MUKACHEVO EPARCHY AND CONFESSIONAL DISCIPLINING IN THE 18TH CENTURY
The Mukachevo Eparchy is situated on the Southern Slopes of the Carpathian Mountains, and at the beginning of the 18th century belonged to the Hungarian Kingdom under the rule of the Habsburgs. The territory of the Eparchy spanned 10–13 counties and more than 800 parishes, 6 "senior" and 13–17 "minor" monasteries. For the believers of the Eastern Rite, the 18th century was a time of continuation of the confessional age. The Mukachevo Eparchy didn't accept the ecclesiastical Union with the Roman Church in Brest 1596, when part of the Kyivan Orthodox Metropolitanate recognised the supremacy of the Roman Pope, while preserving the ancient local religious practices. However, the idea of the Union was spreading among the hierarchy of the Eastern Rite, through the monastic communities and individual monks. The 17th century, along with wars and rebellions, was also marked by religious tensions. In the context of the Mukachevo Eparchy, the rivalry was between the Eger Latin Diocese, the Calvinist Transylvanian princes, the Habsburgs and the local hierarchs. The question of the Union/Orthodoxy depended on the jus patronatus, and the lay lord of the Mukachevo had a decisive role in naming and the confessional orientation of the bishops. In practice, this meant that when the centre of the eparchy was under the control of the Transylvanian princes, the bishops were to be Orthodox, and when the centre was controlled by supporters of the Habsburgs, the Uniates. Under the political conditions, the eastern part of the Eparchy established the Maramorosh Orthodox Eparchy, which experienced the temporary union with Transylvanian Calvinists at the end of the 17th century. The Uniate part of the Mukachevo Eparchy under the rule of Joseph de Camellis attempted to organise the territory and the believers according to the Tridentine disciplining model adapted for the Uniate community. But Prince Ferenc II Rakoczy's Liberation War against the Habsburgs and the death of de Camelis suspended the disciplining processes. In the conflict for the episcopal office between John Joseph Hodermarskyi and George Gennadius Bizantsi, the Latin bishop of Eger made Bizantsi pledge allegiance of the Mukachevo Uniate Eparchy to the authority of the Eger Latin Diocese. The Mukachevo Eparchy went through an unsettled period from 1716 to 1771, until it was officially established as an independent administrative ecclesiastical unit by Pope Clement XIV's bull "Eximia regalium principum".
1. Basilian monastery of St. Nicolas near Mukacheve in the beginning of the 20th century (Source: "Мукачівський монастир", Провінція Святого Миколая. Василіянський чин святого Йосафата в Україні, дата звернення 4 вересня 2025, https://osbm.org.ua/index.php/cherneche-formuvannya/71-2011-07-27-21-09-28/180-2011-08-02-14-14-23.).
The disciplining process was not the first question when starting this project. The initial idea of the research was to find information about the library collections, create statistical tables and reconstruct the repertoire of the books. The process of disciplining is a way to explain why the book collections of parishes and monasteries looked exactly as they looked in the 18th century. This question is essential as even nowadays the Mukachevo Eparchy and its descendant eparchies in Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, and the USA have an issue of identity rooted in the historical ancientness. So, the questions of the liturgical, religious, and ritual practices are more than essential to the issue. My research is based on a close reading of the historical sources that have been published and newly discovered in the archival and library collections of different institutions in Ukraine, Hungary, and Slovakia. During the research project, I prepared and published several articles and one essential source for current research.
My PhD project consists of four chapters, an introduction, conclusions and an appendix. The first chapter is about the historiography, sources and methodology. The second chapter is about the disciplining process, and the third and fourth chapters are about the book collections of the parishes and the monasteries.
The research project I prepared, thanks to the Scholarship of the Think Space Ukraine at the University of Regensburg, was the second chapter of the thesis. Here I will tell a little more about the content of the chapter.
As I mentioned, the disciplining processes were the determining issue for the Mukachevo Eparchy in the 18thcentury. In some sense, my approach has a new viewpoint on the processes. The main idea of the chapter is to put the interpretation of the local events into a broader context of the religious history, which is commonly known in Eastern Europe as the Reformation, Confessionalization, and Catholic Reform. Tridentine Council's resolutions became the primary canonical source for the Catholic Church until probably the Second Vatican Council. Instead of accepting the reforms in the 16th century, it is hard to tell whether the Eastern Rite in East-Central Europe gained success during the 17th century. After the last eparchies of the Kyivan Metropolitanate in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth adopted the Union, the problem of the unification and organisation of the religious life became mainstream. To solve the uncertainties in Liturgy, theology, practices and behaviour of the Eastern Rite believers, the Council in Zamość was convened in 1720. This Council adopted the main features of the Catholic Tridentine reform for the Eastern Rite, preserving the appearance of the local tradition. Also, this Council restricted some problems of the reception of Latin practices to the Eastern Rite.
