How Ukrainians have developed tolerance for other
religions
ADORATION OF THE MAGI. 18th century baroque icon. The characters are portrayed
with a likeness of contemporary Ukrainians, with Cossack mustache
Various forms of Christianity, paganism, Judaism, and Islam coexisted in
the territory of the modern Ukraine since ancient times. In later periods and
in modern times, a number of other beliefs were added to the list. This created
a unique environment where different religions coexisted peacefully in the same
area, while tolerance became an inherent feature of the Ukrainian national
character. Besides, Ukraine never had religious wars. Another national
Ukrainian tradition is horizontal interaction between society and the church:
it ensured twoway influence of the church on the laity and vice versa. This
distinguishes Ukraine from the vertical traditions that existed in Rome,
Constantinople, and later in Moscow.
The Symphony of Church and State, adapted from the Byzantine Empire and
still viable in Russia that likes to boast of its "Third Rome"
status, the secularism and atheism of the Soviet period, and the European
trends of post-secularism when religion gradually stepped down from the public
and political arena, becoming a private matter – all these models of
interaction between the society and religious organizations either existed
traditionally or are present in today's Ukraine in one form or another,
accounting for that specific Ukrainian attitude toward religion and the Church
as an institution that is markedly noticeable to this day.
SYMPHONY AND THE RULE OF ELECTION
The system of church-state relations of Kyivan Rus developed upon the
final introduction of Christianity was brought from the Byzantine Empire, along
with its religious tradition. It was the practice of the "Symphony of
Church and State" prescribed in the sixth paragraph of the Code of Emperor
Justinian, whereby the State and the Church were declared to be the two divine
gifts to humanity that should exist in perfect harmony with each other. While
the Church takes care of the works of God, the State is responsible for the
worldly matters and, at the same time, for the protection of the Church dogma
and the priesthood that ensures the compliance of public life with religious
prescriptions. In the times of Yaroslav the Wise, the institutions and
structures necessary for the activities of the local church were formed, and a
Metropolitan arch-see was established at the St. Sofia Cathedral in Kyiv. In
1051, Metropolitan Hilarion, a local, was elected to head the Kyiv archdiocese,
becoming the first church leader of the Kyivan Rus. At first, bishops were
elected by the Bishops' Council, but later a tradition was established whereby
local princes and other local authorities determined the nominees for
ordination. The tradition of moving eparches from one see to another did not
exist in the medieval Kyivan Metropolia. At the same time, every town had its
own bishop or metropolitan, which made the status of the head of a diocese
higher than that in Byzantium. Bishops were assisted by the clergy acting on
the basis of customary law. These were the priests with the highest available
levels of education and the monks headed by an Archpriest.
They assisted the bishop during various religious ceremonies, sat in
judgment, and managed the property of the diocese.
The Symphony of Church and State, while proclaiming the two parties to
this relationship to be equal and equivalent, meant in practice the
predominance of only one of them over the political and social life. This gave
rise to the "Papa-Caesarism" phenomenon, when the church clergy assumed
the power of political governance, or to "Caesaropapism," when the
church was subordinated to secular rulers and served their interests. Depending
on the prevailing trend, the Church had the status of either the ruling or a
subordinate institution. In the Ukrainian territory that was part of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the above practices coexisted at the turn of
the Middle Ages and the early modern period (though their forms differed from
those of Western Europe and Muscovy). A distinctive feature was the "right
of patronage," when possession of churches and monasteries was granted to
the clergy by the king, magnates or noblemen who concentrated in their hands
the ownership of the Church property and its lands. This allowed them to impose
their will or denominational preferences, and even to sell the highest clerical
posts. At the Vilnius Church Council of 1509, convened at the initiative of the
Kyiv Metropolitan Joseph Soltan, a rule was adopted that condemned the Symphony
and the use of the right of patronage for the appointment and ordination of
clergy, and those ordained for money were excommunicated.
ICON OF ST. BARBARA THE GREAT MARTYR. Early 19th century, Transcarpathia. Likeness to real life is
typical of modern Ukrainian iconography
At about the same time, the tradition of the Kyivan Orthodox Metropolia
returned to election of the clergy for offices within the church. Eparches were
elected by councils, where laymen also had voting rights.
Priests and deacons were elected at the meetings of parishioners.
Special agreements were made, often in writing, stipulating the terms of
holding specific clerical posts. In the 18th century, a parish "choice" was
used, which was a special deed confirming the community's agreement to accept a
person as a member of the clergy. The electivity extended to monasteries, where
archimandrites and abbots were elected. Such practice was characteristic, in
particular, of Kyiv monasteries, where both secular clergy and laypeople took
part in the elections of their heads. The participation of laypeople in the
elections of church clergy goes back to the apostolic times, when the Apostles
along with the lay people elected two candidates and cast lots between them.
The electivity of the clergy at all levels was carefully preserved by the Kyiv
Metropolia and distinguished it from the Moscow and even the Constantinople
Churches, where bishops and priests are appointed to this day. In the 6th century
Byzantium, the Justinian Code was enacted, whereby 2 or 3 bishop nominees were
elected by higher clergy and influential local officials, but the final choice
was left to the Metropolitan or the Patriarch. This system was borrowed in its
entirety by Muscovy, but when absolute monarchy was established there, it lost
any signs of electivity. From the mid-15th century, bishops and even the
Metropolitan in Muscovy were elected "with the help of the Holy Spirit and
at the command of our lord the Grand Duke...." The 17th century
Order and Rule code stated that bishops were those "whom the Czar commanded,
and His Holiness Patriarch blessed." Priests were appointed by the acting hierarch.
