Cossacks in defense of Orthodoxy

Today, many historical and popular works are published about the history of Zaporozhian Sich, about its hetmans, registered Cossacks, about the campaigns and battles of these famous knights of the Wild Field. Since two decades, various "Sichis", "Cossacks" with their hetmans, osavuls, etc. began to be created in different parts of Ukraine, who with a serious look offer us to consider them as... the real heirs of the legendary Zaporozhye. In the article below, we will not touch on the problems of modern "Cossacks" or the heroic victories of real Cossacks, but will focus on only one, still little-known to the general public, sphere of Cossack life - faith and rituals.

Having been under the oppression of the Polish crown for many years, until 1569 the Ukrainians, who at that time were all Orthodox, did not hold back, especially from the religious side. Moreover, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was particularly interested in the good attitude of the ordinary residents of Ukraine, and especially of its most combat-ready part, the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, as they protected its eastern borders from attacks by the Turks and Tatars. But with the election of King Sigismund III, Ukrainians who adhered to Orthodoxy began to be humiliated and oppressed more and more, creating obstacles in the construction of churches, limiting their rights to education, the judiciary, etc. The basis for such a drastic change in the behavior of the occupying state towards the temporarily enslaved people was the notorious Union (in today's terminology - a project of the Roman Catholic Church, with appropriate funding), the attempt to legalize which was made in 1596 at the Brest Cathedral.

Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, we are sometimes forced to believe that the Union (modern UGCC) was treated differently in those years. But there was no such thing! Read the documents of those years: Uniatism was immediately met with active rejection in all Ukrainian lands without exception, which often (and there were good reasons for this, as you will see below) took on extreme manifestations of protecting its identity. The "first bell" for the traitors of Ukraine, who signed the Uniate agreements with Rome, was the unprecedented scale of Severyn Nalivaik's rebellion in the same year 1596, which for the first time in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth proclaimed an exclusively religious slogan - the defense of Orthodoxy. Therefore, by "letting the rooster" on the estates of supporters of the Union, the Cossacks did not so much take revenge as warn others, who were greedy for the money offered for treason. And the main thing in that struggle was not the possession of values, as some historians with a pro-Western (Polonophile?) orientation sometimes try to impose on us, namely: the cleansing of Ukrainians from tribesmen who are not firm in their faith. What "benefits and privileges" Ukrainian defenders were given by Orthodoxy at that time is evidenced by a document that records the words that Zaporozhian recruiters shouted at the squares and fairs: "Who wants to be impaled for the Christian faith, who wants to be quartered, wheeled , who is ready to endure all kinds of torments for the holy cross - come to us!"

Many of the Zaporozhians visited the Kyiv Consistory, the Mezhyhirsky Monastery, and other Ukrainian monasteries, either on their own volition or on the instructions of Kosh. Moreover, a significant part of the clergy in Sich came from Mezhihirya. In the 18th century "traveling dyaks" from the Kyiv Academy to Zaporozhye were also common. Constantly waging wars, always being in various dangers, the Zaporozhian Cossacks put all their hope in God's Providence - "...this single anchor of salvation in all cases, no matter how inevitable the danger seems, no matter how close death is." Since there were no women in Sich, and, therefore, no children were born, and, besides, many Cossacks died in battles, died of wounds, diseases and old age every year, Zaporozhye received immigrants from all over. For the most part, of course, they were Ukrainian peasants, burghers, and often nobles and clergy, however, Bulgarians, Serbs, Georgians, Jews, Vlachs (Romanians), Poles, Lithuanians, Belarusians, Montenegrins, Tatars, Turks, Kalmyks, Germans, French, Italians, Spaniards and English. Men of any nationality were accepted, but they had to accept the Orthodox faith. G. F. Miller said the following about the baptism of non-believers who arrived in Zaporozhye: "Zaporozhians baptize a Jew or a Tatar, they baptize a Pole or another Christian who was not of their faith - they are like children to them." As you know, during the battles, the Zaporizhia often recaptured Yasir from the Turks and Tatars - Orthodox captives, who were not prevented from returning to their homeland. For example, when the Cossacks under the command of Danylo Tretyak recaptured another yasir from the Tatars, which included 673 Vlachs and Jews, the Vlachs, as co-religionists, were offered to stay in Sich or "move beyond the Dnipro." Instead, Jews from the same camp were detained in Zaporozhye until they or their families paid a ransom of 8,000 roubles. If this amount was not paid, the Zaporozhian leadership threatened to baptize the Jews or even kill them "without any mercy."

