Orthodoxy in the Kingdom of Russia under the descendants of the great Danylo

Exclusive. After the death of Danylo of Halytsky, the crown passed to his son Lev I Danylovych (1264–1301), but he ruled only the Galician part of his possessions. Until his death in 1269, his uncle Vasylko was considered (and was) the eldest in the family, the other sons of the first king - Mstislav in Lutsk, Shvarn in Kholm with Dorogochyn (for a certain time, after his father-in-law - the Orthodox Lithuanian prince Voishelk - went to monastery, he also ruled Lithuania), were also almost independent of the power of the nephew. In 1268, during a banquet, King Leo killed Woyschelk. Shvarn's position in the Lithuanian land was shaken, he soon died, and his Galician possessions went to Leo.

Orthodoxy in the Kingdom of Russia under the descendants of the great Danylo

In 1272, Lev Danylovych moved the capital of the Galicia-Volyn lands from Kholm to Lviv. Here, in particular, a church was built in the name of Nicholas the Wonderworker, it has been preserved to this day in a significantly rebuilt form. After the death of Princes of Volyn Volodymyr-Ivan Vasylkovich and Lutsk Mstislav in 1292, Leo took all of Volyn under his hand, thus restoring unity in the Galicia-Volyn lands. Constantly fighting with Poland, he was able to annex a part of Transcarpathia with the city of Mukacheve (around 1280, he failed to capture Uzhgorod) and the Lublin land to the Galicia-Volyn principality. Shortly before his death, Lev again went with the Tatars to Poland and returned "with great booty and captivity." It is known that his daughter Svyatoslava († 1302) was a nun.

Leo I died in 1301, passing the crown and not yet sufficiently strengthened possessions to his eldest son Yuri I Lvovych. Dissatisfied with the move of Metropolitan Maxim of Kyiv from Kyiv, devastated by the Mongol-Tatars, to Volodymyr-on-Klyazma in 1299, Yuriy obtained from the Patriarch of Constantinople the establishment of a special metropolis in his state. Prominent church historian A. V. Kartashov describes this event as follows: "From Greek monuments we learn that the Greeks, who were generally opposed to the division of the Russian metropolis, were convinced of something this time, and in 1302 or 1303, under the emperor Andronikos II Palaeologus the Elder and Patriarch Athanasius, The Galician diocese received the degree of metropolitan. According to a later document (a charter of King Casimir in 1371), the first Galician metropolitan was a certain Nifont. Of course, all the six dioceses of Halytsk, Peremyshlsk, Volodymyrsk, Lutsk, Kholmsk, Turovsk, which were within the boundaries of the Grand Duchy of Halytskyi-Volhynia, ended up in the new metropolis. The metropolis did not last long. By 1305, both metropolitans died - Maxim of Kyiv and Galician Nyfont.

Saint Peter, the founder and abbot of the Rat monastery in Volyn, an outstanding icon painter, creator of the "Petrovskaya" icon of the Mother of God, was to become the heir of the latter by the will of the king.

However, in June 1308, Patriarch Athanasius of Constantinople appointed Peter to the Kyiv Metropolitan Chair with the title of "All Russia". A.V. Kartashov: "...it so happened that the same emperor Andronyk II and Patriarch Athanasius, who not long before arranged the division of the Russian Metropolis, now this division has been canceled, Peter was appointed Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Russia...". Gavriil is later mentioned as the Metropolitan of Galicia, no information about whose activities has been preserved. Saint Peter, after a short stay in Kyiv, like his predecessor, moved to North-Eastern Russia, to Volodymyr, and later to Moscow.

The first Galician Metropolitanate, apparently, was finally abolished by Metropolitan Peter of Kyiv and All Russia in 1323, after the death in the same year of the kings of Galicia, brothers-co-rulers Leo II Yuriyovych (the throne in Galicia) and Andrii (the throne in Volodymyr-Volynskyi), in battle either with the Tatars or with the Lithuanians. Two years later, the rebellious boyars summoned to the throne instead of the son of Lev II, the last Galician king-Ryurikovych, Volodymyr - his relative Boleslav, the son of the Masovian prince Troyden Piast and Maria Yurievna, the daughter of Yuri I Lvovich. Having accepted Orthodoxy with the name Yuriy, he is known to history under the name Yuriy II Boleslav. He was poisoned, according to some historians, in 1340 by boyars for trying to introduce Catholicism in the Galician kingdom. Due to the lack of heirs, he bequeathed the throne to the Polish queen, the zealous Catholic Casimir the Great, while the boyars in Volhynia called the Orthodox Lyubart-Dmitry, son of the Grand Duke Gedimin of Lithuania, to reign, which caused a bloody Polish-Lithuanian war for Galicia-Volhynia a legacy that lasted more than half a century - from 1340 to 1392.

