Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny - Kievan Brotherhood

Kievan Brotherhood

Not only did Sahaidachny fight for control, he also fought for the religious and cultural rights of the Ukrainian people. In 1620, he registered himself and his entire Zaporozhian Host as students into the Kiev Epiphany Brotherhood School, that preceded the current Kyiv Mohyla Academy. It was done in order to protect the school from conversion from an Orthodox school into a Roman Catholic Jesuit Collegium. He also contributed to the establishment of a cultural center in Kiev and sought to unite the Cossack military with the Ukrainian clergy and nobility.

In 1620, Sahaidachny convinced the Patriarch Teophanes III of Jerusalem, who recently returned from Moscow, to reconstruct the Orthodox hierarchy, that was almost destroyed by the creation of the Greek-Catholic Church. The patriarch appointed Iov Boretsky as a Kievan Metropolitan bishop and five other bishops at the same time. Because the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had threatened to arrest Teophanes III as a spy, Sahaidachny was guaranteed his protection by the patriarch. After the new metropoliten and bishops were installed, Sahaidachny escorted the patriarch to the Ottoman border with a 3,000 men Cossack army.