Usually, a large number of fugitives from the Right Bank of Ukraine came to Sich, fleeing from the overwhelming demands of the Polish lords, who in various ways and increasingly through physical violence, tried to convert the Orthodox to the Union (since the Uniates then became very tolerant of everything Polish). . The Zaporozhians, seeing how events were developing, began to retreat to Haidamaki. Having left Sich, the Zaporozhians already in new places created a kind of mobile military units (using today's terminology - special units), which destroyed enemy possessions throughout Right Bank Ukraine. The Cossacks explained their actions against the Poles by the fact that "... the Uniates caused great trouble and ruin to the Christian people, at the same time they destroyed pious priests, they caught pious priests, cut off their heads, beards and mustaches and tortured them tyrannically, and they did this not only to priests and monks, but also of the Christian people, and the confederate army, having sent them to Ukraine, wanted to torture the Christian people." And when a Cossack died, his comrades near the grave said that he lived and died as he should have - a Christian and Orthodox. And although he "... beat up Lyashko, although he tricked a Jew or a Tatar - well, this is a bad thing, but the trouble is small, these are non-Christians, and they insulted good Christians more than once, and he repented, was seriously ill, prayed diligently, defended the Church of God from the Busurmans and the Uniates, God will forgive his sins."

The hostility of the Cossacks and Haydamaks towards the Jews was not accidental, because few people at that time could afford so much grief and tears that they caused Ukrainians. For example, Jews who rented manors were granted extraordinary rights by the Polish king - they could manage the lives of even the local peasants. Establishing and each time raising taxes and fees from the Ukrainian peasantry, the Jews even rented churches, after which the Orthodox were forced to pay them a certain amount for permission to celebrate Holy Liturgies and other Christian services.

The role of Cossack weapons in the Orthodox rite. It may seem strange that the Zaporozhians often used weapons on religious holidays, during the Divine Service and other services. For example, on the feast of the Epiphany in Sich, even those Cossacks who lived in distant winter camps gathered for its celebration. Together with other Zaporozhians in military gear and fully armed, they went to the church, even carrying guns with them. The army occupied the entire central square of Sichi, attentively listening to the Holy Liturgy. And as soon as the Divine Service ended, when leaving the church, when the abbot and hieromonks, carrying the cross, St. The Gospel and icons were walking to the river, the Cossacks were walking with unfurled battle banners. At the end of the consecration of the water, at the moment when the abbot immersed the cross in the water, the Cossacks fired one salvo from rifles and cannons. And when the abbot had already immersed the cross three times, the Cossacks, according to eyewitnesses, began "...already roasting in all seriousness, as much as anyone wants." A similar course of the Cossack Epiphany was told by Osyp Omelchenko, whose reminiscences were recorded by M. In them, in particular, it was said that the day before the Epiphany, the Cossacks, according to their custom, "drove the kutyu" and conducted "such shooting, as if in reality the war is coming." Cossacks entered the church with weapons, including when the Holy Liturgy was celebrated. Then, when reading St. Gospel, up to half of the Zaporozhians took sabers out of their scabbards, which, according to the researchers, should have meant a readiness to defend the "evangelized truths" with weapons. In Sich, according to the story of I. Rozsolod, there was also a custom that during the baptism of boys who were born to Zaporozhian Cossacks outside Zaporozhye, the father poured gunpowder into the baptismal font. This was done in order to harden the Cossack from an early age. It is also interesting that the parents of the baby could not be present at the rite of baptism, because it was considered a bad omen for the child.

Burial of Zaporozhians. Weapons also played a special role in the funeral rite of the Cossacks. Before burying the deceased, they dressed him in clean clothes, put on his usual combat armor, put a spear and a gun next to him. When the coffin with the deceased Zaporozhian was carried to the church, his horse was followed, which was also fully equipped - under the saddle, with pistols in covers and packs. When the house was already lowered into the ground, a Cossack saber and a spear were placed on the lid. It is interesting that when the Zaporizhia hid characters who were "acquainted with evil spirits", the priests were absent.

Great Lent and Cossack abstinence. It was generally accepted in Koshi to postpone the resolution of all criminal cases until the end of the fast. So, in 1762, in the first week of Great Lent, a Cossack colonel asked Kosh to figure out what to do with someone arrested on suspicion of murder. The answer came from Sichi that "...in the present fasting days...the investigation of that murder should not and cannot be done until the end of those days", so the arrested person was ordered to be released on bail to his parents with the condition that the suspect must appear before the court at the first request. During the fast, many Zaporozhians made a pilgrimage to the Mezhihirskyi and other monasteries. For example, when the monk Leonid, being on business in Sich, on the first Saturday of Great Lent, heard the early evangelism before the dinner, he first assumed that the Sich clergy, by order of the Zaporozhians, but in violation of church rules, wanted to hold the dinner not at noon, as of course, and at 6 or 7 in the morning so that you can eat as soon as possible. What was his surprise when Vasyl Koval, a sub-ponomar of Sich, answered that the foreman did not give such an order, and the early lunch was served so that those rescuers who had never eaten, fasting since Monday, could eat.

