith, was generally held to include catechetical knowledge – e.g. basic passages of scripture, Christian dogmas and norms, the creed and certain elementary forms of prayer – as well as certain liturgical formulas and canticles, which have always been at the heart of Orthodox worship. To bring this knowledge to the faithful on a large scale was considered a pastoral task; to "instruct the ignorant" was an act of charity. To explain such articles of faith intellectually was scarcely a consideration; this belonged to a second level, on which the tools and methods of the "secular sciences" – that is, of the liberal arts and classical, "pagan" philosophy – were employed in order to reach a more profound understanding of the faith. Both levels have always been familiar to the Orthodox tradition. As early as the 7th century, John Damascene (675–749) wrote of the utility the "secular sciences" might have for faith – albeit, of course, as in the West, as faith's "handmaidens". Yet distrust of such openness ran deep, especially in Eastern Christianity and especially in its mystical-ascetic monastic tradition. A broad current of thought with advocates in the Ukrainian lands and in Russia held that too much unguided knowledge was apt to harm the souls of the ordinary faithful. Instead, it preferred a simple piety that was above suspicions of heresy.

This assumption for some time continued to underpin the answer given by Orthodox theology to the controversial theology emanating from the West in the confessional age. Travelling across the vast territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this theology sooner or later reached Eastern Christendom, leading the Athonian monk Ivan Vishenskiĭ (ca. 1545–1620), Ukrainian by birth, to call the faithful to order. Was is not better, he posed the rhetorical question, to grow in piety and gain eternal life with the aid of the Psalter, the Octoechos (the Orthodox hymnal), and certain prayers and exercises than, led astray by Plato (ca. 427–347 BC) and Aristotle (ca. 384–322 BC), to attain supposed philosophical wisdom and yet be condemned to hell?⁴ There was an unmistakably anti-Western overtone to this question. Similar ideas regarding the "Latins" and their "sophistries" were already being expressed in 16th-century Muscovy.⁵ 

If Petro S. Mohyla and his collaborators took a different turn at this juncture, this is not to say that they rejected this division outright or that they necessarily held a higher view of science and human reasoning. What they maintained, simply put, was that the core substance of the Christian faith was too profound to be rationally apprehended in full and that efforts to do so should be aware of their limits. Yet they certainly were to be explained or even defended if required. The notion of "explaining" them presupposed their transmission at two levels, first as an introduction to their basic tenets and second as guidance in the appropriate use of "worldly arts and sciences", the better to defend the faith through the force of argument. This attitude emerged against the cultural backdrop of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its plural political structure. Particularly among the Commonwealth's elites, familiarity with classical literature and rhetorical ability were highly valued. By contrast, the adherents of the Eastern Church, of the "Greek religion", were often mocked for cleaving to a peasant faith, to a backward Church that "itself scarcely knows what it believes".⁶ Such mockery, which came particularly from the Jesuits as the Counter-Reformation gained pace, was directed at the secular elites of Orthodox faith in Poland-Lithuania and the clergy in equal measure.

Much as the curriculum taught by the Kyiv College is to be understood against the backdrop of the controversial theology of the confessional age, the adoption of the Western confessions' model of instruction and form of organisation served the externally defined purpose of explaining Orthodoxy to the faithful and defending it from attack. It was a matter, as the Byzantinist and historian Ihor Ševčenko (1922–2009) aptly put it, of "defeating the enemy by using the enemy's weapons".⁷ Later commentators, especially the Russian Orthodox Church historians of the 19th and early 20th century, were often highly critical of "Kyiv scholasticism" and of the "Jesuit influence" supposedly at work in the early Kyiv College. In fact, however, the Jesuits had merely perfected a model that could be found across Europe – including, in almost identical form, among the Protestant confessions. Secular benefactors also followed the model in establishing their own schools, a notable example being the Zamość Academy, founded by Grand Chancellor of the Crown Jan Zamoyski (1542–1605) in the late 16th century. Mohyla himself spent some time as a pupil at Zamość, making it all the more likely that he drew on it as a model for the Kyiv Academy. It should also be pointed out that the division between knowledge of the faith and secondary learning was also applied in the Western collegiate model. As the famous Ratio Studiorum of the Jesuits stipulated, "everything is to be carefully arranged in such a manner as to place piety at forefront of all studies".⁸ Regardless of a school's denomination, lessons were interspersed with regular prayers and worship services, which structured the school day and created an outward framework for studies. In Kyiv, the balance differed inasmuch as learning was directed less at guiding understanding than at performing an explanatory and to some degree "ornamental" function.⁹

