Kopystenskij, Zacharija

KOPYSTENSKIJ, ZACHARIJA. - The most important South Russian anti-Catholic and anti-Protestant polemicist of the 17th century, d. March 21, 1627. From 1624 he was archimandrite of the famous monastery "Pečerskaja Lavra," near Kiev. He fought for the autonomy of his monastery and had many books printed. In 1619, against the errors of the Protestants, he published his Kniga o vere ("Book on the Faith"). His principal work, however, is the one against those united with the Catholic Church, in which he replies to the Defensio unionis Ecclesiarum (Vilna 1617) of the Uniate archimandrite Lev Krevza (later archbishop of Smolensk, 1625-39).

The work, composed in South Russian (1621-22), is entitled Palinodia, or Book of Defense of the Catholic, Holy, Apostolic Eastern Church and of the Holy Patriarchs, and of the Russian and Greek Christians. The work, in which he develops, with an anti-scholastic mentality, his "Eastern" conception of the unity of the Church, is divided into 4 parts. In it K. attempts to show how the Russian Church was never subject to Rome, and he maintains the invalidity of the Union of Brest. The work was published only by P. A. Giltebrandt in Russkaja Istoričeskaja Biblioteka, vol. IV (1878), coll. 313-1200. Another work of K. on the unity of the Church has remained unpublished.

Bernardo Schultze