Brotherhoods as a cultural phenomenon

Renaissance humanism in Europe

Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval scholastic education, emphasizing practical, pre-professional and -scientific studies. Scholasticism focused on preparing men to be doctors, lawyers or professional theologians, and was taught from approved textbooks in logic, natural philosophy, medicine, law and theology. The main centers of humanism were Florence and Naples.

Rather than train professionals in jargon and strict practice, humanists sought to create a citizenry (sometimes including women) able to speak and write with eloquence and clarity. Thus, they would be capable of better engaging the civic life of their communities and persuading others to virtuous and prudent actions. This was to be accomplished through the study of the studia humanitatis, today known as the humanities: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy…

Religious life after the Church Union of Berestia

Church Union of Berestia agreement, proclaimed in 1596, between the Ruthenian (Ukrainian-Belarusian) Orthodox church in Poland and Lithuania and the Holy See. The recognition of the pope as the head of the church and the implications of this position for the faith, morals, practices, and church administration were accepted by the Orthodox clergy. For his part, the pope agreed to the retention of the Eastern rite and confirmed the administrative-disciplinary rights and autonomy of the Kyiv metropoly.

Various circumstances brought about a crisis in the Ukrainian Orthodox church in the second half of the 16th century: the Turkish conquest of the seat of the patriarch of Constantinople in 1453; difficulties in the Ukrainian-Belarusian Orthodox church, such as declining discipline; the creation of the Moscow patriarchate in 1589; Protestant influences; and the Polonization of the Ukrainian upper classes. The Orthodox bishops worked out a plan for establishing ties with Rome at their sobors in 1590–4. The initiators of the plan hoped to gain not only ecclesiastical benefits from the union, but also an end to the Polonization of the upper classes and equality for the Orthodox church and its clergy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The union was supported by leading Polish circles because it was politically and religiously advantageous to them.

The union was announced by the papal bull Magnus Dominus on 23 December 1595. In January and February of 1596 the rights and privileges of the Uniate church were worked out and were guaranteed by the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem of 23 February 1596. After Ipatii Potii and Kyrylo Terletsky returned from Rome, a sobor was called in Berestia for 16–20 October 1596. The sobor split into two groups—for and against the union with Rome—and thus two councils went on concurrently. The Polish king Sigismund III Vasa issued a proclamation in support of the union. The Apostolic See was represented at the sobor by the Roman Catholic bishops of Lviv, Lutsk, and Kholm, and the Polish government and crown were represented by several senators.

Brotherhoods as a cultural phenomenon

Fraternities affiliated with individual churches in Ukraine and Belarus that performed a number of religious and secular functions.

The origins of brotherhoods can be traced back to the medieval bratchyny, which were organized at churches in the Princely era (first mentioned in the Hypatian Chronicle, 1159). Brotherhoods as such appeared in Ukraine in the mid-15th century, with the rise of the burgher class. They adopted their organizational structure from Western medieval brotherhoods (confraternitates) and trade guilds. Initially the brotherhoods engaged only in religious and charitable activities. They maintained churches and sometimes assumed financial responsibility for them, ensured that church services, in particular parish feasts, were celebrated in a ceremonious way, arranged ritual dinners for their members, collected money, helped the indigent and the sick, and organized hospitals. Since these religious and charitable activities of the brotherhoods left no visible traces, some historians, such as Kost Huslysty and Yaroslav Isaievych, do not consider the early period of the brotherhoods as being part of their history.

The Kyiv Epiphany Brotherhood began to play an important cultural-educational and religious role in 1615. It founded the Kyiv Epiphany Brotherhood School that in 1632 became a college and then in 1701 the Kyivan Mohyla Academy.

34. Education and Brotherhoods’ activity: general characteristics

Education

Brotherhood schools. Schools founded by religious brotherhoods for the purposes of counteracting the denationalizing influence of Catholic (Jesuit) and Protestant schools and of preserving the Orthodox faith began to appear in the 1580s. The first school was established in 1586 by the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood. The school served as a model for other brotherhood schools in various towns of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, most of them in Ukraine and Belarus.The most prominent schools were the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood School and Kyiv Epiphany Brotherhood School.

Then the schools began to adopt the structure and curriculum of the Jesuit schools, using Latin as the primary language, particularly those schools that modeled themselves on the Kyivan Mohyla Academy. Ukrainian was used only for examination purposes and, from 1645, for teaching the catechism. The curriculum of most of the brotherhood schools provided what was accepted as a secondary education in those times: classical languages, dialectics, rhetoric, poetics, homiletics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (church singing). Some schools taught Orthodox theology and Catholic theology (for the purpose of polemics). Brotherhood schools were open to various social strata. Students were judged not by lineage, but by achievement (in contrast to Jesuit schools). Discipline in the schools was strict, and physical punishment was used. Orphans and poor students lived in bursas and student residences. Lecturers were required to set an example by their behavior and to have pedagogical training. Brotherhood schools made a significant contribution to the growth of religious and national consciousness and the development of Ukrainian culture. They published textbooks, particularly language textbooks. The Czech educator J.A. Comenius (Komenský) derived many of the ideas in his Didactica Magna (1628–32) from the practices of the brotherhood schools.

Brotherhoods’ activity

Initially the brotherhoods engaged only in religious and charitable activities. They maintained churches and sometimes assumed financial responsibility for them, ensured that church services, in particular parish feasts, were celebrated in a ceremonious way, arranged ritual dinners for their members, collected money, helped the indigent and the sick, and organized hospitals. Since these religious and charitable activities of the brotherhoods left no visible traces, some historians, such as Kost Huslysty and Yaroslav Isaievych, do not consider the early period of the brotherhoods as being part of their history.

The brotherhoods began to play a historical role in the second half of the 16th and at the beginning of the 17th century. In this period they assumed the task of defending the Orthodox faith and Ukrainian nationality by counteracting Catholic and particularly Jesuit expansionism, Polonization, and later conversion to the Uniate church.

Their interference in clerical affairs was one of the reasons for the favorable attitude towards the Church Union of Berestia among the Orthodox bishops. The brotherhoods brought about a revival in the life of the church by promoting cultural and educational activity. They founded brotherhood schools, printing presses, and libraries. The resulting cultural-religious movement found its literary expression in polemical literature. The brotherhoods also participated in civic and political life. They sent representatives to church councils and to the Sejm in Warsaw and maintained ties with the Cossacks.