From the outset, the Kyiv College made much use of Roman Catholic textbooks, Latin grammars and manuals of logic, and works of controversial theology.¹⁰ The much-used term "Kyiv scholasticism" was far from unfounded. However, scholasticism provided not so much rigid doctrines and ideologies as an art of debate to be cultivated among the scholars. The power of argument was always harnessed to the defence of a faith whose truth ultimately eluded rational comprehension – the point was rather to demonstrate that critical reason, properly applied, was unable to harm it. Disputation was regularly practised among the students of the Kyiv College, sometimes even being staged for the public in the manner of a theatrical performance, divided into several "acts" and with a chorus performing in the background and during intervals.¹¹ For all their intellectual substance, the books edited and published in 17th-century Kyiv¹² likewise testify to the Baroque celebration of the arts and to the apotheosis of the Russian (in the meaning of Kievan Rus') Orthodox Church for the sake of the supposedly "simple" verities of faith. Accordingly, even a critic of "Kyiv scholasticism" like Georges Florovsky (1893–1979) was compelled to differentiate:

In this manner were adopted and appropriated not only individual scholastic opinions and viewpoints but its entire psychology and intellectual habit. Of course, this was not "mediaeval scholasticism" but a resurrected scholasticism of the Counter-Reformation era …, a Tridentine scholasticism, a form of theological Baroque.¹³

This judgement, made over seventy years ago, today stands in need of qualification. While it is true that the Kyiv College and the manner in which theology was practised there – for the first time in Orthodoxy in the modern age – was fundamentally no different from its Western, Counter-Reformation counterparts, in Kyiv the balance between instruction in the articles of faith necessary for salvation on the one hand and intellectual reflection on the other was certainly tilted towards the former. Yet the foundation had certainly been laid for learning to be acquired and developed, and it is in any case another matter whether the "Orthodox balance" just described was maintained in all fields and courses, and regarding all authors. The model leaves scope for variation. Both their course outlines in philosophy and theology and their published writings confirm that Kyivan scholars were widely read in Western scholarship, sometimes moulding it into distinctly idiosyncratic syntheses. This applied to virtually every Western intellectual current since the late Middle Ages, from humanism, the Counter-Reformation and pedagogics to international law in the German-Dutch tradition and the German, French and Italian Enlightenment.

In the last third of the 17th century the Kyiv College, along with the lands of Right-bank Ukraine (i.e. west of the River Dnieper), became gradually absorbed in the Church and state of Muscovy. By this time, Western education and learning had long begun to be felt within the Orthodox Church of Russia. Although such influence was sometimes resisted from Moscow, it proved irreversible in the substance and organisation of scholarship as well as in the personal networks through which it travelled. It would be no exaggeration to state that the gates of Muscovy and of the Orthodox world were opened to the West long before the reforms of Tsar Peter I (1672–1725) and that Kyiv was instrumental in doing so.¹⁴

Institutional development, changing curricula (1631–1817)

Around the middle of 1632, once the dust of the founding phase had settled, the College's work could begin. Since initial shortcomings – in terms both of the library and teaching materials and of the teaching staff – could be remedied only gradually, instruction initially remained limited and only reached its full scale as the decade progressed. Some one hundred students are supposed to have been matriculated in the early years, the bulk of them sons of noble families resident in and around Kyiv. Yet since the school was intended from the outset to be open to members of all classes, its student body clearly also included members of non-aristocratic families, some of them Cossacks.¹⁵

A new kind of intellectual life emerged, with the College at its centre. When not occupied with devising curricula and teaching students, the Orthodox scholars gathered in Kyiv at Mohyla's invitation edited ecclesiastical texts and prepared books for publication. The Monastery of the Caves had for several years already operated its own printing press, with which the College's teachers now closely cooperated. The country's rulers – namely King Władysław IV (1595–1648) of Poland and his circle – regarded the establishment of an Orthodox school with suspicion, treating it as a potential competitor to Catholic colleges. This was due not least to the lobbying of Catholic orders, which were themselves trying to gain a foothold in Kyiv. In 1634 the king even suddenly ordered the closure of "Orthodox Latin schools". Yet Mohyla took no notice, instead succeeding in obtaining official permission for his school. This was, however, conditional on its remaining a "college", which meant that it was permitted to teach the liberal arts but not advanced courses in philosophy and theology.¹⁶

Even this condition was observed only incompletely. Over the following years, Mohyla succeeded in expanding the school and establishing a curriculum, which initially consisted of six consecutive classes. Instruction was centred on language and rhetoric. The flowering of rhetoric in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and in Baroque Europe more generally was also felt in the Kyiv College.¹⁷ The first year of courses, headed fara or analogia, usually taught reading and writing as well as the foundations of grammar. From the outset, instruction usually took place in several languages, for instance in Greek or Old Church Slavonic, but Latin and Polish were predominant into the 18th century. Rote learning and recitation played an important part. The second year consisted of the so-called infima course, which continued to teach basic grammar, while grammatica, the third year, concentrated on further reading and the formal-philological analysis of texts in the various languages of instruction. The first section of the curriculum concluded with the fourth year, synaxima, which included translation exercises but also catechism, basic arithmetic and (church) singing as well as, it seems, instrumental music.

