One of the brightest figures in our early-17th-century history was Melety Smotrytsky, a talented writer, a language scholar, an erudite, a highly educated European-minded individual. He was deeply concerned about the destiny of his people and the church, and doing all he could for them. He was not an “otherworldly” academic. His contemporaries read, reread, and discussed his wise political writings at any place where there was at least one literate person.
THE MILESTONES OF LIFE
Melety (lay name Maksym) Smotrytsky (1575-1633) was born in the village of Smotrychi, Podillia province, into a middle-income Orthodox noble family. His father Herasym Smotrytsky was rector of the famous Ostroh Academy, a renowned writer and poet. It is he who printed, together with Ivan Fedorov, the Bible of Ostroh. Melety Smotrytsky studied at the Ostroh Academy under the tutorship of Greek Cyril Lukaris, the future Patriarch of Constantinople. He also graduated from the Jesuitical Academy of Vilna. Later on, Smotrytsky went abroad to complete his education and attended lectures at several well-known Polish and German universities, including that of Wittenberg (the city in which Catholic monk Martin Luther first published his famous accusative theses against the Catholic Church). The ideas of Reformation had a dramatic impact on the nobleman from Podillia. He wrote much later about himself, “Who was I at the time? A follower of Luther, who squandered his youth in scholastic pursuit near Luther’s grave, who arrived, permeated with the Lutheran smoke, in Lithuania, and then befouled Rus with the same stifling fumes.” At Western universities, Smotrytsky received a well rounded classical education, familiarized himself with Ancient Greek and Roman culture, Renaissance philosophers and writers, had an opportunity to compare the education and philosophy systems, denominations, and universities of different countries, and, what is more, became a confirmed rationalist and advocate of the freedom of convictions. Smotrytsky knew a lot of languages, including those of the biblical times, and was one of the most educated people of his time .
Back in his homeland (1604), Smotrytsky, viewed by his compatriots as an oracle, plunged into public polemics, defending the rights of the Ukrainian- Belorussian Orthodox Church humiliated by the Polish Kingdom. Under his influence, residents of Minsk founded a church fraternity, erected a new temple, and some of those who had accepted the Church Union re-embraced Orthodoxy. Soon after, Maksym Smotrytsky moved to Vilna and settled, as a lay man, at the Holy Spirit Monastery. The cloistered life caused the young scholar no inconvenience. For example, he would visit the Uniate Holy Trinity Monastery for debates with monks Kuntsevych and Rutskoy (later Metropolitan of Kyiv). Maksym Smotrytsky worked for some time as rector and teacher of Latin at the Kyiv Brotherhood School. In 1617 he went back to Vilna and took monastic vows under the name of Melety.
An important event occurred in Smotrytsky’s life in 1620; he became a “catacomb” Orthodox bishop. At that time, after the Union of 1596, there was no Orthodox hierarchy at all in Ukraine and Belorussia. This lack of representation aroused never-ending indignation among lay people and Cossacks. When Theofanis III, Patriarch of Jerusalem, was in Kyiv en route from Moscow to the East, Kyivans persuaded him to secretly ordain seven bishops in order to restore the hierarchy. The patriarch hesitated at first, fearful of the Polish authorities’ wrath, but finally agreed to do so. The ordination was held at the Kyiv Brotherhood Church at night with windows shuttered and without the otherwise required large choir. Iov Boretsky and Melety Smotrytsky were ordained Metropolitan of Kyiv and Archbishop of Polotsk, respectively. From the Polish authorities’ viewpoint, the ordination was illegal because it was performed without permission of the king who had the exclusive right to “recommend” clerical titles. Yet, the hierarchy was actively supported by the Cossacks under Hetman Petro Sahaidachny.
The Belorussian diocese welcomed its spiritual leader with respect and joy. The lay people of Vilna and other cities had gathered a handsome amount of money to buy their archbishop rich vestments and sacral items. The new archpriest’s liturgies and sermons would gather large numbers of believers, and his epistles against the Union were on everybody’s lips.
