Peter Mogila - Career

Career

In the 1620s, Mohyla traveled to Ukraine which at that time was in a political turmoil due to internal and external factors, in part due to Poland’s annexation of Ukrainian lands. He started preparing spiritually at his aristocratic home in Rubiejovka, where he also founded a church dedicated to Saint John the New from Suceava. He then settled in Kyevo-Pechers’ka Lavra in Kiev (Kiev Pechersk Lavra), which was the political, cultural, spiritual, and educational center of Ukraine. There he joined Ivan Boretsky, Zakhariy Kopystetsiy, and Pamvo Berynda, and a group of scholars and orthodox clerics who promoted ideas of national liberation and cultural self-preservation. The effects of political instability had an impact on all spheres of life in the country. The number of printed publications was significantly reduced and many schools were closed. In order to preserve their privileges before the Polish king, the nobility, in great numbers, started to convert from Orthodoxy to Catholicism.

In 1632 Mohyla became the bishop of Kiev and abbot of Pecherska Lavra. Because of his ties to several European royal homes, the leadership of the Orthodox clergy entrusted him to negotiate with the Polish Sejm (parliament) and the king to lift the repressive laws against the Orthodox Church and to ease the restrictions on the use of the Ukrainian language in schools and public offices. Mohyla’s diplomatic talent paid off. King Władysław IV reinstated the status of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The first years as abbot Mohyla showed that he had far-reaching goals to reform not only the monastic life at the Lavra and the Church. He wanted to strengthen the Orthodox spirituality and enhance the sense of national identity as well as raise the educational level in the country to equal that in Western Europe.

One of the first steps in implementing this vision, Mohyla founded at the Lavra a school for young monks (1632). The tutoring was conducted in Latin. The students studied theology, philosophy, rhetoric, and classical authors. At the same time, Mohyla significantly improved the print shop at the Lavra where Orthodox books were published in Latin and distributed to various places in eastern Europe. Later that year, Mohyla merged this school with the Kiev Brotherhood school and created the Mohyla collegium which later became known as the Kyiv Mohyla Academy (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy). The students at the collegium had diverse backgrounds. They came from noble, clerical, gentry, Cossack and peasant families. The school offered a variety of disciplines: Ukrainian, Latin, Greek, and Polish languages; philosophy; mathematics, including geometry; astronomy; music; and history. Because of the high profile of the faculty, the collegium received the status of a higher educational establishment.

In the next few years, Mohyla established a whole network of schools around Ukraine as well as the Slavonic-Greek-Latin Academy in Vinnytsia and collegium in Kremenets. Also, he supplied the prince of Wallachia, Matei Basarab, upon his request, with a printing press and printers. In 1635 the prayer books which were published in Prince Basarab’s monastic residence were widely distributed in Wallachia, (later to became Romania), and Ukraine.