Following the well-established scheme, the next two years concentrated on the humaniora, on instruction in poetics and rhetoric. Vocabulary, enunciation, rhythm and metre were taught in several languages. Students were instructed in literary forms: comedy, tragedy, elegy, idyll, satire, etc. Indeed, the curriculum strongly emphasised poetics: "Judging from the popularity of Poetics, the Kievan student was less a scholar and more an aspiring bard."¹⁸ The poetics course was probably taught in Polish and Latin, based – as in "Western" schools – on Polish-Latin texts.¹⁹ The curriculum was rounded off by a dedicated course on rhetoric, which taught the systematic development and exposition of speech. This course also included preliminary instruction in dialectics, which was intended to prepare students for speaking persuasively with sound foundations in philosophical and theological thought and argument.

The higher course of studies consisted of three years of training in philosophy followed by four years of theology. Philosophy had formed part of the curriculum from the outside, in defiance of the royal prohibition, and some sources suggest that a theological course was already taught between 1642 and 1646. Only around 1680, however – and thus under Russian rule – was regular instruction in theology established. The subject matter taught can be deduced from the library's holdings (as far as they can be established)²⁰ and by the manuscripts prepared by the instructors themselves. This evidence suggests that the philosophy taught was fundamentally Aristotelian, albeit mediated through late mediaeval Western interpreters and supplemented by the doctrines of Augustine (354–430), Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274), John Duns Scotus (ca. 1266–1308) and William of Occam (1285–1347). The curriculum also included humanists such as Lorenzo Valla (1447–1500), Erasmus (1469–1536)[] or, venturing into the sphere of Protestant learning, Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) []. Theological instruction was based on (far from uncritical) commentaries on Catholic theologians, including not only Thomas Aquinas but also Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) or the Polish Jesuit Tomasz Młodzianowski (1622–1686).²¹ The first attempt at independently systematising the theology of the Eastern Church was made in the 1640 Confessio Orthodoxa, a compendium produced by Kyiv theologians and structured in the manner of a catechism.²²

Endowments from individual benefactors allowed the College to experience several periods of flourishing; when these legacies ran dry in troubled times, it passed through extended dry spells. The contribution of Metropolitan Mohyla himself, who bequeathed considerable funds from his personal fortune when he died in January 1647, seems to have been instrumental in keeping the College afloat during its early years. Gradually, however, it began to attract support from the wider Kyivan aristocracy and from the elite of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. It is a testimony to the College's recognition even among the formerly hostile Cossacks that, in the post-1648 conflicts with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, they argued in favour of placing the College on an equal footing with Polish institutions. The Treaty of Hadiacz (1658) duly granted the Kyiv College the status of an academy and the permission to develop accordingly, with the academy of Cracow cited as a model in terms of status and structure. However, the treaty was not ratified by the Polish royal diet or Sejm, and it was only towards the end of the 17th century that the new status finally received official sanction.²³ Amid the turmoil of the wars between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Cossack army and the expanding empire of Muscovy in the second half of the 17th century, it was necessary temporarily to reduce and even to suspend teaching several times.

Generally speaking, the Cossack hetmans²⁴ took on the role of donors and benefactors in the Ukrainian territories since the second half of the 17th century. Most of the leading figures of the Cossack elite were graduates of the Kyiv College. However, relations between Kiev's ecclesiastical hierarchy, which had always been loyal to the Polish crown, and the Cossack elite, which was pushing for increased autonomy, continued to be marked by frequent tensions.²⁵ As early as 1654, under pressure from Hetman Bogdan Chmel'nyckyij (1595–1657), the College's teachers had grudgingly signed the Treaty of Pereyaslav, pledging loyalty to the Tsar in Moscow.²⁶ In 1667 the Treaty of Andrusovo divided the Ukrainian lands between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy, with Kyiv and the entirety of Right-bank Ukraine ceded to Moscow. This meant that the College was cut off from much of the land that had provided its income and that Polish students were henceforth excluded. By the final third of the 17th century, however, even the clerics and intellectuals of Kyiv began to accept that the College's future lay with Moscow. Publications such as the so-called "Sinopsis" of the Kyivan rector Innokentij Gizel'(1600–1683), produced in the 1670s, testify to the gradual acceptance of the Tsar's rule and of the College's new role within the Russian Church.²⁷ In 1686, a year after "perpetual peace" was concluded between Muscovy and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Kyiv eparchy was incorporated into the Russian Church of the Tsarist empire. By a decree of 1694, Tsar Ivan V (1666–1696) officially raised the College to the rank of an academy, a decision confirmed by Peter I in 1701.²⁸

