On July 25, 1687, the general Cossack Council elected General Osaul Ivan Stepanovych Mazepa Ukrainian hetman “according to the customs and ancient rights by free voting.” The bearer of the hetman’s mace became a person whose fate was to leave the most remarkable trace in the history of Cossack Ukraine after Bohdan Khmelnytsky.
A number of positive changes took place during his predecessor Ivan Samoilovych’s 15-year rule in Hetmanshchyna [Left-Bank Ukraine] where the center of sociopolitical life had moved after the disastrous times of the Ruin. Relying on Samoilovych’s achievements, the new hetman — a highly educated, wealthy, and well-traveled person — directed his inexhaustible energy and financial possibilities towards Ukraine’s revival.
In those days the idea of Kyiv as the Second Jerusalem was widespread in Ukrainian society. To all appearances, Hetman Mazepa’s activity was also oriented on this idea. The renaissance of Ukrainian culture, burgeoning of scholarship, literature, decorative arts, and large- scale construction are inseparably linked with his name.
Mazepa regarded the question of raising education to the European level an important prerequisite for Ukraine’s flourishment and international reputation. In executing his plans, he used the experience of his precursor, “the uncrowned king of Ukraine” Prince Kostiantyn Kostiantynovych Ostrozky (1526 — 1608.) Relying upon his nearly unlimited financial resources (Ostrozky owned approximately 40 castles, 100 towns, and 1,300 villages) coupled with his passionate patriotism, the prince devoted his entire life to the protection of Ukraine’s rights, traditions, and faith.
Under the conditions of the Rzeczpospolita’s expansion into Ukraine — the Catholization and Polonization of the population — in 1576 the Slavic-Greek-Latin School was opened in Ostroh, which was renamed an academy in 1579. The first rector of the academy was the writer and polemicist Herasym Smotrytsky, and his successor — the future Patriarch of Constantinople and Alexandria, Cyril Lukaris. The prominent writer and polemicist Ivan Vyshensky and the famous Ukrainian cultural figure Demian Nalyvaiko worked for a time at the academy.
Among the graduates of the academy were the famous hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossack Army, Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, the author of the first Slavic grammar, Meletii Smotrytsky, and the prominent humanist of the day, Metropolitan of Kyiv Iov Boretsky. However, when Prince Ostrozky died, hard times began for the academy. While his elder son Yanush (who had become a Catholic) carrying out his father’s last will and testament, continued to maintain Ostroh Academy and its printing house, other descendants of “the celebrated great ancestors,” extinguished the prince’s great cause. The academy ceased to function in 1636.
At this time a Brotherhood School was already functioning in Kyiv, which became a collegium under Metropolitan Petro Mohyla. Mazepa insisted on elevating the status of the Mohyla Collegium. In 1701, in keeping with a tsarist decree, it was officially recognized as an academy and, thanks to the hetman’s generous financial support, it soon became one of the leading cultural centers in the Orthodox world.
In this most prestigious of Ukraine’s educational establishments, everyone, regardless of social status, could receive an education. The main criteria for the enrollment of students were a natural ability for learning and desire to acquire knowledge. In the school building constructed in 1694 students were taught Greek and Latin, theology and philosophy, literature and history, mathematics, physics, and astronomy by highly-qualified lecturers, among them the future guardian of the patriarchal throne in the Russian Empire, Stefan Yavorsky, and the scholar and encyclopedist Feofan Prokopovych, the future confessor of Peter I.
Graduates of the academy often held the highest ecclesiastical and government offices in the Russian Empire. In 1700 a collegium modeled after the Kyiv Mohyla Academy established at the Borys and Hlib Monastery in Chernihiv, the building for which was built at Mazepa’s expense. There were plans to open a collegium in ancient Pereiaslav. This activity clearly demonstrates the hetman’s desire to revive the prominent role of the main cities of ancient Rus’ that were mentioned as early as the 10th century.
To a large extent the revival of manuscript writing is also connected with the age of Mazepa. The dramatic events that were unfolding in Ukraine during the rule of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and his successors were described in the Cossack chronicles of Samovydets, Hrabianka, and especially in the fundamental Chronicle of Samiilo Velychko.
Church construction was arguably the most important part of the hetman’s many- sided activities. After the collapse of Kyivan Rus’ the construction of monumental religious structures in Ukraine, particularly in the Dnipro and Left-Bank regions, practically ceased. Owing to the conditions in Ukraine during the Horde’s rule, Tatar invasions in the Lithuanian epoch, the persecution of the Orthodox Church under Polish rule, popular uprisings, and the period of the Ruin, the population was able to maintain in more or less satisfactory state only those ancient Rus’ churches that had escaped destruction and to build a few new ones.
