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[German Version] I. Term The term “Ukraine” with the meaning of “borderland” appears in the chronicles of the 12th and 13th centuries as a designation of the border areas lying between the sedentary and the nomadic civilization of the Kievan Rus. From the 16th century onward, Polish sources refer to the middle reach of the Dnieper River as the Ukraine. In the 17th century, the term was used to designate the domain of the Dnieper Cossacks. The territory that has been defined as the Ukraine since Worl…

[German Version] (Apr 17, 1818, Moscow – Mar 1, 1881, St. Petersburg), Tsar of Russia (1855–1881). In domestic policy, the epoch of the “reform tsar” is rightly considered a turning-point. As the core of the reforms, the law abolishing serfdom was issued on Feb 19, 1861, the …

[German Version] I. History of Religions – II. Church History – III. Current Situation I. History of Religions Brotherhoods are a special form of community, not constituted by traditional forms of relationship (Covenant). They are mono-gendered groupings (also “sisterhoods”) distinguished by certain homogeneous characteristics. Initiation groups are often the origin of brotherhoods in cultural histo…

[German Version] (1528 – May 23, 1583, Kovelʾ, Wolhynia). Descended from the dynasty of Smolensk/Yaroslav princes, Kurbsky is first mentioned in 1549 as a participant in Ivan the Terrible's campaign against Kazan. He served Ivan as a successful military leader during the Livonian War. Having fallen out of favor, Kurbsky changed allegiance in 1564 and entered the service of King Sigismund Augustus II, who endowed him with estates in Lithuania and Wolhynia. During his exile, as a student of Maksim G…

[German Version] (Feb 28, 1834, Kostroma, Russia – Jan 7, 1912, Sergiyev Posad, Russia). Golubinsky's magum opus is the still indispensable Istoriia russkoi tserkvi…

[German Version] (Samuil Emelianovich Petrovskii-Sintianovich; 1629, Polotsk [?] – 1680, Moscow), active as a theologian, educator, poet, and dramatist in Moscow, where he acquired enormous cultural and political influence in a period when formal education and increase of knowledge through closer ties with the Western world were taking on existential significance. After concluding his studies at the Mogila Academy in Kiev (II) in 1651, he studied at Jesuit colleges abroad and then began teac…

[German Version] According to tradition, the Holy Dormition Pochaev Laura, 120 km east of Lviv (Ukraine), had its beginning when monks from Kiev, destroyed by the Mongols in 1240, settled on Mount Pochaev, where a footprint of the Theotokos is venerated. The earliest document of the monastery, from 1595, records a generous gift from Anna Goys-¶ kaya, a Volhynian noblewoman. The document forbids the takeover of the monastery by any other denomination. Thanks also to the veneration of St. Job of Pochaev, the monastery’s abbot, the monastery stayed in Orthodox hands longer than other monasteries in the region after the Union of Brest in 1596 (Unions with Rome). Not unti…

[German Version] (1574, Ruta, near Vilnius – 1637, Ruta), third metropolitan of the Uniate church (since 1596; Unions with Rome) of the Kiev (II) metropolita…

[German Version] (1722, Cho…

[German Version] After the Union of Brest in 1596, Orthodox laity, supported by the church brotherhoods, opposed a union with Rome (Unions with Rome) and called for the restoration of the Eastern church hierarchy. The election of Vladislav…

[German Version] (Mikhail Ragoza; c. 1540? – 1599, Kiev?), metropolitan of Kiev and Halič. In Rohoza’s period in office, union with Rome (Unions with Rome) was agreed. He came from the lesser Ruthenian nobility, and appears in 1579 as archimandrite of the Monastery of the Ascension in Minsk. On his appointment in 1589, Patr…

[German Version] I. Catholicism – II. Orthodoxy – III. Protestantism The term parish comes from the Greek παροικία/ paroikía (“resident alien’s dwelling”), which in early Christianity expressed the foreignness of Christians in society. Resulting from this basic feeling, individual congregations were called παροικίαι/ paroikíai from the 2nd century. Until Late Antiquity, paroikía remained a technical term for a bishop’s congregation. Only after the rise of pastoral subcenters in large towns and rural areas, which became the main point of reference for ¶ believers’ religious li…

[German Version] (Hypatius, secular name Adam; Aug 12, 1581, Rozhanka, Grand Duchy of Lithuania – Jul 18, 1613, Vilnius) is considered the most learned Ruthenian church dignitary in the era of confessionalization. After attending the Calvinistic school of Prince Nicholas Radziwiłł (“the Black”), he left the Orthodox Church but returned to it in 1574. Before he became a monk and was appointed bishop of Volodymyr-Volynskyi (1593) by Sigismund III, he served as a senator and held the office of castel…

[German Version] (1524/1525 – Feb 13/23, 1608 Ostrog, Volhynia [Ukraine]), voivode of Kiev and marshal of Volhynia, played an important role in the public life of Poland-Lithuania in the age of confessionalization. He was concerned at times with reaching an agreement with representatives of the Reformation, as well as an understanding with Rome. He rejected the union of an Eastern Orthodox state church with Rome without the participation of all patriarchs of the East, a…

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[German Version] (Tuptalo; 1651, Makarovo near Kiev – Oct 28, 1709, Rostov), was influenced by scholasticism and the early Enlightenment during his education in Poland-Lithuania. As archbishop of Rostov, from 1702, he founded there the first eparchial school in Russia. It was considered the paradigm for the educational model of the 1721 Spiritual Regulation. For Dimitry, winning back the Old Believers to the Orthodox Church was also a matter of enlightenment and education. Dimitry's …

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[German Version] (1724, Korotsk, Novgo­rod region – Aug 13, 1783, Zadonsk), one of the most important 18th-century Russian hierarchs. The son of a church sexton, he was baptized Timofey. He attended the seminary at the court of the bishop in Novgorod, and after being tonsured as a monk in 1758 he took the name Tikhon and served as the bishop’s prefect. In ¶ 1759 he was called to the seminary in Tver as professor of theology; soon he was made its rector. Consecrated “bishop of

[German Version] (250 km northeast of Lviv [Lemberg], Ukraine), chosen seat of the Ruthenian Udel princes of Ostrog; from the mid-14th century steadily built up as a defensive fortress against Tartar attack. With the rise of the princes of Ostrog to the highest rank of the Polish-Lithuanian aristocratic republic, Ostrog gained particular importance as a political and cultural center for the defence of Ruthenian interests, and the strengthening of the position of the Eastern Church in the process o…

[German Version] (1530?–1607), Orthodox bishop of Lemberg (Ukrainian L'viv) from 1569. He opposed the introduction of the Gregorian cal…