Food and food. When the Zaporozhians sat down at the tables with food, they always said a prayer before the start, in all the times of Sichi's existence, and only then began to eat. After drinking, they thanked the Lord again in prayer, then bowed to the chieftain and each other, and thanked the cook for feeding them. On Easter, in Zaporozhye, as in the rest of the Ukrainian lands, there was talk of krashankas and paskas. When, for some reason, there were no eggs, the Cossacks compensated for their absence with crayfish.

Religious holidays and icon worship among Cossacks. The Zaporozhians, like few others, were honored by Pr. Mother of God One of the reasons was celibacy, which was observed in Sich. By forbidding the presence of women on Sich (remember, Mount Athos) and entrusting themselves to the patronage of the Mother of God - the Immaculate and Immaculate Virgin Mary, who always remains the Immaculate Virgin, the Cossacks could no longer fear anything in this world, except sin. Back in 1659, the Church of the Intercession was built in Chortomlytsia Sich. Mother of God, and in 1734-1775 there were already more than ten churches in Zaporozhye dedicated to the glorification of the Holy Intercession. Zaporozhians from all over came to this holiday, even when a plague epidemic was raging in Sich. So, at the end of September 1751, when the people of Zaporozhye gathered to celebrate their temple holiday Pr. Pokrovy, an epidemic raged here again, and then several chicken chieftains and elders, Cossacks and ministers of the Pokrovsky Church died here - hieromonk Ignatius, first deacon Theodore, monk Feona, candlemaker and school chief Hrytsko Volyk.

In a special way, holy intercessors were revered in Sich, for example, Nicholas the Wonderworker, who protected the Cossacks in their river and sea voyages, on the roads and on long journeys. In St. Nicholas, as the Cossacks said, they have "a great benefactor and a compassionate philanthropist." In the same way, Archstrategist Michael, the leader of his army, was greatly honored at Sich, calling him the Leader. From the 18th century special veneration of St. also spread among the Cossacks. Anriy Pervozdannoy, who was the first bearer of Orthodoxy in Ukraine. Almost all Cossacks wore on their chests, in addition to the cross, a medal or icon with the image of Pr. Mother of God, St. Archangel Michael, St. Nicholas, St. Andrew and other holy intercessors. In 1771-1772, during the plague, residents of the Cossack village of Karnaukhivka prayed for salvation from death before the icon of St. Barbarians of the Great Martyr. When the danger passed, then, in accordance with this vow, they put God's church in glory, consecrating it in the name of St. Barbarians According to the property registers that were compiled in the Zaporizhzhya foreman's residences during the destruction of Sichi by the Russians, the Cossacks had many icons in their homes. The icons were lavishly decorated, some with lamps and, according to the monk Leonid, it was the impression that individual kureni were more like chapels.

Cossacks are donors and patrons. Those travelers who, moving on business through Sich, were right, were surprised that the Zaporozhian people "...have a great disdain for avarice." And behind this Cossack feature was not demonstrative pride and baseness, but a deeply realized belief in the temporality of everything earthly, and therefore - perishable and worthless. Experiencing many trials on their way and often being within a hair's breadth of death, the Cossacks learned not to be greedy, but to be satisfied with little, and from the first years of their stay in Sich, they learned the value of life and the power of prayer. Before the campaign, or returning happily from it, or recuperating from wounds, Zaporozhians always brought donations to the church for the glory of God and all the saints. Yes, during the Lenten Triod, which was donated to the church of St. app. Peter and Paul by the Cossack Yakov Pavlov Dana, it is written on the knife that it was "...bought...for the sake of salvation and forgiveness of sins."