The turning point came during the rule of Hetman Ivan Samoilovych, which saw the construction of the magnificent Trinity Cathedral in Chernihiv and the cathedral church of Mhar Monastery near Lubni. At this time the architectural style, which came to be known as the Ukrainian Baroque, started to develop. It successfully comprised the architectural features of ancient Rus’ monumental stone churches or wooden religious structures, and elements of Baroque, varieties of which had spread throughout Europe.
During Mazepa’s rule, for the first time since the age of Yaroslav the Wise, Ukraine underwent a real building boom. In slightly over a year after he came to power, he completed the construction of the cathedral church at Mhar Monastery, which was begun by Samoilovych; Savior Cathedral at the same monastery; and Trinity Cathedral in Chernihiv. On the hetman’s initiative and at his expense grand stone churches were built, ancient temples were restored, and the architectural appearance of Ukrainian cities changed.
Without a doubt, the Second Jerusalem — Kyiv, the enduring capital of the Ukrainian people — was a key component of the hetman’s building activity. In the former capital city of Rus’ many buildings were reminders of its glorious past. Some ancient Rus’ buildings that had escaped destruction were restored by Metropolitan Petro Mohyla, while others remained in ruins. Mazepa saw the revival of the ancient capital’s former grandeur in the restoration of churches, which were unique symbols of the Kyivan state.
In 1690-97 the completely restored “St. Sophia, the Rus’ metropoly,” emerged in baroque attire. Almost simultaneously large— scale work began on another prominent monument of the princely era — St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery. In 1695-96 the main church of the Kyivan Cave Monastery, Assumption Cathedral, was expanded, and its exterior appearance became unrecognizably altered. Trinity Church of the Cave Monastery, built in the 12th century, was restored and rebuilt. Substantial funds were contributed to the restoration of the ancient St. Cyril’s Church and SS. Borys and Hlib Cathedral in Chernihiv.
New domes were erected and new structures were added onto old buildings (St. Sophia’s and Assumption cathedrals) their domes were gilded, splendid baroque frontons appeared, and new galleries and naves were built. In general, however, the interiors preserved the characteristic stylistic features of ancient Rus’ churches. A prominent achievement of Mazepa’s building activity was the construction of new monumental churches. They emerged in Kyiv and other cities at the same time as ancient churches were being restored.
Kyiv’s remarkable monuments of the day — Annunciation Cathedral at the Kyiv Brotherhood Monastery, St. Nicholas’s Cathedral at St. Nicholas’s Monastery, and Church of All Saints at the Kyivan Cave Monastery — served as an example of church construction for a long period of time. The momentous influence of ancient Rus’ monumental churches is observed in the constructions of Annunciation (1690-93) and St. Nicholas’s cathedrals (1690-96.) Their design features an extended rectangle with six pillars that divide the interior into three long sections — naves. The churches were wreathed with five cupolas, and the western facade was decorated with two towers (like in St. Sophia’s Cathedral in Kyiv and the Savior’s Cathedral in Chernihiv). An essentially new construction principle was applied during the building of All Saints’ Church (1696-98), which was the first stone church built according to the quinquepartite (five-frame) construction of wooden churches. This original type of religious buildings, native only to Ukraine, also served as a model for Ascension Cathedral in Pereiaslav, St. Nicholas’s Church in Baturyn, and SS. Peter and Paul Church in Hustynia Monastery near Pryluky, which were built at Mazepa’s expense, and also for later churches. Stone bell towers were built near churches for the first time in Hetmanshchyna (St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and the Cathedral of SS. Borys and Hlib in Chernihiv) and mighty walls were built around monasteries (the Kyivan Cave and Hustynia monasteries).
Mazepa’s activity was not restricted to important cities. With his assistance Assumption Cathedral in Hlukhiv, the refectory churches in the Mhar and Hustynia monasteries, and Trinity and St. Nicholas’s churches in Baturyn were built. Documents attest to the fact that the hetman donated funds for the restoration of St. Esau Monastery in Palestine.
Significant building also went on in the hetman capital of Baturyn, where a splendid collection of weapons and a large library were located in the hetman’s palace. In 1708, after the Russian army commander Aleksandr Menshikov seized the Baturyn fortress, the town was completely destroyed and its population was massacred. Today more than 3,000 people reside in this ancient town.
Three centuries have passed. Some of the churches that were built or restored by Mazepa were destroyed during the period of militant atheism, and the only traces of them are evident in yellowed photographs. The churches that have been preserved to this day are a worthy memorial to their founder.
