Shevchenko Scientific Society conference focuses on Union of Brest (11/03/96)

Shevchenko Scientific Society conference focuses on Union of Brest

by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj
Toronto Press Bureau

TORONTO - With a one-day conference held at the University of Toronto Sanford Fleming Building on September 12, the Canadian chapter of the Shevchenko Scientific Society commemorated the 400th anniversary of the Union of Brest and the 350th anniversary of the Union of Uzhhorod.

Consummated at a sobor in Brest (Berestia) on October 16-20, 1596, the ecclesiastical treaty brought a section of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church into the orbit of the Roman Holy See, creating what became known as the Uniate, or Greek-Catholic Church.

As Shevchenko Scientific Society President Dr. Wolodymyr Mackiw noted in his introduction to the proceedings, the irony of this act of union is that it codified the divisions among the Ukrainian people who, as a stateless nation, grew more and more subject to the influences exerted upon them by the Polish Commonwealth, the Vatican, Muscovy and Constantinople.

And yet, the conference's first speaker, Dr. Frank Sysyn, director of the Peter Jacyk Center for Historical Research at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, in a paper titled "National Consciousness at the Turn of the 16th and 17th Centuries," stressed that questions concerning confessional allegiances (Orthodox versus Greek-Catholic or Uniate) actually helped crystallize concepts of national identity in Ukrainians.

While many historians contend that national consciousness as such is a strictly modern idea that did not emerge until the early to mid-19th century, Dr. Sysyn countered that the concept of "nation" appeared in Ukraine in the mid- to late 16th century, and it was then that the seeds of ethnic and political identification were sown.

Dr. Sysyn pointed out that the cultural and ethnic identities of Ukrainians and Belarusians (then known collectively as "Ruthenians") were basically fused, but signs of differentiation had begun to emerge at the time of and after the union. In fact, the historian contended that support for the Uniate Church was initially much stronger among Belarusians.

Dr. Sysyn said that in some circles, particularly among Catholic polemicists, Ruthenian identity was thought to be closely tied to Orthodoxy. However, the historian said, among the earliest attempts to differentiate religious and national identities was formulated by Meletii Smotrytsky, a thinker whose confessional allegiances shifted often during his lifetime (1577-1633) from the Orthodox, to the Uniate, then back.

Dr. Sysyn said this intellectual see-sawing led Smotrytsky to focus on ancestral "blood" ties as a determinant of Ruthenian identity.

Another important figure, in Dr. Sysyn's estimation, was Adam Kysil, a statesman of the immediate pre-Khmelnytsky period, who insisted on the necessity of a single united "Ruthenian Church" and deplored the cultural decline caused by religious strife. Dr. Sysyn said Kysil despaired over the lines of conflict in Ukrainian society drawn by the Union of Brest.

Dr. Sysyn highlighted a positive aspect of attempts to integrate with the Polish order, in that Polish aristocratic insistence on citizenship and independence from one's monarch was decidedly more progressive than the Muscovite absolute fealty to the tsar.

Dr. Sysyn contended that the Ukrainian framers of the Union of Brest although they were not supported by the majority of the Ukrainian nobility or clergy and the grassroots, were primarily concerned with cultural and "national" concerns, because they sought to secure equal rights for themselves and their compatriots within a legal framework, rather than with questions of "religious universality."

The historian added that the Orthodox reaction to the union also served to sharpen concepts of nationhood, particularly among Lviv's burghers. Dr. Sysyn said Orthodox clergymen took to writing Kozak chronicles in a religious light, in some sense to bring the Hetmanate and the Zaporozhians over to their side of the theologiccal struggle.

History of Church schism

The Rev. Petro Bilaniuk, professor emeritus of theology and Church history at the University of Toronto, provided some religious historical background for the Union of Brest and shed some light on the rather ambivalent nature of the Vatican's "unifying" impulses.

In a paper titled "The Greco-Roman Sobor in Nicea, the Nymphaion of 1234 and the Final Schism between the Roman and Byzantine Churches," Prof. Bilaniuk illustrated his contention that, in terms of canon law, no act of union had been required of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, because none of its hierarchs had ever made any formal declaration of secession from the "Universal (Catholic) Church."