December 21, 1326 Saint Peter of Ratsky, Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Russia, rested in the Lord. On the day of his death, Lutsk bishop Theodosius was in Moscow on the business of his diocese, who mourned the saint. In the morning of 1328, the new Metropolitan of Kyiv, St. Feognost, appointed Bishop Feodor to the Galician See. In the following seven years, Saint Feognost made several pastoral trips to the south of Russia, where he stayed for a long time.

Around 1331, probably at the request of the Galician Prince Yuriy II Boleslav, the Patriarch of Constantinople Isaiah once again granted the title of Metropolitan to the Galician Bishop Feodor, but soon this decision was canceled due to the protest of Saint Theognost. Yuri II, who in the first years of his reign expressed a desire to return to the bosom of Catholicism, was persuaded by Pope John XXII in his personal letter to remain with this "saved" intention; the pontiff also wrote to the Polish king Władysław I, asking him to facilitate the return of his relative to Catholicism.

It ended badly for the "prince and master of Russia, the prince of all Little Russia": in April 1340, he was poisoned. And the reason was not only the displeasure of the boyars with the proselytism of the prince: the Polish chronicler says that Yuriy "treated his subordinates too cruelly, imprisoning and looting their property, kidnapping their wives and daughters and raping them, as well as giving preference to other peoples, such as , for example, to Germans and Czechs."

This act of the boyars became the impetus for the event known as the war for the Galician-Volyn heritage, which for half a century tore apart Little Rus (central, Rusiae Minoris, a carbon copy of Little Greece, that is, actually Greece) - this is how the Galician-Volyn lands were often called since then. The son of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas and his second wife Olga, daughter of the Smolensk Prince Vsevolod, Dmitry-Lubart, with the support of the boyars, established himself in Volyn and claimed the entire Principality of Galicia-Volyn. In this intention, he faced a powerful rival – the Polish king Casimir III the Great (1333–1370), who also claimed his rights to the inheritance. Grand Duke of Volyn Dmitriy-Lubart (1340–1383) and Bishop Feodor, taking advantage of the state and church disturbances in Constantinople ("hesychast disputes" Saint Gregory Palamas and his opponents), briefly achieved the restoration of the Galician metropolis.

However, in 1347, the new emperor John VI Kantakouzin, the new patriarch Isidor I and the Council of Constantinople, at the request of the Grand Duke of Moscow Simeon the Proud and Metropolitan Feognost of Kyiv, canceled it again. In a letter to the Volyn prince, the emperor explained his action: "You know that ever since the Russian people came to know God and were enlightened by Holy Baptism, it was established as a custom and became legal that there should be one metropolitan for all of Great (outer) and Lesser (central) Russia of Kyiv and that he ordain bishops for all bishoprics."

However, a new test was approaching, much more difficult. In 1349, King Casimir III seized Galicia, and in the following years began a persistent, with varying success, attack on Volhynia. He granted a certain autonomy, including religious autonomy, to the Galicians within the Kingdom of Russia, but, as in Poland, he facilitated its settlement by Germans and Poles. Along with the Catholic settlers came the Latin clergy. "The king of Kraków will come," the chronicler writes about that time, "with a lot of power, and he will take the land of Volhynia and Halytsia and do a lot of evil to Christians, and he will turn the holy churches into Latin worship." On the territory of the former Galicia-Volyn principality in 1361. the Roman Catholic dioceses of Lviv and Halytsia were opened, and a little later, by a special papal bull, they were united into a metropolis. In the same year, the construction of the cathedral in honor of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary began in Lviv, which has survived to this day, the first stone of which was laid by the king himself...

Shortly before his death, Casimir III made another attempt to revive the Galician Metropolis under the pretext that Metropolitan Oleksii of Kyiv, who was in Moscow, had been unable to visit his congregation in Southwestern Russia for many years due to a protracted conflict with Grand Duke Olgerd of Lithuania.