This act also implied a concession to the Cossack hetman Ivan Mazepa (1644–1709), de facto ruler over Ukraine since 1687, with whom the tsars in Moscow had initially maintained friendly relations. In fact, the tsars' decrees merely gave official sanction to an established state of affairs. Since the early 1680s there had once more been sufficient staff and funds to resume full-scale teaching, and since that time documents refer to the institution as an "academy". Mazepa himself had been educated there, and his munificence extended not only to church-building but also to his alma mater, which by the early 18th century appears to have numbered some two thousand students. This "golden age" came to an abrupt end when, in the Great Northern War, Mazepa changed sides and allied himself with King Charles XII (1682–1782) of Sweden. Soon after the defeat of his forces at Poltava by Peter I in 1709, which Mazepa himself survived by only a few months,²⁹ a Russian army sacked Kyiv. In 1711 the rector at the time, Rafail Zaborovs'kyj (ca. 1676–1747), wrote of fewer than 200 students. Yet such a figure as Feofan Prokopovič (1681–1736) – himself a former rector of the Kyiv Academy and later archbishop of Novgorod – would, through his "Spiritual Regulation" of 1721, play a key role in the ecclesiastical and educational reforms of the reform-minded Tsar Peter I. Prokopovič's ideas about the Church and about (especially religious) education betray the influence of German political philosophy, Protestant ecclesiology and the French Enlightenment, which he first encountered at the Kyiv Academy.³⁰

The final phase of flowering began under Rafail Zaborovs'kyj, metropolitan of Kyiv from 1731 to 1742, and Hetman Danylo Apostol (1654–1734). By introducing courses in modern languages (including French and German) and Hebrew (of particular importance for biblical scholarship) as well as in history, mathematics and medicine, they modernised the curriculum in line with early Enlightenment precepts.³¹ In the early 1700s the highest authority in the Russian Church, the Holy Synod, decreed that the works of Christian Wolff (1679–1754) should form the foundation of philosophical instruction at Kyiv. From this point at the latest, Wolff's influence on Russian philosophy can be detected in manifold ways.³² In 1744 the Academy once again numbered more than 1100 students. Only the abolition of the Hetmanate – and with it the remnants of "Little Russian" autonomy – by Empress Catherine II (1729–1796)[] in 1764 largely deprived the Academy of its material and administrative foundations. Until the end of the 18th century it continued to function merely as a seminary for the Church, albeit still attracting a considerable number of students. The Academy was finally closed in 1817, only to be reopened two years later, as part of a general reform of Church education, as the Kyiv Theological Academy.

Networks: scholars and bishops, secular and temporal elites

Together with the printing press at the Monastery of the Caves, the Kyiv College formed an intellectual centre whose influence was felt throughout East European Orthodoxy while itself absorbing influences from nearly all centres of West European culture. The influence of the Kyiv College on the Orthodox Churches in the Romanian principalities and in Serbia, for instance – from both of which students are known to have come to Kyiv – is still understood only incompletely.³³ In fact, the network consisted of two main branches, one receptive – the result of studies abroad, the purchase of printed works and sometimes personal correspondence with the Latin West – and another that exercised an influence, sometimes dominant, over the substance and organisational forms of higher education that developed elsewhere in the Orthodox East. That the works of Kyivan scholars should exert a comparable influence in the West, by contrast, was the exception, one such case being the Confessio Orthodoxa compiled under Mohyla's supervision, which was long regarded an authoritative compendium of Orthodox theology,³⁴ or some of the works of Feofan Prokopovič that were translated into Western languages.³⁵

Exchange with the West was brought about largely through personal connections. Mohyla himself sent a number of able students to study in Latin Europe,³⁶ thereby establishing a precedent: henceforth, most Kyiv intellectuals would spend several years at Western universities. The list ran from Jesuit colleges in Rome through the Universities of Paris, Padua, Oxford and Cambridge to the intellectual centres of the early German Enlightenment, Leipzig, Jena and Halle, in the early 1700s. In the course of their travels, students were able to form their own sophisticated image of local conditions, each returning with his own mixture of positive impressions and sincere approval on the one hand and specific dislikes on the other. In the 18th century too students were expressly encouraged to round off their studies by going aboard. The fact that attending an institution of higher learning outside of Russia often required a conversion – in Poland, for instance, to Roman Catholicism or at least to the Uniate Church – seems not to have presented much of an obstacle into the first third of the 18th century. Only then do confessional differences appear to have hardened, making exchange more difficult.³⁷

