Introduction

Historiographical discourse. In Ukrainian humanities only now in the time of independence has an understanding arisen of the importance of Lithuanian studies, because researchers for a long time were limited to studying the cultural and religious history of their own country, outside the context of the GDL, in general ignoring the fact of the many years that Ukrainian lands were under the Lithuanian state and their integration into the civilizational space of Latin Christianity. This is partially connected with the dominance in Ukrainian historiography of conceptual approaches of the noted Ukrainian scholar Mykhailo Hrushevsky (1866–1934). Together with his numerous followers, he considered the religious factor secondary in Ukrainian history, concentrating attention on questions of socioeconomic and political history.¹See: Serhiy Plokhy, Unmaking Imperial Russia: Mykhailo Hrushevsky and the Writing of Ukrainian History, Toronto–Buffalo–London: University of Toronto Press, 2005. In return, the government school formed in the first half of the 20th century tried to interpret the Church in national categories, not taking into account its sacred character and bypassing the whole level of the interior life of the Christian community.

In the Soviet period, Ukrainian historical scholarship, functioning in the riverbed of “progressive” and “socially significant” themes, in general remained in intellectual self-isolation and institutional decline. And only a small part of scholars, thanks to the particularities of “velvet totalitarianism”, did not lose a high, expert level of research,²See: Jaroslav Pelenski, “Soviet Ukrainian Historiography after World War II”, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 1964, vol. 12, no. 3, p. 384. Also: Ярослав Д. Ісаєвич, Братства та їх роль в розвитку української культури XVI–XVIII ст., Київ: Наукова думка, 1966; Ярослав Д. Ісаєвич, Джерела з історії української культури доби феодалізму XVI–XVIII ст., Київ: Наукова думка, 1972; Ярослав Д. Ісаєвич, Українське книговидання: витоки, розвиток, проблеми, Львів: ІУ, 2002. entirely understandably focusing on medieval history and archaeographic work on sources and empirical studies. Paradoxically, scholars from the Ukrainian diaspora, working in the free Western world, after the Second World War also did not “insert” the historical tradition of the GDL into the national metanarrative, following the schemata of periodization and methodological approaches of M. Hrushevsky and the government school. Entirely in opposition to this nationalizing approach was the scholarly and archaeographic activities of the Basilian Fathers in Rome through the second half of the 20th century.³See: Сергій М. Плохій, “Від Якова Суші до Атанасія Великого (Огляд видань римських джерел з історії української церкви)”, Український археографічний щорічник, 1993, вип. 2, с. 10–12. Cardinal Josyf Slipyj, the head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, freed from Soviet concentration camps in 1963, used a similar “totalitarian approach” to the publication of ecclesiastical sources. Based at Pope St. Clement Ukrainian Catholic University, which he founded in Rome, he published 14 volumes of documents, “Monumenta Ucrainae historica” (1964–1977), collected earlier at the initiative of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky.⁴See: Йосиф Сліпий, Спомини, red. Іван Дацько, Марія Горяча, Львів–Рим: Вид-во УКУ, 2014. And so, for the first time in the historiography of Central-Eastern Europe, the whole Kyivan Metropolitanate of the Slavic-Byzantine rite became an object of study, from Vilnius in the north to Kherson in Crimea in the south and from the Lemkiv area and Podlachia in the west to Smolensk, Bryansk, and the Sloboda area in the east.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the USSR in 1990–1991, a so-called “rehabilitation period” began in the newly-independent countries of Central-Eastern Europe, when, from nothing, hundreds of undeservedly forgotten and repressed names and works returned and a search began for new methodological approaches to the humanities and a gradual integration of young historiographers into the Western scholarly discourse. Then in the capital of Ukraine, the city of Kyiv, the scholarly school of Natalya Yakovenko gradually formed. It turned attention to social history, publishing a monograph, pioneering for that time, about the pre-modern elite, the boyars (nobles). The work became a strong impulse for reinterpreting the role of the GDL in Ukrainian history and for interesting researchers in Volyn as a unique region for the concentration of the Ruthenian nobility, which formed in “the Lithuanian age”.⁵Наталія М. Яковенко, Українська шляхта з кінця XIV – до середини XVII ст. Волинь і Центральна Україна, Київ: Наукова думка, 1993. In a synthesis of 1997, with a new conception of the history of Ukraine, the Ukrainian lands of the 13th to 16th centuries were viewed within the bounds of the cultural, political, and socioeconomic history of the GDL and Poland as “dissimilar shoots of a [common] Ruthenian trunk”, the Lithuanian dukes figure as “gatherers of the Ruthenian lands”, and the Lublin Union of 1569 is treated as an opportunity for the first “meeting of Rus with Rus” in a few centuries.⁶Наталія М. Яковенко, Нарис історії середньовічної та ранньомодерної України, Київ: Генеза, 1997. A clearer articulation of the Lithuanian legacy is noticeable in the generalizing monograph “Ukraine under the Tatars and Lithuania”, published in the multi-volume series “Ukraine through the ages”, authored by Olena Rusyna.⁷Олена В. Русина, Україна під татарами і Литвою (series: Україна крізь віки, т. 6), Київ: Альтернативи, 1998. Analyzing the “Lithuanian expansion into Ukrainian lands”, the author traces in detail the vicissitudes of the ecclesiastical policy of the dukes of the Gediminids dynasty regarding the Ruthenian Church, internal divisions in the Kyivan Metropolitanate, “union struggles of the 15th century”, and presents the particularities of interconfessional relations in the GDL.