Melety Smotrytsky died in 1633, when he was archimandrite of the Uniate Derman Cathedral and titular Hierapolitan Bishop ordained by Pope Urban VIII.
POLITICAL WRITER
Smotrytsky wrote his first works when still a Vilna academy student, but it was not until he came back from abroad that his polemical writing talent flourished. In that stormy era, debate with the opponents of Orthodoxy was significant and popular. During the Reformation, Counter-Reformation and Enlightenment, when book-printing and schooling saw an unprecedented upsurge, the sluggish Orthodox Church was often the object of criticism by authors who belonged to other Christian denominations in the multi-denominational Rzeczpospolita. The well-known Catholic Jesuit polemicist Peter Skarga wrote, “The Ruthenians have neither a formal liberal-arts education nor the tradition of intellectual pursuit. Association with the Greeks made them poorer. They never developed scientific disciplines, abstract thinking, institutions and organizations of their own, i.e., all the things that allowed the West to spearhead scientific progress since the late Middle Ages” (Borys Hudziak, Crisis and Reform ). It is nevertheless evident that the personality of Melety Smotrytsky, his broad learning, inclination for intellectual work, and his adherence to many humanistic ideas of that time strongly refute Peter Skarga’s allegations.
Smotrytsky’s works were extremely popular at that time — they captured the minds of the Ukrainian and Belorussian Orthodox people. They were not only reprinted but also copied by hand, always stirring up heated disputes. As Porfiry Yaremenko writes in his book Melety Smotrytsky , “the second decade of the 17th century brought him glory and assigned him a prominent place in the history of Ukrainian and Belorussian culture and literature of that time.”
Melety Smotrytsky almost always wrote in Polish. During that time Polish functioned as an official and literary language on the territory of what is now Ukraine and Belorussia. Some modern researchers (Antoine Martel for example) think that “by bowing to the Old Church Slavonic tradition and refusing to develop literature on the basis of the spoken language, the Ruthenians made a fatal mistake which led to the domination of the Polish language.”
TRENOS
Smotrytsky’s polemical fiction book Trenos or Lamentations of the Eastern Church (“trenos” is the Greek for “cry, lament”) had the greatest impact on contemporaries. It was published in 1610 in Vilna under the pen name of Theophil Ortholog. The main reason for the book was a clash between the Orthodox and the advocates of the Brest Union. Another reason was the confiscation of the Vilna Holy Trinity Monastery by the Catholics.
The very title of the book, Lamentations of the Eastern Church , reveals the author’s intention to arouse sympathy for the downtrodden Orthodox Church, draw the government’s attention to the infringement of its rights, and prove the uselessness and grave harm of the Brest Union. Smotrytsky depicted the church in the lyrical image of a Mother abandoned by her Orthodox children. She laments her destiny, “Woe to me, poor, hapless, and robbed by all! My hands are in shackles, neck in a yoke, feet in fetters, legs in chains, and a double-bladed sword hangs over my head.” The polemicist puts the blame for the church’s plight, first of all, on the top Orthodox clergy who entered into an ecclesiastical union with the Catholics. Smotrytsky writes, “Oh, the wretched flock! Can one who has never studied and is unaware of what he owes God and his neighbor be a pastor and a teacher? Physician, heal thyself! Teacher, teach thyself first!” Smotrytsky also reproaches the topmost clergy that, due to their conservatism and lack of education, allowed many noble families broke away from Orthodoxy: they “ran away into various sects and faiths.” He gives the endless list of princes and other high-born nobles who embraced Catholicism or Protestantism in the 16th and early 17th centuries.