On the other hand, in institutional terms, the Kyiv College was never meant to exist in isolation but rather was intended by its founder to serve as a model for similar institutions. Even Mohyla's statement of purpose, which preceded the founding act, refers to schools in the plural, to be established for the benefit of the Church.³⁸ However, other such initiatives – for instance in the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia or in Moldavia – did not produce lasting results. Similarly unsuccessful, at least in the short term, was the proposal for a school to be established in Moscow according to the Kyiv model, addressed by Mohyla to the Tsar in 1640.³⁹ Yet the example of Kyiv proved influential throughout the remainder of the 17th century, particularly in Muscovy, in spite of widely held reservations concerning the orthodoxy of their "South Russian" neighbours. In his profound reforms of Church life, Patriarch Nikon (1605–1681) drew heavily on models and precedents from Kyiv. Meanwhile, Moscow theologians gradually adopted the techniques of the Kyiv polemicists in their defence of the Orthodox faith against the West, regardless of these methods' ultimately "Western" derivation.⁴⁰

Nor could the Kyiv scholars be ignored when, following Patriarch Nikon's reforms in Moscow, improvements were undertaken to the Church's educational system. Although Nikon's successor Ioakim (1620–1690) said of Symeon Polotsky (1629–1680),⁴¹ who had come to Moscow from Kyiv, that somebody who had studied, however briefly, with the Jesuits could not be an truly Orthodox Christian, Polotsky not only became a key figure in the establishment of a school of higher learning at the Moscow Zaikonospassky Monastery but also taught the older children of Tsar Alexey.⁴² For a time, there was a controversy in Moscow between representatives of the Greco-Slavic current in education, e.g. the Greek Leichoudes brothers, and the Kyivan monks. Even before the reforms of Peter I the latter were clearly gaining the upper hand, and by the early 18th century the Academy had become a model for similar foundations throughout the empire.⁴³

The wide influence of the Kyiv Academy was due above all to a personal network that included both alumni and active teachers. Moreover, it served as an institutional example both for the expansion of higher ecclesiastical education in the Tsar's dominions and in the manner and subject of its teaching. The latter were also articulated in conceptual and programmatic writings, the most important of which is probably Prokopovič's aforementioned "Spiritual Regulation". A biographical encyclopaedia published a few years ago in Kyiv and covering important figures connected with the Academy in one way or another runs to 1500 entries for the period covered here, a number which, according to the editors, might very well have been larger still.⁴⁴ As already mentioned, alumni of the Academy were numerous among the leadership of Cossack Hetmanate. Some would later rise to positions in the political elite of the Tsarist empire, a notable example being Alexander Andreyevich Bezborodko (1747–1799), who became foreign minister under Catherine II in 1775.

By opening a new approach to intellectual labour in the service of Orthodoxy, the Kyiv College created a new intellectual type hitherto unfamiliar in the East Slavic world of Orthodox Christianity. Steps in a similar direction had already been made by its predecessors, for instance the Brotherhoods of Lviv and Vilnius or the Slavic-Greek academy founded in the Volhynian city of Ostroh by Prince Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski (1526–1608), although the latter had already ceased operations by 1610. Not least by offering material security, the wealthy Kyiv metropolitan Mohyla was able to attract this circle of Ruthenian⁴⁵ intellectuals at his new college. The Church historian Igor Smolitsch (1898–1970) characterised and criticised this type of "scholar-monk" which, while formally subject to monastic vows, often had little contact with the ascetic monastic life of the Eastern Church. These monks led the life not only of a scholar or teacher but also, by virtue of their administrative function within the College and their relations with secular elites, of an administrator or even politician.⁴⁶

These particular qualifications made the "scholar-monks" of Kyiv sought-after candidates for higher ecclesiastical offices in Muscovy. Although it was above all Tsar Peter I whose efforts to reform the Church depended strongly on Ukrainian clerics, several of them had already been made bishops in Muscovy before his reign. Well into the 18th century, the episcopate of the Russian Empire was staffed by Ukrainian monks, many of whom had not only trained in Kyiv but had also served the Academy as teacher, prefect or rector. Church leaders of this new type also introduced new ways of exercising their authority. The Kyiv-trained bishops were not only of a scholarly cast and strict in their moral and dogmatic views, they were also able administrators with a penchant for control and efficiency. As such, they often initiated reforms at the local level in the Russian Empire. This did not make them popular, and complaints about their strictness seem to have been legion. The image of the episcopal despot was further burnished by these clerics' origins in the middling or even higher nobility of the Ukrainian provinces, whose lavish lifestyle they tended to preserve. Yet scholarship has since come also to appreciate the positive aspects of the reforms implemented by Kyivan clerics within the Russian Church.⁴⁷

