Petro Mohyla
Metropolitan Petru Movilă (, , , ; 21 December 1596 – ) was an influential Eastern Orthodox theologian and reformer of Moldavian origin, Metropolitan of Kyiv, Halych and All Rus' from 1633 until his death. Family. Petro Mohyla was born into the House of Movilești, who were a family of Romanian boyars. Several rulers of Moldavia and Wallachia were members of this family, including Mohyla's father, Simion Movilă, thus making him a prince. He was also a descendant of Stephen the Great, through the bloodline of his great-grandfather Petru Rareș. His uncles, Simion's brothers, were Gheorghe Movilă, the Metropolitan of Moldavia , and Ieremia Movilă, who also ruled Moldavia before and after the first reign of Simion. Petro Mohyla's mother, Marghita (Margareta), was the daughter of a Moldavian logothete, Gavrilaș Hâra. Petro Mohyla's sister Regina married prince Michał Wiśniowiecki, and their son Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, was Mohyla's nephew and supporter even though he converted to Catholicism in order to marry a Roman Catholic princess and thus inherit the Polish crown. After Mohyla's father was murdered in 1607, Mohyla and his mother sought refuge in the Ruthenian Voivodeship, part of Lesser Poland. For a time, they lived in Kamianets-Podilskyi , and in 1608 they moved to Stanisław Żółkiewski's castle, where they stayed for sixteen years. Career. In the 1620s, Mohyla traveled to Ukraine which at that time was in a political turmoil due to internal and external factors, in part due to Poland’s annexation of Ukrainian lands. He started preparing spiritually at his aristocratic home in Rubiejovka, where he also founded a church dedicated to Saint John the New from Suceava. He then settled in Kyevo-Pechers’ka Lavra in Kyiv (Kyiv Pechersk Lavra), which was the political, cultural, spiritual, and educational center of Ukraine. There he joined Job  Boretsky, Zacharias Kopystensky, and Pamvo Berynda, and a group of scholars and orthodox clerics who promoted ideas of national liberation and cultural self-preservation. The effects of political instability affected all spheres of life in the country. The number of printed publications was significantly reduced and many schools were closed. In order to preserve their privileges before the Polish king, the nobility, in great numbers, started to convert from Orthodoxy to Greek and Roman Catholicism. The Romanians from Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania belonged to the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Old Church Slavonic was used, until the 17th century, as the  common liturgical language in Romanian principalities. In 1632 Mohyla became the bishop of Kyiv and abbot of Pecherska Lavra. Because of his ties to several European royal homes, the leadership of the Orthodox clergy entrusted him to negotiate with the Polish Sejm (parliament) and the king to lift the repressive laws against the Orthodox Church and to ease the restrictions on the use of the Church Slavonic language in schools and public offices. Mohyla’s diplomatic talent paid off. King Władysław IV reinstated the status of the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The first years as abbot  Mohyla showed that he had far-reaching goals to reform not only the monastic life at the Lavra and the Church. He wanted to strengthen the Orthodox spirituality and enhance the sense of national identity as well as raise the educational level in the country and in all Russian and Romanian lands to equal that in Western Europe. One of the first steps in implementing this vision, Mohyla founded at the Lavra a school for young monks (1632). The tutoring was conducted in Latin. The students studied theology, philosophy, rhetoric, and classical authors. At the same time, Mohyla significantly improved  the print shop at the Lavra where Orthodox books were published not only in Old Slavic but in Latin as well and distributed to various places in eastern Europe. Later that year, Mohyla merged this school with the Kyiv Brotherhood school and created the Mohyla collegium which later became known as the Kyiv Mohyla Academy (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy). The students at the collegium had diverse backgrounds. They came from noble, clerical, gentry, Cossack and peasant families. The school offered a variety of disciplines: Church Slavonic, Latin, Greek, and Polish languages; philosophy; mathematics, including geometry, astronomy, music and  history. Because of the high profile of the faculty, the collegium received the status of a higher educational establishment. In the next few years, Mohyla established a whole network of schools around Ukraine as well as the Slavonic-Greek-Latin Academy in Vinnytsia and collegium in Kremenets. Also, he supplied the prince of Wallachia, Matei Basarab, upon his request, with a printing press and printers. In 1635 the prayer books which were published in Prince Basarab’s monastic residence were widely distributed in Wallachia (later to become Romania) and Ukraine. He helped to establish the school in Iași in Moldova  as well. Printing. For over 20 years, Mohyla played a leading role in Ukraine’s book printing. He was one of the first to print in the Ukrainian language. Mohyla and his followers at the Lavra and the Mohyla collegium made the first steps in formulating the fundamentals of the modern Russian and Ukrainian languages. The proliferation of the Ukrainian language in print was part of a wider effort of Ukraine’s struggle for sovereignty and cultural self-preservation. Mohyla wanted to preserve the Ukrainian nation’s identity that had been experiencing enormous pressure from the Polish and Lithuanian regimes . He initiated the publication of sermons for the laity in Ukrainian, Biblical texts in Church Slavonic, and scientific books in Ukrainian, Polish, Greek, and Latin. Mohyla wrote several books which were distributed in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Muscovy, Romania, and Georgia. One of his most important publications was the first Orthodox Catholic "Catechesis" worldwide (1640), written by him on the request of all Orthodox Catholic churches. After it was approved by several Ecumenical Patriarchs of Constantinople it became the foundational document for the Church doctrine in the orthodox world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, this book had 25 editions. His  other notable works included "Trebnyk" or Euchologion (1646). It resembled an encyclopedia in which all Ukrainian church rites and services were systematized. In this, he did much to preserve the purity of Orthodox ritual. A decade earlier, he published his "Anthologion" in which he emphasized the need for teachers to find unique approaches to each student when teaching since their abilities varied. Applying the same requirements to all students may not be the most effective teaching method. Mohyla stressed the need for students to ponder over and understand and not simply repeat scientific, religious, and moral truths. In this and  other works, Mohyla underscored the need for the younger generation to use their minds and not emotions in striving to achieve goals. In his Triodion (1631), Mohyla expressed his political views about what an ideal ruler should look like. He argued that the person has to maintain peace with the neighbors; defend his lands in the times of war; a ruler is not only obligated to issue laws but first of all he should limit his own powers. "Project of a Polish nobleman of the Greek religion" (1645) a Latin manuscript printed firstly in 1928 presents his "Project of Union