Metadata: Protohegumenate of the Monasteries of the Order of St. Basil the Great, Lwów/Lemberg/Lviv/L’vov
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine, Lviv
- Holding institution (official language):
- Центральний державний історичний архів України, м. Львів
- Postal address:
- pl. Soborna, 3-а, 79008, L’viv
- Phone number:
- + 38 (032) 235-40-63
- Web address:
- archives.gov.ua/Eng/Archives/ca04.php
- Email:
- tsdial@arch.gov.ua
- Reference number:
- F. 684
- Title:
- Protohegumenate of the Monasteries of the Order of St. Basil the Great, Lwów/Lemberg/Lviv/L’vov
- Title (official language):
- Протоигуменат монастырей ордена св. Василия Великого, г. Львов
- Creator/accumulator:
- Protohegumenate of the Monasteries of the Order of St. Basil the Great, Lwów
- Date(s):
- 1575/1946
- Language:
- German
- Latin
- Polish
- Greek, Modern (1453-)
- Hebrew
- Yiddish
- Extent:
- 3,617 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
Documents in this fonds that pertain to Jewish history may be provisionally divided into three thematic groups:
1) Files on religious conversions from Judaism to Greek Catholicism (no. 1). In particular, there are documents of the Greek Catholic Consistory in Lemberg/Lwów dealing with instances of Jews having been baptised who returned to Judaism and subsequently attempted to convert to Greek Catholicism; documents on the prohibition on baptising Jewish minors (with the exception of the terminally ill; 1789); on Church officials’ recommendation that a young newly baptised Jew from Hungary named Abraham York be confirmed in the Greek Catholic faith (1799); and on an application by a Jew named Isaac for permission to convert to Christianity and be admitted to the Basilian Monastery of St. Onuphrius in Lemberg (1833). The same group of materials includes documents of the Lemberg District Administration on the conversion of M Kachko to the Greek Catholic faith (1833), and a petition by Samuel (Vladimir Yosafat) Yassover requesting that the monastery issue him documentation on his baptism (1895).
2) Articles, reports, and reviews of works dealing with biblical history, including a manual for working with Hebrew and Greek biblical manuscripts (a textbook in German, with inserts in Latin); a review by the Ukrainian archaeologist J. Pasternak (1892-1969) on a dissertation by the Polish archaeologist W. A. Fic (1901-1943) titled “Zion – the City of David in the Light of Texts and Excavations” (the review was written in 1938, the work itself, in 1933); a handwritten Ukrainian translation of part of the Book of Joel, and commentary on it (undated) by an unidentified author (no. 1); studies by Protohegumen Mark (Halushchinski; 1880-1918) titled “Philo of Alexandria and St. Paul” and “The Epistles of St. Paul to the Hebrews and Romans”; studies by Archimandrite Titus (Theodosiy Halushchinski; 1880-1952) titled “St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews,” “Old Testament Prophets,” “On the Old Testament Prophet Amos,” “From the Creation of the World to Abraham,” “The History of the Old Testament,” and his lecture notes on the study of the Hebrew language. (Mark Halushchinski’s works are undated; most of the works of Archimandrite Titus are dated 1930, or are likewise undated.)
3) Documents on credit, financial, and other property relations between Jews and monastery authorities (no. 1). These include extracts from court rulings, letters, and other materials pertaining to disputes of the Lwów kahal and local synagogues regarding the payment of 8,000 zlotys to Basilian monasteries (1712-67); notifications by members of the Jewish community of the town of Bohorodczany to the hegumen of the monastery assuring that debts would be paid (1746-55); copies of decrees and extracts from Lwów civil registers regarding a financial dispute between the monastery and the synagogue in the town of Jaworów (1775-78); documents pertaining to litigation between the protohegumenate and monasteries on the one hand, and individual Jews on the other, regarding payment of debts by the latter (1755-1872); materials on property disputes and the settlement of property rights cases (1774, 1803-72); documents on the activities of Jewish tenants on monastery-owned lands (1691, 1822-54); a ruling of the Lwów Castle Court decreeing the alienation and confiscation of gold and other items from a Jew named Irshko Malevany as previously stolen from Lwów’s St. George’s Cathedral (1723).
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The Order of St. Basil the Great was established through the efforts of the Uniate Metropolitan Josyf Veliamyn Rutsky (1574-1637) in the first half of the 17th century. The protohegumenate (the office of the protohegumen or provincial superior) appeared as the governing body of the Basilian crown province, which included the monasteries of Western Ukraine, in 1743 (the guidebook Центральний державний історичний архв України, м. Львів [Lviv/Kyiv, 2001, p. 234] mistakenly gives the date of the founding of the protohegumenate as 1772), pursuant to the Congregation of the Protection of the Mother of God (established in 1739; monasteries had previously been subordinate to bishops). The province was governed by the protohegumen, konsultorzy (advisers), and a secretary. In 1780, the Galician Province of the Holy Saviour, which was under Austrian rule, became separate from the Basilian Order. Monasteries in Volhynia were initially ruled by Poland, and after 1795, by Russia (under whose rule they were eventually abolished). The secularisation reforms of Emperor Joseph II led to the decline of the monastic life of the Basilian Order. In 1882-1904, a program to revive it was undertaken, led by the Jesuit Order; as a result of this effort, known as the Dobromyl reform, the Galician Province became self-governing. In 1939-41 the province was divided, being located in the territory occupied by both the USSR (the Ukrainian SSR) and Germany (the General Government). These territories were unified in 1941-43 when the District of Galicia was incorporated into the General Government. However, during the war, the status of the Basilian Order became markedly worse. Some of the Basilians went abroad. With the return of Soviet power, the remaining clergy was subjected to political repression, and after the liquidation of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church at the “Pseudo-Council” of 1946, the monasteries of the Basilian Order were closed.
- Access points: locations:
- Bohorodczany
- Jaworów
- Lwów
- Access points: persons/families:
- Kachko, M
- Malevany, Irshko
- Yassover, Samuel [Vladimir Yosafat]
- York, Abraham
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds comprises two inventories arranged mainly according to the thematic-chronological principle.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary