Humanities Journal

The article analyzing the treatise by Meletius Smotrytsky's «Threnos» attempts to systematize the views of the author on the role and place of the Orthodox hierarchy in the formation of Ukrainian national ideology and political tradition.

The key idea of the «Threnos» is the idea that social and historical conditions of that time in Ukraine require the appearance of a constellation of prophets or shepherds who are understood by author as spiritual mentors of the people. Their task was to enlighten Ukrainian society and raise its national-religious consciousness. The author of the «Threnos» pays considerable attention to the criticism of the hierarchs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church when he determines their role in society, therefore, he obviously correlates this role with the expected arrival of the named ecclesiastical and moral leaders, and this gives us reason to suppose that the church should nominate the mentioned spiritual shepherd. Orthodox Church is also versed by Smotrytsky as an authoritative social institution obliged to become the basis for the moral improvement of society and its consolidation before the realization of an external threat. 

Smotrytsky pays special attention to the condemnation of the actual culprits of the situation that was formed ‑ in fact, the members of the church hierarchy. He distinguishes three main levels of criticism, which are used to judge the degree of decline of the spiritual shepherd - theological, ethical and social. According to Smotrytsky, each of these levels logically follows from the previous one, creating a peculiar hierarchical sequence linking the true shepherd with God, on the one hand, and with the Ukrainian society on the other one.

He sees the main cause of evil in forgetting God's covenants.  Smotrytsky believes that the indifference to the testaments of God is connected with the ignorance and incompetence of the ministers of the church, devastating to the whole flock. In other words, only the enlightened mind of the shepherd can make him a real mediator of the will of God - "good shepherd". Meanwhile, the ignorance is the cause of the ethical decline of the hierarchs of the Orthodox Church, and as a result, the moral degradation of all classes of Ukrainian society.

According to Smotrytsky, the key to understanding the social behavior of the «evil shepherd» is the principle of the formation of the Orthodox hierarchy, namely the practice of selling church positions, for which the applicant was not obliged to undergo a pre-examination and election procedure, which would exclude a bad candidate. The result is logical: the immorality of shepherds, standing at the basis of their social behavior, leads to the humiliation of the authority of the Orthodox hierarchy, which, in turn, stimulates the collapse of the church structure that should cement Ukrainian society.

Constructing an oppositional set of properties that relate to the characteristics of a «good shepherd», Smotrytsky draws his image in terms that repeat the foregoing, but receive a qualitatively different ethical sound. If pastorship was based on the authority of ethical perfection, it would provide the opportunity to cure the social diseases that struck the church, the main of which is the sale of church positions.  However, though necessary, these steps are insufficient to consolidate the entire Ukrainian society. According to Smotrytsky, as a result of the healing of the Orthodox Church, its shepherds will have the moral right to lead the entire Ukrainian «nation».

Thus, the ideas of Meletius Smotrytsky became, in fact, the first fixed attempt of Ukrainian intellectuals to offer their option for the further development of Ukrainian society, designed to ensure the continuity of the process of forming a national ideology and political tradition in conditions of explicit tension in interconfessional relations. The main role in this process is given to the updated Orthodox Church and its expected «good shepherds», who are called not only to improve the Church itself but also to consolidate the Orthodox community.  In spite of the expressive motives of Christian providentialism, in the future this concept has found completely secular application, contributing to the ideological justification of the actions of the Orthodox brotherhoods and the Zaporozhian Cossacks, aimed at the restoration of the Orthodox hierarchy as new political elite. 

orthodox hierarchy, church elite, shepherd, moral perfection

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