Nor should the Academy's role in training ordinary priests and other minor clerics be ignored, though few of them would have undergone the curriculum in its entirety. In the division, outlined above, between the basic tenets of religion on the one hand and higher learning on the other, the former was widely regarded as sufficient for the priesthood both by the candidates themselves and by the ecclesiastical authorities. Even this represented a significant advance over earlier times, when complaints about ignorant and unworthy parish priests were commonplace. Awareness of these deficiencies in the priesthood had been growing since the late 1600s, and the academies were assigned a special role in remedying them, first by the Church and later by the civil authorities. Before taking office, a priest elected by a parish had to prove to the Academy his familiarity with the fundamentals of the Christian faith and the Orthodox liturgy. If he fell short of the assembled scholars' expectations, he was forced to complete a remedial course lasting at least six weeks. Supplementary training often lasted longer, especially once the "Spiritual Regulation" and the ecclesiastical reforms begun by Peter I in 1721 raised the level of education expected of parish priests. While this affected the basic training at seminary level rather than teaching at the Academy itself, the seminaries – at least those in the "South Russian" eparchies – used textbooks produced by Kyiv scholars.⁴⁸

For all the influence exercised by the Kyiv Academy in its nearly two hundred years of existence in its original form, the picture also reveals certain limitations. It remained as rooted in Orthodox spirituality as it had been at its foundation, and its importance for the Orthodox Church continued to grow. Yet secular scholarship began to take a different turn in the mid-1700s, one that was followed in Kyiv only partially and idiosyncratically. Hryhorij Skovoroda (1722–1794), the "wandering philosopher", is one of the few important non-ecclesiastical scholars to have completed the Kyiv Academy's curriculum. His "spiritual anthropology" and the marked scepticism towards rationalism and the Enlightenment's faith in technology which run through his works can surely be traced to his training in Kyiv.⁴⁹ His great contemporary Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765), who had also been sent to Kyiv to study in 1733, was disappointed by the teaching he found there and turned his back on the Academy after just a few months.

Alfons Brüning

Appendix

Sources

[Anonymus]: Акты и документы, относящиеся к истории Киевской академии, Киев 1904, vol. 1–3 [Records and documents relating to the history of the Kyiv Academy, Kyiv 1904, vol. 1–3].

[Anonymus]: Киевский Собор 1691 г., in: Киевские епархиальные ведомости 8, 2 (1865), pp. 313–329 [The Synod of Kyiv, 1691, in: Records of the Kyiv Eparchy 8, 2 (1865), pp. 313–329].

[Anonymus]: Памятники временной комиссии по разбору древних актов, Киев 1840–1844, vol. 1–3 [Monuments of the provisional commission for the cataloguing of historical documents, Kyiv 1840–1844, vol. 1–3].

[Anonymus]: Treaty of Hadiacz, in: Записки Наукового Товариства ім. Т. Шевченка, Львів 1909, vol. 89, pp. 82–90 [Annals of the Taras Shevchenko Scientific Society, Lviv 1909, vol. 89, pp. 82–90].

Rothe, Hans (ed.): Sinopsis: Kiev 1681, Facsimile, Cologne 1983 (Bausteine zur Geschichte der Literatur bei den Slaven 17).

Literature

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Berezhnaya, Liliya: Topography of Salvation: "Kyiv – The New Jerusalem" in the Ruthenian Literary Polemics (End of Sixteenth Beginning of the Seventeenth Century), in: David Frick et al. (eds.): Litauen und Ruthenien: Studien zu einer transkulturellen Kommunikationsregion (15.–18. Jahrhundert), Wiesbaden 2007, pp. 246–271.

Brüning, Alfons: Confessio Orthodoxa und europäischer Konfessionalismus: Einige Anhaltspunkte zur Verhältnisbestimmung, in: Robert O. Crummey et al. (eds.): Russische und ukrainische Geschichte vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden 2001 (Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 58), pp. 207–221.

Brüning, Alfons: On Jesuit Schools, Scholasticism and the Kyivan Academy: Some Remarks on the Historical and Ideological Background of its Founding, in: Kyivs'ka Akademiia 4 (2007), pp. 5–19. URL: https://ekmair.ukma.edu.ua/handle/123456789/7216 [2025-02-20]

