The Synod of Zamość was a Ruthenian Uniate synod held in 1720 in

Zamość Zamość (; yi, זאמאשטש, Zamoshtsh; la, Zamoscia) is a historical city in southeastern Poland. It is situated in the southern part of Lublin Voivodeship, about from Lublin, from Warsaw. In 2021, the population of Zamość was 62,021. ...

. It is considered a crucial event that stabilised the Uniate liturgy and organisation after this

Church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

had managed to gain the upper hand among the

Eastern Christians Eastern Christianity comprises Christian traditions and church families that originally developed during classical and late antiquity in Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Northeast Africa, the Fertile Crescent and ...

of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Having brought the Uniates into line with the Tridentine Catholicism, the synod remains a controversial issue, as its critics claim that it corrupted the Ruthenian Uniate traditions with too many borrowings from the Latins.

Background

In 1596 the Ruthenian

Orthodox Orthodox, Orthodoxy, or Orthodoxism may refer to: Religion * Orthodoxy, adherence to accepted norms, more specifically adherence to creeds, especially within Christianity and Judaism, but also less commonly in non-Abrahamic religions like Neo-pag ...

bishops of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth accepted the terms of the 1439 Union of Florence and concluded the so-called

Union of Brest The Union of Brest (; ; ; ) was the 1595–96 decision of the Ruthenian Orthodox Church eparchies (dioceses) in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to break relations with the Eastern Orthodox Church and to enter into communion with, and place i ...

with the

Holy See The Holy See ( lat, Sancta Sedes, ; it, Santa Sede ), also called the See of Rome, Petrine See or Apostolic See, is the jurisdiction of the Pope in his role as the bishop of Rome. It includes the apostolic episcopal see of the Diocese of Rome ...

in Rome. In exchange for the promises of political elevation within the Commonwealth and the preservation of their Byzantine-Slavonic liturgy and organisation, they chose to recognise the papal supremacy. Many Orthodox

Ruthenians Ruthenian and Ruthene are exonyms of Latin origin, formerly used in Eastern and Central Europe as common ethnonyms for East Slavs, particularly during the late medieval and early modern periods. The Latin term Rutheni was used in medieval sourc ...

, however, regarded that agreement as contemptible and rejected it outright, which led to a prolonged internecine strife among the Commonwealth's Eastern Christians and constituted one of the causes of the

Cossack uprisings The Cossack uprisings (also kozak rebellions, revolts) were a series of military conflicts between the cossacks and the states claiming dominion over the territories the Cossacks lived in, namely the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russian E ...

. In the course of the seventeenth century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth lost control of

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...

and the territories on the left bank of the Dnipro, inhabited by the Ukrainian Cossacks and nobles fiercely opposed to the Union of Brest. This, in turn, weakened the supporters of Orthodoxy among those Ruthenians who remained under the Polish-Lithuanian rule and enabled the Uniates to gain the upper hand: the process was crowned in 1700 when the bishop Iosyf Shumlianskyi succeeded in turning the crucial eparchy of Lviv to Union. In the second decade of the eighteenth century the Uniate Metropolitan Lev Kyshka applied to Rome for permission to convene a provincial synod that would order the affairs of his Church and solidify its dominance among the Commonwealth's Ruthenians.

Pope Clement XI Pope Clement XI ( la, Clemens XI; it, Clemente XI; 23 July 1649 – 19 March 1721), born Giovanni Francesco Albani, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 23 November 1700 to his death in March 1721. Clement XI w ...

agreed.

Sessions and attendance

Originally, the synod was to take place in

Lviv Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine ...

, but it was removed to Zamość due to the epidemic. Three sessions were held in the St Nicholas Church in the southeast part of the town: the first one on 26 August 1720, the second one on 1 September, and the last one on 17 September. The meetings were presided by the papal

nuncio An apostolic nuncio ( la, nuntius apostolicus; also known as a papal nuncio or simply as a nuncio) is an ecclesiastical diplomat, serving as an envoy or a permanent diplomatic representative of the Holy See to a state or to an international or ...

to Poland-Lithuania

Archbishop of Edessa Early bishops The following list is based on the records of the ''Chronicle of Edessa'' (to ''c''.540) and the ''Chronicle of Zuqnin''. Jacobite (Syriac) bishops These bishops belonged to the Syriac Orthodox Church. During the later period there ...

Girolamo Grimaldi. Apart from the metropolitan Kyshka, the synod was attended by the following Uniate bishops: * Teodosii Godebskyi, bishop of

Pinsk Pinsk ( be, Пі́нск; russian: Пи́нск ; Polish: Pińsk; ) is a city located in the Brest Region of Belarus, in the Polesia region, at the confluence of the Pina River and the Pripyat River. The region was known as the Marsh of Pinsk a ...

, * Floriian Hrebnytskyi, archbishop of Polatsk, * Iosyf Levytskyi,

bishop of Chełm The Archdiocese of Lublin ( la, Lublinen(sis)) is an archdiocese located in the city of Lublin in Poland. History * 1375: Established as Diocese of Chełm * 1790: Renamed as Diocese of Chełm and Lublin * September 22, 1805: Renamed as Diocese o ...

