Mogila, Peter

MOGILA, PETER. - Metropolitan of Kiev from 1633 to 1646. Famous as the author of an Orthodox Confession. Born on 21 December 1596 (according to the old style) in Moldavia into a noble Romanian family (Movilă). He studied in Moldavia and then at the school of the Brotherhood of Lviv (hostile to the Union of Brest, 1595), perhaps also abroad. In 1627 he entered the famous Monastery of the Caves in Kiev, of which he became archimandrite in the same year, and there he founded, in 1631, a school elevated to an academy in 1633, the cradle of the later (1701) Ecclesiastical Academy of Kiev. He died on 22 December 1646.

M. carried out an indefatigable activity as a pastor - he was not a speculative theologian - in Poland in the first half of the 17th century, to strengthen the Greek-Russian Church in its struggle against the Protestants and against both Latin and Byzantine Catholics. Negotiations on the Union with Pope Urban VIII (between 1636 and 1643) were unsuccessful. As means of pastoral activity he employed the influential brotherhoods, the schools, the printing presses - especially that of the Monastery of the Caves -

TABLE OF THE EIGHT MODES ACCORDING TO TRADITIONAL THEORY:

ASSIMILATED MODES:

(phot. Enc. Catt.)

Mode - Diagram of the modes the hospitals, the churches. He fought against abuses and published a great number of liturgical and religious writings.

The principal writings are: The Great Catechism (the so-called "Confession of Faith of P. M."). It was devised to neutralize the Protestant influence of the Confession of the Patriarch of Constantinople Cyril Lucaris. Drafted first in the vernacular and in Latin (a copy of the Latin autograph is found in cod. Parisius 1265, published by Malvy and Viller), it was submitted to a Synod of Kiev convened by M. in 1640. As divergences existed on certain points (for example, on the state of souls after death, on the form of the Eucharist), the work was, in order to obtain the approval of the Patriarch of Constantinople, examined in a conference of 5 theologians (3 from Kiev, 2 Greek; and among the latter Meletios Syrigos), held in 1642 at Jassy. After making some corrections in the Latin text, Syrigos translated it into the Greek vernacular and submitted it for the approval of the Patriarch of Constantinople, given by his Synod (1643) and confirmed with the signatures of the other 3 Eastern patriarchs. The work was printed, and only in Greek, for the first time in 1667 at Amsterdam. Numerous editions and translations into several languages followed later. However, the Confession thus disseminated in several points did not correspond to the author's doctrine. Hence M. published (Monastery of the Caves, Kiev 1645) his small catechism as a summary of the great one with a very long title: Little Collection of Doctrine, etc. It had editions in Polish, Ukrainian and Slavonic. On the divergences of the two catechisms Malvy and Viller treat (pp. cxiv-cxxix). Trebnik or Euchologion (ritual), with which he exercised notable influence on the Russian Church, which adopted it in 1757. M. introduced several new rubrics into the Missal and Ritual, in contrast with the theses of the Greek anti-Catholic polemicists. As a response to the polemical work of the Uniate theologian Cassian Sakowicz, Επανόρθωσις ουγενό, etc. (Kraków 1642), he published or had published, under the name of Εὐαφῆς ποιμήν ("Pious Shepherd") the Λίθος or Stone Cast, etc. (Monastery of the Caves, Kiev 1644). M. concedes the existence of abuses, but attributes them to the persecutions to which his Church is subjected, and strenuously defends the Byzantine Ritual, speaking also of the questions disputed between Catholics and dissident Easterners.

M.'s theological school became the center of Greek-Russian theology and was attended by Russians, Greeks, Romanians, Serbs, Bulgarians. Instruction there was in Latin, according to St. Thomas and the scholastic method. Setting aside the primacy of the pope, the doctrines taught there were Latinizing (they agreed with Catholic doctrine on purgatory, on the Immaculate Conception of Mary, on the words of Christ as the form of the Eucharist, etc.). Malvy and Viller think (op. cit. in bibl., p. xvii) that even the doctrine of M.'s Confession (part 1, question 71) on the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father alone ("sicut a fonte et principio Divinitatis") is susceptible of a Catholic interpretation. What seems true of the tenor of the words, however, is not so much true of the context. In the Trebnik M. recognizes, among other things, the validity of Baptism by infusion, rejects the reconfirmation of the Apostles, teaches as Catholics do on penance, on satisfaction and the temporal punishment due to forgiven sin.

Bernardo Schultze