KOPYSTENSKIJ, ZACHARIJA. - The most important South Russian anti-Catholic and anti-Protestant polemicist of the 17th century, d. 21 March 1627. From 1624 he was archimandrite of the famous monastery of the "Pečerskaja Lavra" near Kiev. He fought for the autonomy of his monastery and had many books printed. In 1619 he published against the errors of the Protestants his Kniga o vere ("Book on Faith"). His principal work, however, is that against the Uniates with the Catholic Church, in which he replies to the Defensio unionis Ecclesiarum (Vilna 1617) by the Uniate archimandrite LEO KREVZA (later archbishop of Smolensk, 1625-39).
The work, composed in South Russian (1621-22), is entitled Palinodia or Book of Defence of the Catholic, Holy, Apostolic Eastern Church and of the Holy Patriarchs and of the Russian and Greek Christians. In this work, which he develops with an anti-scholastic mentality, his "Eastern" conception of Church unity is set forth in four parts. He seeks to show that the Russian Church has never been subject to Rome and maintains the invalidity of the Union of Brest. The work was published only by P. A. Gilbrehant in Russkaja Istoričeskaja Biblioteka, vol. IV (1878), cols. 313-1200. Another work by K. on Church unity has remained unpublished.