Prof. Bilaniuk also stressed that schisms and conflicts over heresies in the realm of organized Christianity were the norm rather than the exception from the earliest days of apostolic missions, and that the commonly accepted date of the schism, 1054, is inaccurate.

Prof. Bilaniuk marshaled his mastery of Church arcana to paint a picture of the Medieval Vatican's harsh dogmatism and readiness to excommunicate all and sundry as the source of many conflicts.

Prof. Bilaniuk asserted that the Papal States' sponsorship of a rapacious Crusade resulted in the single most traumatic event leading to the eventual schism. In 1024, before any Mongols got to it, Constantinople/Byzantium was sacked by Crusaders who destroyed the city's churches, trampled icons, defiled graves and assaulted members of monastic orders.

He then provided a detailed account of the boisterous three-day Church Council held 30 years later that, in his opinion, led to the Great Schism. In Nicea, Prof. Bilaniuk related, "while the Greeks (legates of the Byzantine Church) showed maturity and restraint, the Papal legates persisted in confusing spiritual obedience with canonical submission."

Prof. Bilaniuk placed responsibility for the schism squarely on Rome's shoulders, quoting the final declaration of the papal legates, in which they asserted, "We separate from you, as you are heretics and anathema."

And yet, the Toronto-based Church historian cited the coronation of King Danylo of Halych as evidence that "the Ukrainian Church of Kyiv-Halych paid no heed to the schism between the Greeks and the Latins," and added that Kyiv's hierarchs fully accepted the resolutions adopted at the Council of Florence in 1439, whose provisions, he claimed, were adhered to right up until the Union of Brest.

In conclusion, Prof. Bilaniuk asserted that "from the time of the apostles to the Union of Brest, the Rus'-Ukrainian Church was never in schism with either the Eastern or Western Churches, since it never issued any formal acts or declarations to that effect," and that the subsequent (1646) Union of Uzhhorod, was but a regional reaffirmation of the Union of Brest, the decisions of the Council of Florence, and the reaffirmation of the existence of a single, united, holy Catholic Apostolic Church and its Orthodoxy.

Legal aspects of the union

Prof. Ihor Monchak, a lecturer at the Lviv Theological Academy, formerly an instructor at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Rome and the University of Ottawa, provided a nuts-and-bolts view of the agreement entered into by the "Kyivan Church" and the Holy See.

This aspect of the canonical treaty was of particular importance for Prof. Monchak, who stressed that it was "an agreement, not a declaration of submission." The Montreal-based Church historian likened the Union of Brest to the Treaty of Pereiaslav, signed by Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and representatives of Tsar Aleksei of Muscovy in 1654, which the latter used to subvert the autonomy of his weaker partner.

Prof. Monchak explained that the preconditions assuring the Ukrainian Church of its rights and autonomy (referred to as "the Articles") were never formally disavowed or abrogated by the Vatican, but that over the years the Curia applied pressure to individual bishops to back down from their adherence to their rite and independence.

Specifically, Prof. Monchak said the papal bull proclaiming the union (which was issued a full 10 months prior to the sobor in Brest, in December 1595), dropped the various preconditions agreed upon from the text. In addition, the text read that "permission" to use Church Slavonic and adhere to the Eastern Rite was granted, while the original had stipulated a "guarantee of rights" to do so.

Prof. Alexander Baran, a historian from the University of Manitoba, then provided a factual account of the sobor in Uzhhorod of 1646, which he described as a Transcarpathian outgrowth of the Union of Brest. Prof. Baran also provided a brief historical sketch of the Mukachiv Eparchy's tumultuous history.

The Rev. Hryhoriy Kutash, a lecturer at St. Andrew's College in Winnipeg, provided an Orthodox 20th century perspective on the issue. Compared to the other presentations, however his address was more of a sermon on the desirability of unity and a plea for mutual tolerance and understanding than a substantive examination of the issues facing the Ukrainian Orthodox and Catholic Churches today.