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Notes

1. ^{^} See the testament of Petro Mohyla, in: [Anonymus], Monuments of the provisional commission 1844, vol. 2, p. 153 (Cyrillic).
2. ^{^} The Zaporozhian Cossacks were an immigrant group which – as is typical for thinly-populated frontier territories – was socially and militarily self-organised. It was Polish and particularly Ruthenian in origin. In the Turkic and Tatar languages, the word "kazak" mean something like "free warrior". Self-governing Cossack entities "behind the rapids" (Ukr. za porohu) of the Dnieper first appeared in late 15th century. Since the end of 16th century their social formation had developed to a point that allows us to speak of the parallel existence of a Cossack political organization and the Polish-Lithuanian state system. The Polish-Lithuanian state sought to incorporate the Cossacj regiments into its military system but was only partially successful (see also note 24).
3. ^{^} See Plokhy, Cossacks and Religion 2001; Drozdowski, Religia i kozaczyzna 2008.
4. ^{^} See Golubev, Petr Mogila 1883, vol. 1, p. 417 (Cyrillic); Golubev, Petr Mogila 1883, vol. 1, appendix XVIII.
5. ^{^} This attitude goes back to so-called apophatic ("non-knowing") theology, which is highly regarded in the Eastern Church and, following the writings of Neoplatonism and above all of Dionysius the Areopagite in the early 6th century, excludes the possibility of making valid statements about God and ultimate things. Instead, the path of mystical contemplation is recommended. On this, including the traces of this tradition in Russia, see Goerdt, Russische Philosophie 1984, pp. 317–335.
6. ^{^} Frick, "Foolish Rus" 1994.
7. ^{^} "The enemy was to be fought with the enemy's weapons." in: Ševčenko, The Many Worlds 1984, p. 15.
8. ^{^} See Kessler, Die Studienordnung der Jesuiten 1999, p. 249.
9. ^{^} For more detail on this background and the circumstances of the foundation see Brüning, On Jesuit Schools 2007.
10. ^{^} On this see Charipova, Latin Books 2006; see also Sydorenko, The Kievan Academy 1977, pp. 125–129.
11. ^{^} Charipova, Latin Books 2006, p. 53.
12. ^{^} Among the by now numerous studies on individual book publications and on the educational programme of the Kyiv College more generally see e.g. Pylypiuk, Eucharisterion Albo Vdiačnost 1984; Berezhnaya, Topography of Salvation 2007.
13. ^{^} Florovskij, Paths 1937, pp. 51f. (Cyrillic).
14. ^{^} The standard work on "Little Russian" (i.e. Ukrainian and Ruthenian) influence on the culture of the Tsarist empire is still Charlampovič, Little Russian influences 1914 (Cyrillic). On the controversies with the West that this mediation sometimes involved see Torke, Moskau und sein Westen 1996. The philosophical and, since the political transformation of 1991, theological concepts of the Kyiv Academy have been the subject of numerous studies. An overview of the reception and adaptation of this material can be found in Ničik / Stanislavs'kyj, The Kyiv Mohyla Academy 2003a (Cyrillic).
15. ^{^} Charipova, Latin Books 2006, p. 48.
16. ^{^} See Golubev, Petr Mogila 1898, vol. 2, pp. 92–95 (Cyrillic); Sydorenko, The Kievan Academy 1977, pp. 36ff.
17. ^{^} Laplanche, Von der Dialektik zur Rhetorik 1992; on instruction and the curriculaum at the Kyiv Academy, building on earlier accounts, see Ničik / Stanislavs'kyj, The Kyiv Mohyla Acdademy 2003b (Cyrillic).
18. ^{^} Sydorenko, The Kievan Academy 1977, p. 115.
19. ^{^} Łużny, Autoren 1966, pp. 22–107 (Polish).
20. ^{^} A major fire in 1780 destroyed large parts of the library, so that only a fraction of the titles that probably once existed can be identified. This attempt is discussed in Charipova, Latin Books 2006, esp. pp. 125–152 and in the appendix pp. 180–231.
21. ^{^} Cracraft, Theology at the Kievan Academy 1984.
22. ^{^} Several possible sources of influence are discussed in the scholarship, but the idea that they were absorbed uncritically has been largely discredited. See e.g. Korzo, The "Orthodox Confession" 2002 (Polish). On its emergence and context see Brüning, Confessio Orthodoxa 2002.
23. ^{^} See Paragraph 1 of the treaty. At the same time, the other schools – particularly those of the Jesuits – were to be moved from Kyiv to other locations. The treaty was signed between representatives of the Polish crown and Ivan Verhovs'kyj, the successor to the Cossack leader Bohdan Chmelnyc'kyj (d. 1658). It referred to the Ruthenian Cossacks as the "third nation" in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth alongside Poles and Lithuanians. The Sejm made acceptance of the treaty conditional on significant changes, meaning that hostilities soon resumed. The text is published e.g. in [Anonymus], Treaty of Hadiacz 1909, vol. 89, pp. 82–90.