However, far from all Ukrainian nobles spurned their faith and origin. To illustrate this, here is a fragment of the speech made by Volhynian deputy Drevinsky at the Polish Sejm (Sergei Solovyev, A History of Russia Since the Most Ancient Times ), “In the Turkish war, Your Royal Majesty enlisted most warriors from among the Greek-faith Russian people. But will the people with unsatisfied needs and requests readily line up to defend your state? How can they try to secure eternal peace for the fatherland (Rzeczpospolita) when they have no peace in their own home? For it is obvious to all that this ancient Russian nation has had its religious rights grossly infringed upon.” Freedom of speech flourished in the Polish Kingdom. In all probability, our ancestors failed to take full advantage of it.
Smotrytsky’s book Trenos or Lamentations of the Eastern Church was received by contemporaries as a sensation. Porfytiy Yaremenko writes, “The Orthodox viewed Trenos as a prophetic and holy book, almost equal to the Gospel.” For example, Severyn Nalyvaiko’s brother Demian tried to prove that the Lamentations was “equal to the writings of St. John Chrysostom, and it would be an honor for us to shed our blood and lay down our lives for the author.” Smotrytsky himself recalled later that he had then been surrounded with “nationwide glory, affection and grace.” The book often changed hands, was read, reread, and considered an invaluable treasure. There were even those who willed that the book be placed in their coffin. The Catholic Church cursed the book and instituted a 5,000-zloty fine for selling or buying it. The Vilna Holy Spirit Brotherhood — the publisher — was persecuted. The happy author safely weathered all these troubles under a pen name behind the walls of the Holy Spirit Monastery.
Within a short time, “anti-Trenoses” writings began to appear. The first to raise a voice of protest was Jesuit Peter Skarga, Rector of the Vilna Academy: within a few months he published the book A Warning to the Ruthenians about Theophil Ortholog’s Lamentations . This, too, was a masterpiece of polemics, with Skarga accusing the author of heretical views and Calvinism. “Anti-Trenoses” continued to appear throughout the next decade. Ivan Franko noted, “The Brest Union immediately caused a dramatic dispute in the midst of the Ruthenian people by stirring up a sudden commotion, movement of thoughts, bitter disputes, and heated passions. It gave birth to the extremely interesting polemical literature.”
GRAMMAR
This book, published by Smotrytsky in 1618 (or 1619), consists of “Orthography,” “Etymology” (morphology), “Syntax,” and “Prosody” (the rules of versification). This book is as famous in its own genre as Trenos to its. This was in spite of the fact that it was written by a broadly-educated scholar, not a fervent polemicist. A combination of a research paper and a brilliant (for that time) school resource manual, the book had an extensive effect on national linguistics as well as all the Slavic studies of the day.
In those times, all strata of Ukrainian society viewed Old Church Slavonic as a language of literature and instruction (similar to Latin in the West). This language was, however, in a neglected state: few studied it, there were no textbooks, grammatical rules were commonly ignored, and even the clergy had quite a poor command of it. This was an object of ridicule on the part of Catholic polemicists, including the above-mentioned Peter Skarga who said, “There has never been or will be at least one academy or college, where theology, philosophy, and other liberal arts are taught and understood in Old Church Slavonic. No-one can become a scholar if he uses the Slavonic language. For there is no nation on Earth which speaks Slavonic the way it is written in books. There are no and cannot be any grammar books, rhetoric manuals, or definite regulations in this language...”
This is why Smotrytsky’s Grammar , ostensibly far from the national and religious struggle of that time, presents a response to the opposite camp’s challenge. At the time it was a tremendous public-relations piece, even though it was written not by a political writer but by a scholar absorbed in and fond of intellectual labor. Since the time it came out, Smotrytsky’s Grammar has served as a manual for over 200 (!) years in Eastern and Southern Slav schools, setting pace to and laying the groundwork for further linguistic research. In Russia, Grammar was republished in 1648 and 1721, in both cases without the author’s name, historian Sergei Soloviev notes.
