Belarusian Smolensk Region

Greek Catholicism in Gomel Region

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Vladimir Vaskov

As is known, Christianity came to the Belarusian lands from Byzantium at a time when there was a single, undivided Church. After the split in 1054 into the Western and Eastern Churches, the Orthodox Church in Belarus maintained ties with both Constantinople and Rome for a long time. As is known, Christianity came to the Belarusian lands from Byzantium at a time when there was a single, undivided Church. After the split in 1054 into the Western and Eastern Churches, the Orthodox Church in Belarus maintained ties with both Constantinople and Rome for a long time.

In 1596, a church union with Rome was signed in Brest. It is from this time that the Uniate Church begins. According to the terms of the Union, all rights held by Roman Catholics in the Commonwealth were extended to the Uniate Church and its hierarchs. The Eastern church rite was fully preserved with all its theological and liturgical peculiarities. The church hierarchy remained independent of the Latin hierarchy.

On June 15, 1621, the Polotsk Archbishop Josafat Kuncievich transferred the Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas in Gomel Castle to the Greek Catholics (Uniates)[1, p.16;44]. He was assisted in this by the Gomel starosta Pavel Stefan Sapieha. However, attempts to bring the residents of Gomel into the union in the first half of the 17th century proved fruitless, and the Church of St. Nicholas eventually returned to the Orthodox believers. In 1701, the Nicholas Church burned down. To rebuild it, the Orthodox believers of Gomel collected money for construction in Russia, as there were few willing to rebuild the church in Gomel.

In the first decades of the 18th century, the Gomel authorities, with the support of the Catholic clergy, again initiated efforts to bring the Gomel residents into Greek Catholicism. Thus, in 1717, when Gomel was governed by starosta Tomasz Krasinski, the Nicholas Church, located on the castle grounds, and church property were seized from the Orthodox believers, and the protodeacon Pankevich was expelled from Gomel. It is believed that this was done by Krasinski under the influence of his second wife, Alena Graholska, with whom Tomasz Krasinski converted to Catholicism[2].

It is possible that these events occurred under the administration of another Gomel starosta — the son of Tomasz Krasinski, Mikołaj Krasinski (Tomasz Krasinski died around 1717). The church and property seized by Alena Graholska and her servants were transferred to the Jesuit priest Josafat Sokolowski. At this time (1715–1717), Father Sokolowski was working in a traveling mission in the borderlands with Russia[3]. On February 7, 1717, Father Sokolowski celebrated Mass in the church and sealed the building.

The Orthodox residents of Gomel complained about the actions of A. Graholska to the Russian Emperor Peter I. As a result of this complaint, in 1720, a memorandum “on stopping the violence” was presented to King Augustus II the Strong. An investigation into the Nicholas Church was initiated, led by Father Andkuda Antipatrenski. The judge was the Bishop of Vilnius. The investigation took a very long time. Ultimately, the Nicholas Church remained in the possession of the Uniates[4, p.22].

Then the Orthodox believers decided to build a new church and received a privilege from the princes of Noiburg[5], but due to the interference of the pastor of the Gomel church, who was the spiritual advisor to the Krasinski family and had influence over them, this intention was not realized. Later, monks of the Uniate Basilian order settled near the Nicholas Church.

At that time, Gomel was the center of the Gomel Greek Catholic deanery. The Basilian monastery in Gomel existed until 1804, when it was closed[6].

On the night of September 2, 1737, a fire broke out in the house of a townsman, Semyonova, who lived on Troitskaya Street. As a result, most of the city burned down, including the church and all Orthodox churches: the Spasskaya, Troitskaya, and Pracyscenska churches. Only the castle Nicholas Cathedral survived, where the Basilian monastery operated. The Jesuit Adam Rushchitsky, who was working as a missionary in the Khalkansk mission during this period (1736–1741), made efforts to prevent the construction of new Orthodox churches. He was supported in this by the starosta Mikhail Chartoryisky. The lands that previously belonged to the Troitskaya church were also confiscated by Father Rushchitsky[7]. It is quite likely that it was Jesuit Adam Rushchitsky who facilitated the transfer of churches to the Greek Catholics in Bartalameevtsy, Navasyolki, Raduzha, and Sharshtin in 1737, on the feast of Peter and Paul. In 1738, the Khalkansk church was also transferred to the Greek Catholics.

In the Gomel starosty from 1738 to 1749, there was only one Orthodox church. It was located in the village of Kuzminichi, east of Tserakhovka. The remaining churches at that time were already Uniate or Old Believer[8, p.385]. In 1749, the Kuzminichi church was also transferred to the Uniates, and eastern Gomel region became predominantly Uniate for several years.

In Gomel, the authorities failed to create a significant Uniate parish. In 1756, Orthodox believers received permission to build three churches: the Pracyscenska, Transfiguration, and Troitskaya churches. The local authorities agreed to this under pressure from neighboring Russia.

After the annexation of eastern Gomel region to the Russian Empire in 1772, the Gomel and Rahachow deaneries of the Greek Catholic Church were governed by the Polotsk Archbishop Jason Smagarzhevsky (from 1773), who swore allegiance to Russia. The instigator[9] of the Gomel deanery at that time was the chaplain of Chabotovichi, priest Yona Markovsky.