2. Title page of the local council in Nagyszőlős (now Vynohradiv), 1727, February 2. (Author’s photo).
Until today, there has been a discussion about the obligatory nature of the Zamość Council resolutions for the Mukachevo Eparchy. This point of view came from the erroneous view of the Eparchy as an isolated community. This chapter demonstrates the local councils of 1726–1727, where the Zamość resolutions were adopted. It shows their impact on the administrative ordering of the eparchy and monastic network, education of the clergy, liturgical unification, preaching practices, and visitations. All these topics are reflected in book collections in some manner.
3. 1v-2 pages of the local council in Nagyszőlős (now Vynohradiv), 1727, February 2. (Author’s photo).
Before adopting the Council's resolutions, the Eparchy's head bore the titles of the bishop and archimandrite of the Mukachevo monastery. The first time these offices were split was in the peace deal of Hodermarskyi and Bizantsi in 1716. Still, after the death of the archimandrite Hodermarskyi in 1729, bishop Bizantsi was elected for this office. The deal between monks and the bishop provided that Bizantsi would rule the monastic affairs as an archmandrite and the eparchial affairs as the bishop. After the death of Bizantsi in 1733, hegumens of "senior" monasteries passed a vow of obedience to the newly elected head of the Mukachevo monastery as the protohegumen – the supreme head of all the monasteries. This should be acknowledged due to the Council's principle of separating eparchial and monastic governance. The Council's resolutions assured the longevity of the new canonical state for these offices, instead of the initial splitting that had happened before these adoptions.
The clergy education was one of the wide problems that was resolved only after the official establishment of the Eparchy in 1771 and its Seminary in 1776. According to the Tridentine Council, each diocese or, in our case, eparchy should have a Seminary to prepare future priests. In the Latin Church, this issue was partly resolved by the Jesuit order; however, the Eastern Rite communities needed to take care of the education differently. The Mukachevo Eparchy had funding opportunities to support several students at the Jesuit colleges, but this was barely enough to recruit the future higher hierarchs. In contrast, the parish clergy were hereditary and home-educated. Bishop Mykhailo Manuil Olshavskyi founded the Theological School in Mukacheve in 1744. The education at this School was incomparable with that of the Jesuits; however, it was better than the home education. This School became the base for the seminary establishment of the Uzhorod Seminary in 1778. For the education in this Seminary, the latin-church-slavonic Primer Catechism was issued in Cluj in 1746. Apart from the primer, the fundamental truths of faith were learned from the 1727 Trnava Catechism by George Gennadius Bizantsii, which was a reprint of the Supraśl 1722 Zamosc Catechism by Leo Kyshka.
4. Title page of facsimile issue of Olshavskyi’s Primer Catechism (Source: István Udvari, ed., Elementa puerilis institutionis in lingualatina. Начало писмεнъ дѣтεм къ наставлεнїю на латинскомъ ѩзыкѣ (Claudiopol – Коложваръ, 1746)).
5. Title page of the the 1727 Trnava Catechism by George Gennadius Bizantsii. (Author’s photo)
The unification of the Liturgy has been a crucial issue for all Uniate communities since the beginning of the confessional age. The vast territory, divided by political and geographical borders and different external influences, prompted the emergence of local variations in liturgical texts and practices. One of the Council of Trent's outcomes was not only the specification of the doctrine, but the obligation to follow it by the believers. This feature is reflected in the Eastern Rite as well. The local specifics, among others, were that there was a need to clarify the mentions of the Roman Pope in the Liturgy, the obligation of the preaching, and to correct some ritual Sacramental practices. George Bizantsi's Catechism obliged the priesthood to regularly provide catechisation for the children. Along with the catechism part, the book contained all the necessary instructions for giving the rituals, behaviour, external appearance, etc.
6. Fragment of the visitation protocol of 1750–1752 (Author’s photo).
All the above-mentioned stuff was to be examined and controlled by the institute of the visitation. The published and preserved until today in several archival storage, visitation protocols have a lot of materials to prove that the disciplining process was made according to the Tridentine model in the Zamość reception. The reception of some Latin innovations and the preservation of the old tradition remind us of a similar model that was called "Slavia Unita" by Ihor Skochylias.
Further updates on the research will follow in the next months, when I plan to finish preparing the text and initiate a defence process. Using this opportunity, I want to thank the University of Regensburg Think-Space Ukraine for having me. I want to express my gratitude to all Ukrainian defenders who allowed me to conduct research at home, and I hope for a just peace in future.