In Ukrainian historiography in the last decade, we observe significant interest in traditions of the GDL. The Institute of the History of Ukraine at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine has become a leading center of Lithuanian studies. There a young group of researchers began the academic publication “Ukraina Lithuanica: Studies in the History of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania” (six editions from 2010 to 2021), which assembled the best scholars from various cities of Ukraine, Lithuania, and other countries. In addition to Kyiv, Lithuanian studies are developing in regional museums and university centers, for example, in Dnipro and Lutsk. At the same time, at the initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania and teachers of Vilnius University (Alfredas Bumblauskas and Genutė Kirkienė) who enlisted for cooperation leading scholars from Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine, a project started, oriented at the popularization in Ukrainian humanities of the cultural-historical legacy of the GDL. Today the Baltia-Druk Publishing House has issued books, illustrated and written well, in an accessible language, about “the Lithuanian-Polish era 1320–1569” and the most outstanding representatives of the elite of the time, dukes of the Wiśniowiecki, Olelkovich-Slutskys, Ostrogski, and Radziwiłł families.⁸Україна: литовська-польська доба 1320–1569, Київ: Балтія-Друк, 2008; Українське Козацтво і Велике князівство Литовське, Київ: Балтія-Друк, 2014; Князі Вишневецькі, Київ: Балтія-Друк, 2016; Князі Острозькі, Київ: Балтія-Друк, 2014; Князі Радзивіли, Київ: Балтія-Друк, 2012; Князі Олелковичи-Слуцки, Київ: Балтія-Друк, 2017; Епоха Вітовта в історії України: 1387–1430, Київ: Балтія-Друк, 2020. Also some of them available in Lithuanian.

The Kyivan Metropolitanate as the third partner of the Commonwealth of both nations. Despite noticeable interest in the historical legacy of the GDL, the creation of active centers of Lithuanian studies, and the appearance of new works of a wide thematic palette about “the Lithuanian age” of the 14th to 16th centuries, the integration of this period into the historical canon as an inseparable component of the national metanarrative is happening slowly. Research today in Ukraine (as, finally, in Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia) is clearly missing a conceptual approach. Above all, this refers to the absence of an integral and contextual presentation of the mechanisms of self-organization and the functioning of the Ruthenian (Ukrainian-Belarusian) socium within the GDL and also its interactions with the authorities of the GDL, city self-government, local administrative structures, structures of the Roman Catholic Church, and, more widely, the dominant Latin culture. Another essential question relates to the institutional forms of self-organization of the Ruthenians, which “in the long run” ensured the preservation of their ethno-confessional identity, which created the pre-conditions for forming in the 19th–20th centuries modern political nations in Central-Eastern Europe.⁹See: Serhiy Plokhy, The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belorus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