24. ^{^} In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the title "Hetman" denoted the supreme military leader, while among the Cossacks, it could also refer to a political leader more generally. The etymology of the word is unclear, though a derivation from the German "Hauptmann" has been suggested, coming via Czech Hussites. The "Hetmanate" was the name given to the semi-autonomous Cossack state that had separated from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and continued to exist, under the Tsars, in the territory of modern Ukraine into the mid-1700s. Its elite, the staršyna, gradually a developed a distinct economic and social identity. See Subtelny, Ukraine 1994, esp. pp. 158–200.
25. ^{^} Gajecky, The Kiev Mohyla Academy 1984, pp. 81–92.
26. ^{^} Plokhy, Cossacks and Religion 2001, pp. 246–261; Gajecky, The Kiev Mohyla Academy 1984, pp. 83–85.
27. ^{^} Rothe, Sinopsis 1983; Gajecky, The Kiev Mohyla 1984, p. 86.
28. ^{^} [Anonymus], The decrees of 1694 and 1701, in: Monuments of the provisional commission 1840–1844, vol. 2, pp. 488–497 (Cyrillic).
29. ^{^} On Mazepa and his role as benefactor of the Kyiv Academy see Chyžnjak, Mazepa Ivan Stepanovyč 2001, pp. 342–345 (Cyrillic); also Tairova-Jakovleva, Ivan Mazepa 2011, pp. 226–229 (Cyrillic).
30. ^{^} Lytvynov, Prokopovyč (Cerejs'kyj) Jelizar (Elysij) 2001, pp. 444–446 (Cyrillic). But cf. also Härtel, Byzantinisches Erbe 1970.
31. ^{^} Chyžnjak, Monastic name Rafail 2001, pp. 213f. (Cyrillic).
32. ^{^} Abaschnik, Christian Wolff und die Schulphilosophie 2010; on the influence of the German Enlightenment and natural philosophy see Ničik / Stanislavs'kyj, The Kyiv Mohyla Acdademy 2003a, pp. 487f. (Cyrillic).
33. ^{^} Ničik / Stanislavs'kyj, The Kyiv Mohyla Acdademy 2003a, pp. 495–505 (Cyrillic); Dzjuba, The Kyiv Mohyla Acdademy 2012 (Cyrillic).
34. ^{^} For details see Brüning, Confessio Orthodoxa 2002.
35. ^{^} See Ničik / Stanislavs'kyj, The Kyiv Mohyla Acdademy 2003a, pp. 488, 492 (Cyrillic).
36. ^{^} Golubev, Petr Mogila 1883, vol. 1, pp. 424–427 (Cyrillic).
37. ^{^} Systematic studies on this question are still outstanding. See e.g. [Anonymus], Records and documents 1904, vol. 1, p. 213 (Cyrillic); Jaremenko, Inter-confessional relations 2003, p. 128 (Cyrillic); Brüning, Religious Conversions 2012, pp. 549f.
38. ^{^} [Anonymus], Monuments of the provisional commission 1840–1844, vol. 2, p. 93 (Cyrillic); Golubev, Petr Mogila 1883, vol. 1, pp. 433f. (Cyrillic).
39. ^{^} See Charlampovič, Little Russian influences 1914, pp. 115f. (Cyrillic); Scheliha, Russland und die orthodoxe Universalkirche 2004, pp. 339f.
40. ^{^} Charlampovič, Little Russian influences 1914, pp. 149–249, 250–366 (Cyrillic); Oparina, Ivan Nasedka 1998 (Cyrillic).
41. ^{^} Of Belarusian origin, Polockij in Russian transliteration.
42. ^{^} Charipova, Latin Books 2006, p. 43; Scheliha, Russland und die orthodoxe Universalkirche 2004, pp. 355–377.
43. ^{^} For a detailed account see Scheliha, Russland und die orthodoxe Universalkirche 2004, pp. 378–441; Bryner, Der geistliche Stand 1982, pp. 93–97.
44. ^{^} Chyžnjak, The Kyiv Mohyla Academy 2001 (Cyrillic); see also Jaremenko, KMA 2007 (Cyrillic).
45. ^{^} Scholarly discourse has come to adopt the term "Ruthenian" to refer to the East Slavic inhabitants of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the forerunners of modern-day Ukrainians and Belarusians. By the same token, "Ruthenian" also refers to the East Slavic language that was the ancestor of today's Ukrainian and Belarusian languages.
46. ^{^} Smolitsch, Geschichte der russischen Kirche 1964, vol. 1, pp. 389ff.
47. ^{^} For a detailed account, less critical than that given by Smolitsch, see Charlampovič, Little Russian influences 1914, pp. 505–550 (Cyrillic) and Bryner, Der geistliche Stand 1982, pp. 66–70; more recently Michels, Ruling Without Mercy 2003.
48. ^{^} A synod of the Kyiv Eparchy refers, among others, to works by Peter Mohyla (his missal of 1646) and by Innokentij Gizel', the former rector of the Academy, see [Anonymus], The Synod of Kyiv 1691, 1865 (Cyrillic); more generally on ecclesiastical education before and after the Petrine reforms see Smolitsch, Geschichte der russischen Kirche 1964, pp. 430f.; Bryner, Der geistliche Stand 1982, pp. 98–116.
49. ^{^} See Goerdt, Russische Philosophie 1984, pp. 167, 203–215.