In case of elections with free votes, the candidate elected by many was
not obliged to anyone in particular. Over time, this ensured the establishment
of the principles of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church's hierarchical structure
that were radically different from the ones used in churches subordinated to
Constantinople or Moscow. Bishops who elected the Metropolitan considered
themselves to be equal to him, and the Metropolitan to be the first among
equals. Therefore, the clergy had both rights and obligations not only to
secular authorities, but also to the community. This also influenced the
establishment of Orthodox Church Fellowships in Ukraine that largely influenced
the country's spiritual and secular life.
FROM VARIOUS SOURCES
The territory of the modern-day Ukraine is interesting by the fact that
the existence and the coexistence of many religions in this land, their
contacts and conflicts are a historical phenomenon and not a new feature of the
last 25 years of its independence. If we try to understand the history of the
spread of Christianity in this geographical area, we will discover that it is
not just the canonical story of the Conversion of Rus by Prince Volodymyr in
988, with Byzantium as the only source of Christianization. Geographically important
in spreading Christianity were the cities of the Black Sea coast and Crimea,
where Christianity was adopted already in the first centuries AD, in the times
of the Roman Empire, and the areas along the Dnipro, which had close contacts
with the Black Sea coast and the Steppe. These areas were under the influence
of the Scythian, Korsun, Gothic, Surozh, Fulla and Bosporus dioceses that
spread Christianity not only among the tribes living in the Ukrainian steppes,
such as the Goths and the remains of the Scythians and Sarmatians, but also
among the Slavs living in the North, up the Dnipro. If we consider the
Christianization of Rus as a separate state, the story is similar to the
conversion of its nearest neighbors, Scandinavians. Worth remembering here is the
hypothesis of the first official Conversion of Rus by Askold the Varangian,
who, most probably, was baptized by the missionaries of the Roman rather than
Byzantine rite. The new belief lost the functions of a state religion after the
coup of 882. During the 10th century, Christianity struggled with
paganism, and outbreaks of anti-Christian violence were followed by periods of
religious tolerance. Rus had contacts with Christian centers both in
Constantinople and in Rome, which sent missionaries to Kyivan Rus under Popes
Benedict VII, John XV, and Sylvester II. There is a record that the first Latin
diocese in Kyiv was founded in 977 by Archbishop Boniface. The tradition of the
de facto Christian-Pagan dual faith existed for a long time, took deep roots in
Ukrainian folklore, and was nowadays complemented by Neopaganism as an attempt
to restore the pre-Christian spiritual tradition.
ST. HYACINTH
A Catholic presbyter who founded a Dominican monastery
in Kyiv in 1228. Only the Tatar invasion made him leave the capital of Rus
The Jewish tradition has also long been known in Ukraine. Its adepts
lived in the cities along the Black Sea coast and later in different cities of
Rus. Besides, Judaism was the dominant religion of the Khazar Khaganate, which,
until the times of Prince Svyatoslav, collected tribute from the lands that
later became part of Kyivan Rus. In the first half of the 18th century,
in the territory of Western Ukraine, the mystical branch of Judaism, Hasidism,
emerged as an alternative to the dogmatic, ritual formalism of the rabbinical
orthodoxy. The founder of Hasidism was Israel ben Eliezer (Baal Shem Tov),
known among both Jewish and non-Jewish population of Podillya as a holy man and
a miracle-worker. By the middle of the 19th century,
half of the Jewish communities of Ukraine confessed Hasidism. Islam has been
known in the territory of modern-day Ukraine since the Kyiv Rus times. It
established itself on the Ukrainian territory back in the 13th century,
with the arrival of its adepts, Crimean Tatars and the Nogai, Yedisan and Bucak
Hordes, with whom the ancestors of today's Ukrainians had not only military
conflicts, but also close trade relations. Protestantism in the forms of
Lutheranism, Calvinism and Socinianism started spreading in Ukraine just a few
decades after its emergence in Europe in the mid-16th century.
In the early 19th century, the second wave of
Protestantism arrived in Ukraine, when various forms of Evangelical
Christianity spread along its territory. In the late 16th century,
Greek Catholic Church was established, a phenomenon that is no less unique and
distinctive to Ukraine than Anglicanism is to Great Britain. After the
accession of Ukraine to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Roman Catholicism
felt quite confident in its territory. Old Believers and Molokans fled here
from the repressions of the Russian tsarist government. This is just a base map
that does not cover all the religious beliefs that in the past and during the
modern period chose Ukraine as their motherland on Earth, and the Ukrainians as
their flock.
Despite all the positive points mentioned above, problems related to
religious life in Ukraine remain. They include both the fact that the numerous
churches and religious organizations actively working and feeling fine in
Ukraine sometimes fail to perceive themselves as Ukrainian ones, and the lack
of understanding by Ukrainians what religions exist in their country and how
traditional they are to this land. Any revolution, including the Ukrainian
Revolution of Dignity, affects the entire society, including religious
organizations. It is obvious that given the current military aggression of
Russia, Ukrainians, despite their natural tolerance, will not tolerate either
pro-Moscow or pacifist slogans adopted by religious centers and their leaders.
For the latter, it is now time to finally decide which side to take, and for
Ukrainians, to learn more about themselves and their fellow citizens.
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