The empirical results and methodological conclusions of the joint Lithuanian–Ukrainian project, which was thematically focused on the history of the monastery and church of the Holy Trinity in Vilnius (one of the important centers of the Eastern Christian tradition and intercultural communication in the GDL and historical Lithuania from the 14th to 19th centuries), makes possible at least a partial response to these two key questions. We expect that in this way a wider interdisciplinary discussion will begin among scholars of Lithuania, Ukraine, and other states about the model of interreligious dialogue and the organization of the socium in the multiconfessional and multiethnic GDL. I have in mind two concepts: (1) the Kyivan Metropolitanate as a representative of “Rus” and defender of the rights of the Ruthenians in medieval Lithuania (middle of the 13th to middle of the 16th centuries) and (2) the Kyivan Metropolitanate as the third de facto but juridically not acknowledged partner of the Commonwealth of both nations after the Lublin Union of 1569.¹⁰Concept discussed in: Andrzej Gil, Ihor Skoczylas, Kościoły Wschodnie w państwie polsko-litewskim w procesie przemian i adaptacji: Metropolia kijowska w latach 1458–1795, Lublin–Lwów: Instytut Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej, 2014, s. 36–46.

When one considers the absence of “their own” common general state institutions for the clergy and the laity, the Eastern Church in the GDL became an ideal indicator of Ruthenian identity and a defender of “Ruthenian antiquities”.¹¹Regarding the concept of antiquity in the medieval society of Lithuania see: Михаил Кром, “«Старина» как категория средневекового менталитета (по материалам Великого княжества Литовского XIV – начала XVII вв.)”, Mediaevalia Ucrainica: ментальність та історія ідей, 1994, т. 3, с. 68–85. It formed for the Ruthenians the only regional Kyivan (Kyiv-Vilnius) Christian tradition, of which the foundation became:

• the Slavic-Byzantine rite, which was based on the Eastern Liturgy and used the Julian calendar;
• an original theological understanding (“Kyivan theology”);
• particular ecclesiastical law;
• a single canonical territory (“geographical isolation”), which invariably coincided with the borders of the GDL;
• a common Sacrum lingua (the codified Church Slavonic language) and continued practical use of the Ruthenian (“simple”) language (in chancellery and conversation);
• established sociocultural practices;
• memory about the past (liturgical, “historical”, cultural);
• political loyalty to the GDL court and state-legal legitimization.¹²See: Andrzej Gil, Ihor Skoczylas, op. cit., s. 123–135.

Thanks to these formative elements, a unique system of values arose – the ethos of Kyivan Rus, codified examples of which at first centrally were confirmed by Kyiv, the spiritual center of Eastern Christianity, and from the 14th century generally by Galicia, Novogrudok, and Vilnius (↑). Above all, the Ruthenian elite at the time – the hierarchy, monks, clergy, boyars (nobles), and urban patriciate – were interested in preserving and spreading all these characteristics.¹³See: Frank E. Sysyn, “Concepts of Nationhood in Ukrainian History Writing, 1620–1690”, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 1986, vol. 10, no. 3–4, p. 393–423. Relying on the administrative-territorial system of the eparchies of the Kyivan Metropolitanate, on various levels (from the metropolitan court in Vilnius to a village parish in the Smolensk area), the Ruthenians were able to declare their cultural and religious program at the main Lithuanian tribunal, at sejms of the nobles and provincial and eparchial councils. They were able to defend the rights and privileges of “the Ruthenian nation” in spiritual and secular law courts and realize their sociocultural needs in the activities of church brotherhoods, craft guilds, various charitable institutions, schools, etc. In conditions of confessional, political, and class divisions, it was ecclesiastical structures that gave the ability to preserve the unity of Ruthenian culture, fostering on the territories of the GDL the creation of the protonational self-awareness of today’s Belarusians, Ukrainians, and, in part, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles, and Russians.

Ihor Skochylias