The government of Catherine II, by imperial decree of December 14, 1772, confirmed Y. Smagarzhevsky as the archbishop of the Belarusian Uniates. Jason Smagarzhevsky was born around 1714 and died on February 1, 1788; he came from the Vawkavysk district. Around 1731, Smagarzhevsky joined the Uniate order of Basilian monks, although he himself was a Roman Catholic. From 1734 to 1740, he studied theology and philosophy at the Greek College in Rome. In 1740, he received the sacrament of priesthood. From 1747, he was the general official and vicar of the Kyiv metropolis[11]. From around 1752 to 1758, he was in Rome. From 1762 to 1780, he was the Archbishop of Polotsk. He defended the positions of the Uniate Church against attempts to convert believers to both Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. He tried to limit the activities of the Orthodox Bishop Viktor Sadovsky. He sought to prohibit priests from Russia from working in parishes and attempted to return to Uniatism the parishes where believers had accepted Orthodoxy.

In 1774, Archbishop Jason Smagarzhevsky obtained confirmation from the Roman Curia of the 1624 decree prohibiting Uniates from converting to the Latin rite. From 1780 to 1788, he was the Metropolitan of Kyiv and Galicia. He sought to retain the position of Archbishop of Polotsk, but on July 2, 1780, Empress Catherine II stripped him of his archbishopric and Russian citizenship. He moved to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and lived there in the residence in Radomysl[12, p. 597–598].

In the fifth point of the treaty that confirmed the first partition of the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, concluded on September 7 (18), 1773, between Russia and the Commonwealth, it was stated that the Catholic Church of both rites, Latin and Uniate, would be preserved in Eastern Belarus, along with all property, assets, rights, and privileges that belonged to the Church during the times of the Commonwealth. However, at the same time, the activities of the Catholic Church and the Uniate Church were restricted.

Despite the article of the 1773 treaty, the Russian government immediately began transferring the buildings of Uniate churches to the Orthodox Church. By the end of 1774, in five Belarusian provinces of the Pskov and Mogilev governorates — Orsha, Vitebsk, Mstislavl, Polotsk, and Rahachow — 429 churches of the Uniate Church were transferred to the Orthodox Church, and 688 individuals were converted from Uniatism to Orthodoxy. Additionally, another 486 adult believers converted to Roman Catholicism.

By order of Catherine II to Count Z. R. Charnyshov on July 2, 1780, the Uniate Metropolitan in the Commonwealth, Y. Smagarzhevsky (who had moved from the Polotsk archdiocese), was prohibited from managing the affairs of the Uniate Church in the territories of the Polotsk and Mogilev governorates of the empire[13].

In 1839, Uniatism in the Gomel region was completely liquidated. It was revived only 150 years later — in 1989, when the Greek Catholics of Gomel began gathering for communal prayer.

In 1991 (according to other sources, in October 1990), a parish in honor of the Three Holy Hierarchs (Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, and Basil the Great) was registered. So far, the parish does not have its own church, and the believers gather for services in the Gomel church[14]. The services are celebrated by priests from other parishes (in particular, priests Pakhom from Polotsk, Kazimir Lyakhovich from Minsk, and Andrei Krot).

It should be noted that the history of Greek Catholicism in the Gomel region is still little known and requires further research.

Footnotes

  1. Vinogradov, L. Gomel. Its Past and Present. 1142–1900. — Moscow, 1900 (reprint Gomel, 2005).

  2. Zhudro, F. A. The City of Gomel. / F. A. Zhudro, I. A. Serbov, D. I. Dovgyallo. — Vilna, 1911.

  3. Encyclopedia of Knowledge about Jesuits in the Lands of Poland and Lithuania, 1564–1995. http://www.jezuici.krakow.pl.

  4. Vinogradov, L. Gomel. Its Past and Present. 1142–1900. — Moscow, 1900 (reprint Gomel, 2005).

  5. Princess Ludwika Karolina Noiburgska was a representative of the Slutsk-Birzhansk branch of the Radziwills, the most influential in the first half of the 17th century. This branch also included Bogusław Radziwiłł. The branch ended in 1669, and its vast estates passed to the only daughter of Bogusław, Ludwika Karolina. Her first husband was the Elector of Brandenburg, and her second was the Prince of Noiburg (both from Germany). Ludwika Karolina was a supporter of Calvinism and supported this confession as well as Orthodoxy. After the death of Ludwika Karolina, her possessions in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the inheritance of Bogusław Radziwiłł) passed to her two-year-old daughter Elizaveta Augusta Sofia, who was under the guardianship of her father, Prince Karl Philip Noiburg. From 1717, Elizaveta Augusta Sofia was married to the Count Palatine of Sulzbach Joseph Charles Emmanuel. After her death, all the property passed to the three daughters from this marriage: Elizaveta Augusta, Maria Anna Charlotte, and Maria Franciszka Dorothea, who owned the Radziwiłł inheritance until 1744, after which it was annexed to the possessions of the Niasvizh branch of the Radziwiłls.

  6. Zhudro, F. A. The City of Gomel. / F. A. Zhudro, I. A. Serbov, D. I. Dovgyallo. — Vilna, 1911.

  7. Vinogradov, L. Gomel. Its Past and Present. 1142–1900. — Moscow, 1900 (reprint Gomel, 2005).

  8. Russia: Complete Geographical Description of Our Fatherland / Edited by V. P. Semenov. — St. Petersburg, 1905. — Vol. 9.

  9. Instigator — an official person assigned prosecutorial duties.

  10. Paroch — a Greek Catholic priest who heads a parish.

  11. Metropolis — in the Catholic Church, a province of the Church that includes an archdiocese and several subordinate dioceses.

  12. Encyclopedia of the History of Belarus. — Minsk, 2001. — Vol. 6, Book 1.

  13. Hrytskevich, A. The Uniate Church in Belarus in the Late 17th – Early 19th Centuries // Christian Thought. — 1993. — No. 3 (214).

  14. Paznyak, V. Gomel. Parish of the Three Holy Hierarchs // The Way to Christ. — 2000. — No. 2 (10).