For obvious reasons, the Zaporozhian people, not being rich personally, at the same time from year to year, returning from numerous battles and campaigns, brought considerable booty to Sich. But, unlike their contemporaries - the filibusters of the Caribbean and Yellow Seas, our Cossacks did not walk away with everything they had acquired, they did not bury those red coins in barrels in the ground (as is attributed to them in numerous legends), but ... they gave them away. And generously and only to those who really need it. The vast majority of donations went to the construction of new and restoration of old churches and monasteries, to scholarships for spudei, to the order of icons, liturgical books, cups, arks, etc. When Raphael, hieromonk of the Sophia Monastery, was in Zaporozhye in 1763-1765, he met so many clergymen there who asked for donations that, in a letter to the cathedral scribe Yakov Voronkovskyi, he wrote that "...and I asked how God had begotten from the whole world ". The number of clerics who were in Zaporizhzhia to collect donations is evidenced by the letter of hieromonk Yoanikiy Veneratsky to the abbot of the Kyiv-Vydubytsk monastery dated June 2, 1751. At that time, "petitioners" from Kyiv, Chernihiv, Belgorod, Pereyaslav and other dioceses were in Sich. Three people from the Poltava monastery came to Sich at once: a hieromonk, a deacon and a monk. Instead, abbots came from Domnytskyi, Sumy, Gadyatskyi, Sorochynskyi, Skelskyi, Zmovnytskyi, Medvedivskyi and Onufrievskyi monasteries, and with them five to ten brothers. At the same time, there were 9 monks from the Lands of the Don Army in Sich. The monks of Mount Athos were also in Zaporozhye to collect donations for church buildings. During their stay in Zaporozhye, clergymen served in local churches, "moved the Gospel in processions", walked with prosphora along the chimneys, etc. Sometimes the Cossacks gave donations outside of Ukraine. Thus, Hetman P. Kalnyshevskyi sent cups, discs, and stars to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

About the gifts that the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks brought to the Sichov church Pr. Nikita Korzh mentioned the following: "Of the Cossacks...many...decorated church icons, made rich flags and crosses, enriched sacrificial utensils and church holy vessels with precious stones and beautiful products in such a way that in all of Russia hardly any sacristy has the superiority of the Zaporizhzhya sacristy and the wealth of the church." In the mentioned Sich church, under the holy throne, a chest with military relics was kept, which were taken out from there only on special occasions, including during the election of the Zaporozhian leadership. In special hiding places in churches, some elders kept valuables for religious needs.

The Cossack foreman and the old Zaporozhians went to church three times a day. At that time it was written: "Massin did not forgive anyone when someone, especially one of the respectable Cossacks, missed it, except for illness, drunkenness and blessed, though not blessed, reasons." Thus, in the Pokrovsk Sich Church, four special seats were equipped, which the Cossacks called "bokuns" and which were intended for "standing and sitting" of the kosh chieftain, military judge, scribe and osavul, when the Holy Liturgy was administered. Another characteristic point: when the Cossacks decided to become brothers, they went to church, where in the presence of the priest they signed an oath to God "to love each other, not looking at the dangers from our friends or enemies, but looking at God, the peace-giver." ". To affirm such an oath, the Zaporozhians kissed St. the cross and the Gospel.

The above-mentioned monk Leonid repeatedly, according to his words, observed how drunken Zaporozhians, passing by the Sich church with singing and music, stopped in front of its door, crossed themselves and bowed three times. Some of the Cossacks, out of great piety, made prostrations to the ground: "...it happened that he (Cossack) would get so tired when he did them, that his less vigorous comrades would help him get up...and, after doing that, he who got up was free to go back to his old work, i.e. for fun."

The Zaporizhzhya church occasionally witnessed unfortunate events, and then only during the election of an elder. For all the years of Sichi's existence, the documents mention only three - 1748, 1749 and 1751, when the Cossacks, trying to get their candidates elected, committed bloody fights. Thus, on January 6, 1748, Captain Pavlov, who was in Sich, reported to Governor-General Leontiev that during the election of the Kosh chieftain on January 1 of the same year, "there was a great shout and fight" that lasted from noon to evening, and when the Cossacks gathered in Pokrovsk church for the service of God, then they committed a fight there, during which some of them were wounded and the church was covered in blood. The priest, who was serving in the Sich church at that time, was forced to leave the temple of God without finishing vespers, and after the fight ended, he sealed the church. Because of this, for five days, until January 6, there was no order in the Church of the Intercession. The Zaporozhian foreman told Captain Pavlov that "... such an unworthy choice has never been made." The fight in the church in general exceeded all limits of what is permissible, since it was strictly forbidden to even talk in Cossack churches, and a large fine was imposed for violations.

Some of the Zaporozhians, feeling a strong spiritual need, distanced themselves from worldly life and went far into the forests or the steppe, where they established schymnytsky hermitages. Among such persons in Zaporozhye, Semen Koval and Dorosh were particularly well-known. The latter, being a former osavul, moved from Velika Tirnovka to the forest belonging to the Samara monastery around 1730. There he started his own apiary, the profits from which he donated to the poor and the Samara Monastery. The former osavul built a small chapel here with an icon of St. Nicholas and the lamp. There he prayed daily, and every Saturday, with the participation of the hieromonks who came to the Samara monastery, he participated in the service of the open Panakhida for the salvation and comfort of the souls of the dead monks. Many Cossacks came to Dorosh for talks, because, according to Feodosius Makarievsky, Dorosh was "scholarly in the spirit of his time and knowledgeable."

Mykola Bandrivskyi, doctor of historical sciences