HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY VIEWS ON THE KHMEL'NYTS'KYI UPRISING 451In portraying the Orthodox clergymen as major villains of therevolt, the Discourser asserts their superiority to the Cossacks andpeasants in organization and intellect, but he does not willingly admittheir superiority in social position or descent. Rather he mocks thelower clergy and monks as descendants of "field and plough peasants."Elsewhere he condemns the Orthodox bishops, and he undoubtedlyhas the higher clergy in mind in the accusation about bribery ofdelegates to the Diet. In so doing, he attacks a group of noble descent,but he avoids direct mention of this inconvenient fact.The Discourser has more difficulty fitting the Orthodox lay noblesinto his explanation of the revolt. These "deserters of the True Faith"are accused of having been bribed by the clergy to carry on obstructionisttactics at the Diet and dietines. The nobles who for more thanfifty years had used their privileges to protest the abrogation ofOrthodox privileges are portrayed as manipulators of the lower orders.The Discourser casts aspersions on their motivations, but his ownunderstanding of their importance in Orthodox affairs assures that indescribing the revolt he alludes to the lay Orthodox nobles, albeit in aroundabout manner.The depiction of the revolt as a conflict between social orders suffersby the Discourser's dual attack on Orthodox nobles, both lay andclerical. A reluctance to admit openly that "brother nobles" are amongthe despised Orthodox and rebels underlies the entire text. Indeed, the"Discourse" is the product of tension between the author's contradictorygoals. He views the Commonwealth as the perfect politicalembodiment of a free nobility, rejects any possibility that nobles couldbe dissatisfied with its institutions, and depicts the conflict as a revolt ofcommoners against the nobility. Yet he is convinced that the massesare not the real, conscious actors of history and that the Orthodoxnobles are substantially responsible for the revolt. The result is a seriesof circumlocutions and verbal gymnastics.Such gymnastics appear in the discussion of the growth of RomanCatholicism in the Rus' lands. The Discourser attributes this developmentto the ignorance of the Orthodox clergy, and maintains that theOrthodox church retains only peasant believers. He says that there areno longer any princes or great lords of the Ruthenian faith. But he hasdeparted so far from the actual situation that he is compelled to emendsaw, 1930); and Orest Levitskii (Levyts'kyi), "Cherty vnutrennogo stroiaZapadno-Russkoi tserkvi," Kievskaia starına 8 (1884) : 627-654. Also see mydiscussion in "Problem of Nobilities in the Ukrainian Past," pp. 54-61.