Some historians of Ukrainian literature, duly appreciating the Grammar as such, reproach the author for dealing with Old Church Slavonic grammar while failing to write a similar manual of the common spoken language. Ivan Franko wrote, “Smotrytsky’s book had a harmful, rather than useful, effect on our education. A literary language had been nurtured by urban residents in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and the book hurt it by unleashing a campaign in favor of the defunct Old Church Slavonic language.” It is difficult not to agree with Ivan Franko and not to be surprised with Melety Smotrytsky, taking into account that the Protestant movement really had a great impact on Smotrytsky’s worldview. Incidentally, as many as a hundred years before the Grammar came out, Martin Luther had translated the Bible into standard German, issuing the clarion call: “Every German family with a German Bible!”
AN UNEXPECTED FINALE
Melety Smotrytsky’s last years of life were tragic indeed. He was drawn into a confrontation with Uniate Bishop Josaphat Kuncewicz (a.k.a. John Kunsevich) of Vilna and the government which refused to recognize Smotrytsky as an authentic bishop. This provoked reprisals, strongly-worded governmental decrees, and the arrest of Orthodox monks. Smotrytsky wrote and published an anonymous pamphlet The Vindication of Innocence (1621), appealing to the king’s humanity and justice, defending the forefathers’ faith and criticizing the Union. As always, his work triggered a heated reaction: three books were written in response to The Vindication of Innocence that year. Smotrytsky in turn wrote In Defense of Vindication (1621). This book contains the important words, “We do not demand that the Union be abrogated, for each in this country is free to adhere to the faith of his choice. Therefore, our Ruthenian people beseech His Majesty the King to order our rights and freedoms to be left intact.” This put no end to the polemics: In Defense of Vindication was immediately countered by The Examination of Defense, The Denial , and The Anti-Denial ...
The face-off was not limited to political writing. In 1623, a mob of Vitebsk Orthodox residents (in Smotrytsky’s diocese) lynched the Uniate Bishop Josaphat Kuncewicz. This caused an immediate, harsh ,and bloody reaction on the part of the government of Rzeczpospolita and the Vatican. The murder of Kuncewicz, accusations, threats, the fratricidal struggle, and personal insecurity made a painful impression on Melety Smotrytsky. He eventually toyed with the idea of “reconciliation between the two Ruses” (i.e., between the Orthodox and the Uniates) and the attainment of national unity. He went to Kyiv to consult Iov Boretsky and Petro Mohyla who he thought shared his views. However, aware of the stiff resistance of the laity and Cossacks to any kind of alliance with the Uniate Church, the two Orthodox hierarchs resolutely dismissed this idea and condemned the Bishop of Polotsk’s proposals. The 1628 Council, convened to consider the ways of reunification, in fact turned into a trial of Melety Smotrytsky.
Smotrytsky thus reached a deadlock at the end of his lifetime (at 53, he considered himself old and feeble). Since the Orthodox Kyiv Bishopric had ostracized him, his own diocese was also closed to him. So Melety Smotrytsky, who had been fervently fighting the Union all his life, converted to the Uniate Church. He did it too categorically, publicly repudiating his earlier opuses, including Trenos , which “all Lithuania” (Ukraine and Belorussia) read avidly.
Melety Smotrutsky cherished the idea of church unity until he died. In his tract Appeals , he expressed a new idea — he suggested establishing a UkrainianBelorussian Orthodox-cum-Uniate patriarchy independent from both Constantinople and Rome, as did Moscow in 1589. The enlightener Smotrytsky believed this could make it easier to achieve public peace and embrace Western culture and education.
Melety Smotrytsky holds an undeservedly modest place in the history of our culture (perhaps because he had “stained” his image by embracing the Union). Yet, the truth is he belonged to the assemblage of the most prominent humanists of his time and was a patriot of his fatherland. Still, although the true humanist Smotrytsky was a utopian and his dreams of a “Rus and Rus” unity have not fully come true even today, his life can be viewed as a symbol of the reconciliation of two — Orthodox and Greek Catholic — confessions.
