HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

458 FRANK E. SYSYNThe Discourser was well aware that Orthodoxy is an internationalcreed: for instance, he discusses the relation of the Greeks to theconversion of Rus'. But in practice, he, like his contemporaries, hadcontacts with the particular church, not the universal one. Orthodoxylent itself to being viewed as a "national" faith. The decentralization inthe administration of the church and the use of a number of liturgicallanguages allowed particular churches to function as "national" institutions.In certain cases, the particular churches survived as national andcultural institutions after the demise of the dynasties and states underwhich they had been formed. By the seventeenth century, the metropolitansee of Kiev — with its loose ties with Constantinople, role asbearer of the traditions of Kievan Rus', and use of the Slavoniclanguage in the liturgy — functioned as just such a national church forthe Ruthenians.The Discourser's particular emphasis on Orthodoxy as a characteristicof the Ruthenians is evident in his discussion of the Uniates, or,more properly, in the lack of any discussion of them. The Uniatesshared the cultural, historical, and linguistic traditions of the OrthodoxRuthenians; indeed, in the author's interpretation, the Ruthenians hadbeen Uniates at the time of their conversion. But whereas the Orthodoxfaith is mentioned frequently in the "Discourse," the Uníatechurch is almost ignored. Unlike contemporaries who viewed theUniate church as the true Rus' church or who discussed the two Rus'churches of the Ruthenians, the Discourser merely offers the Uniate-Catholic interpretation of the conversion of Rus' and laments thatCatholic sees had been handed over to the Orthodox. 51The Discourser's silence about the Uniates may have had a practicaland an ideological reason. In practical terms, the Uniate church was asmall institution. At the center of rebel territory it was nearly absent,while in the western Ukrainian lands its following was small. 52The51I have discussed various definitions of the Rus' community in "Ukrainian-Polish Relations in the Seventeenth Century," pp. 72-73. For discussions of bothOrthodox and Uniates as Rus', see the speeches of Adam Kysil before theOrthodox synod of 1629, published in P. V. Zhukovich, Materiały dlia istoriiKievskogo i Lvovskogo soborov 1629 goda (St. Petersburg, 1911), p. 17 (ZapiskiImperatorskoi Akademii nauk, ser. 8, no. 15), and before the Diet of 1641,published in Golubev, Kievskii mitropolit Petr Mogiła, 2, pt. 2: 153-54. The firstspeech is translated in part and discussed in my article, "Adam Kysil and theSynods of 1629," Eucharisterion = Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3/'4 (1979-80)pt. 2: 839-41.52On the relative lack of success of the Union in the Ukrainian lands in the firsthalf of the seventeenth century, see Władysław Tomkiewicz, "Dzieje unji kościel-