, * Lavrentii Sokolnytskyi-Drutskyi, bishop of Smolensk, * Ieronim Ustrytskyi,

bishop of Przemyśl A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of Episcopal polity, authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or offic ...

, * Iosyf Vyhovskyi,

bishop of Lutsk The Roman Catholic diocese of Lutsk was first established in the 13th century as the diocese of Luceoria (Latin) or Łuck (Polish). After the victory of Napoleon, the diocese was joined with the diocese of Zhytomyr, forming the diocese of Lutzk-Zh ...

. The gathering was also joined by the leaders of the Uniate Basilian Order and lay representatives of the

Lviv Dormition Brotherhood Lviv Dormition Brotherhood ( uk, Львівське успенське братство) also known as ''Lviv Stauropegion Brotherhood'' was an influential religious organization associated with the Dormition Church in Lviv and one of the olde ...

Statutes

The regulations adopted in Zamość brought the Uniate Church into line with the Tridentine policies and sensibilities, but at the same time aimed to preserve its separate character, for example Uniate priests were strictly forbidden to use the unleavened Latin-style bread for the

Eucharist The Eucharist (; from Greek , , ), also known as Holy Communion and the Lord's Supper, is a Christian rite that is considered a sacrament in most churches, and as an ordinance in others. According to the New Testament, the rite was instit ...

. The synod decreed the insertion of the

filioque ( ; ) is a Latin term ("and from the Son") added to the original Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (commonly known as the Nicene Creed), and which has been the subject of great controversy between Eastern and Western Christianity. It is a term ...

and mentions of the current pope in public prayers, as well as stricter care of the matter of the Eucharist. The uniquely Latin Catholic holiday of Corpus Christi was now introduced into the Uniate liturgical calendar, whereas the cult of the medieval mystic

Gregory Palamas Gregory Palamas ( el, Γρηγόριος Παλαμᾶς; c. 1296 – 1359) was a Byzantine Greek theologian and Eastern Orthodox cleric of the late Byzantine period. A monk of Mount Athos (modern Greece) and later archbishop of Thessaloniki, h ...

was expressly prohibited. Zamość tacitly recognised the presence of

side altar A side-altar or bye-altar is an altar that is subordinate to the central or high altar in a church. The term is generally applied to altars that are situated in the bay or bays of the nave, transepts, etc. Side-altars may be recessed in a side-cha ...

s and the performance of more than one liturgy a day in Uniate churches. The synod demanded also the establishment of diocesan

seminaries A seminary, school of theology, theological seminary, or divinity school is an educational institution for educating students (sometimes called ''seminarians'') in scripture, theology, generally to prepare them for ordination to serve as clergy, ...

and the unification of the Basilian monasteries of Poland-Lithuanian into one congregation. What is more, in future only Basilian monks were to be nominated as bishops.

Aftermath

Pope Benedict XIII Pope Benedict XIII ( la, Benedictus XIII; it, Benedetto XIII; 2 February 1649 – 21 February 1730), born Pietro Francesco Orsini and later called Vincenzo Maria Orsini, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 29 May ...

approved the synod's statutes and had them published in Latin in 1724. Metropolitan Kyshka had released a concise Ruthenian-language catechism based on the Zamość regulations already in 1722 and in 1743 the next Metropolitan, Atanasii Sheptytskyi, had the statutes published in that language for the first time, but this translation soon became a rarity. Much more accessible was the Polish-language edition of 1785. The

Propaganda Fide Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...

republished the Latin version twice in the course of the nineteenth century and eventually in 1897 a Ukrainian translation was produced in Lviv by the authorities of the

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church , native_name_lang = uk , caption_background = , image = StGeorgeCathedral Lviv.JPG , imagewidth = , type = Particular church (sui iuris) , alt = , caption = St. George's C ...

. Both before and after the synod of Zamość the Uniate Church adopted many practices of the Latin Catholic Church. Numerous Orthodox and some Greek Catholic critics condemned this phenomenon as an unnecessary, if not outright harmful, Latinization of the Eastern Christian tradition. In the nineteenth century the Zamość regulations formed the basis of the Greek Catholic liturgical and organisational practices in

Austrian Galicia The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria,, ; pl, Królestwo Galicji i Lodomerii, ; uk, Королівство Галичини та Володимирії, Korolivstvo Halychyny ta Volodymyrii; la, Rēgnum Galiciae et Lodomeriae also known as ...

, but critical voices continued to challenge them. In the twentieth century Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytskyi presided over a wholesale turn away from the allegedly Latinate post-Zamość uses towards more Byzantinised forms.Przemysław Nowakowski CM, ed., ''Statuty synodu zamojskiego 1720 roku: Nowe tłumaczenie z komentarzami'' (Cracow, 2020), 382-390.

References

External links