Due to the king's threat to "rebaptize" the Galician population into Catholicism, in May 1371 Patriarch Philofey of Constantinople was forced to satisfy his request by appointing the Galician bishop Antony as the metropolitan, about which he wrote to the metropolitan of Kyiv: "Let it be known to you that since you left Little Russia for so long and did not inspect it, the Polish king Casimir, who also owns Little Russia, sent here to our peace with other princes the bishop and with him a letter. ... Forced by such circumstances, we ordained him whom he sent. We gave him Halych as a metropolitan and bishopric: Volodymyrsk, Peremyshlsk and Kholmsk, which are in the possession of the Polish king."

Olgerd also persistently sought a separate Lithuanian metropolis. Patriarch Philofey did otherwise - in December 1375. he ordained his pupil Cyprian, a native of the noble Bulgarian-Serbian family Tsamblak, to the rank of Metropolitan of "Kyiv, Russian and Lithuanian" with the right and for all of Russia after the death of Metropolitan Oleksii.

Conflicts between the Grand Duke of Moscow Dmitry Donsky and Saint Cyprian were the reason that the latter was able to finally establish himself in Moscow only in the 12th year after the death of Saint Alexei and already after the death of the prince himself - in 1390. Before that, he was forced to stay in Moscow for many years Lithuania, with a residence in Kyiv. Metropolitan Kyprian managed to do a lot to organize church life in the Lithuanian possessions, despite the sharp deterioration of the conditions for this - in 1385, the Union of Krebs was concluded between Lithuania and Poland...

The Grand Duke of Lithuania Jagiello, having married the Polish Queen Jadwiga, now became the Polish King Władysław II Jagiello. He converted to Catholicism himself and baptized the Lithuanians, most of whom were pagans before that. In the lands of Russia subject to Lithuania, he showed tolerance, which cannot be said about Polish possessions, including Galicia.

In 1390, Przemyśl was added to the previously created Catholic dioceses, and in 1428 - Lutsk. Also, in the Orthodox Galician Metropolitanate, the king showed self-government, contrary to the will of the Patriarch of Constantinople, by appointing his candidate Lutsk Bishop Ioann (Babu), who later promised the king that if he helped him ascend the Galician metropolitan throne, 200 "Russian hryvnias" and 30 horses . Cyprian deprived John of the Lutsk chair, in 1396 the Lutsk bishop Feodor came to Moscow with him, and even earlier he took the Volodymyr-Volyn and Turov dioceses under his omophorion.

Saint Cyprian, who long sought to subjugate all dioceses of historical Russia, also did not recognize another separate metropolitan within its borders, which also caused disagreement between him and the patriarch, apparently he managed to achieve his goal. Testimony about the Galician Metropolis from the end of the 1411th century. disappear In 12/1420 and 21/XNUMX, the new Kyiv Metropolitan Photius made a trip to Halych, which would have been impossible if the city had not been under his jurisdiction. However, the power of St. Photius over the dioceses within Poland was obviously nominal, given the events of those years.

The Horodel Diet of 1413, which strengthened the Polish-Lithuanian union under Polish supremacy, deprived the Orthodox of many rights enjoyed by the Catholics. And on October 6, 1423, Vladyslav-Yagailo granted the Catholic Archbishop of Lviv the right to oversee the territory of his diocese for "heretics" and "schismatics" (Orthodox). "Since," it was said in the royal letter, "in the lands of Russia under our control, where schismatics, followers of the Greek rite, live, unfortunately, much is happening that contradicts the Roman Church, so that the Roman Catholic faith is not harmed, we gave to John, the Archbishop of Lviv, and his successors, and now we grant full and complete authority to punish any heretics and violators of the Christian religion, whatever their status and gender, if their mentioned archbishop recognizes them as such". Around 1434, King Władysław III Varnenchyk issued a privilege that equated the rights of the Galician boyars with the Polish nobility, but instead of the "Kingdom of Rus" an administrative-territorial unit of the Kingdom of Poland was created with its center in Lviv - the "Ruskie Voivodeship".

The fate of Orthodoxy remained difficult, we will describe this in the next essay.

Ivan Verstyanuk, columnist Newsky