The Eastern Catholic clergy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church formed a tight-knit hereditary social caste that dominated Ukrainian society in Western Ukraine, from the late eighteenth until the mid-twentieth centuries, following reforms instituted by Emperor Joseph II, Sovereign of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. Because, like their Eastern Orthodox brethren, married men in the Ukrainian Catholic Church could become priests (although they could not become Bishops unless they were widowers), they were able to establish "priestly dynasties", often associated with specific regions, for many generations. Numbering approximately 2,000-2,500 by the 19th century, priestly families tended to marry within their group, constituting a tight-knit hereditary caste.Orest Subtelny. (1988). Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp.214-219. In the absence of a significant culturally and politically active native nobility (although there was considerable overlap, with more than half of the clerical families also being of petty noble originШляхетська свідомість збереглася в багатьох галичан 2010 12-04. Interview with Liubov Slivka by Vazyl Moroz, newspaper Galicia (Ukrainian)), and enjoying a virtual monopoly on education and wealth within western Ukrainian society, the clergy came to form that group's native aristocracy. The clergy adopted Austria's role for them as bringers of culture and education to the Ukrainian countryside. Most Ukrainian social and political movements in Austrian-controlled territory emerged or were highly influenced by the clergy themselves or by their children. This influence was so great that western Ukrainians were accused by their Polish rivals of wanting to create a theocracy in western Ukraine.Himka, John Paul. (1999). Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine. McGill-Queen's University Press: Montreal and Kingston. Pg. 10 The central role played by the Ukrainian clergy or their children in western Ukrainian society would weaken somewhat at the end of the nineteenth century but would continue until the Soviet Union forcibly dissolved the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Ukrainian territories in the mid-twentieth century (in the so-called Council of Lviv in 1946).
Background and origins
In 988, the East Slavic state of Kyivan Rus' was converted to the Eastern form of Christianity at the behest of Volodymyr I of Kyiv. After the East-West Schism between the Roman and Byzantine Churches, the form of Christianity that Kyivan Rus' followed became known (in English) as the Eastern Orthodox Church. The westernmost part of Kyivan Rus' formed the independent Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, which Poland conquered in 1349. Over the following centuries, most of the native landowning nobility adopted the dominant Polish nationality and Roman Catholic religion. Only the poorer nobles, who were descended from a mixture of poor boyar families, druzhina (free warriors serving the princes) and free peasants, retained their East Slavic identity.Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Entry: Petty Gentry, written by Yaroslav Isaievych Volume 3 (1993). Published by University of Toronto. Many priestly families had origins among those poor nobles.John-Paul Himka. (1988).Galician Villagers and the Ukrainian National Movement in the Nineteenth Century. MacMillan Press in Association with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta, pg.116 and in some particular regions, such as the area between Lviv and the Carpathian Mountains, almost all of the priestly families were of poor noble origins.L. Slivka. (2004). УКРАЇНСЬКА ШЛЯХЕТСЬКА ЕЛІТА: ПРОЯВИ САМОСВІДОМОСТІ ДРІБНОЇ ШЛЯХТИ ГАЛИЧИНИ НАПРИКІНЦІ XVIII – НА ПОЧАТКУ ХХ ст. The Ukrainian Noble Elite: View of self-image of the Galician Petty Gentry from the end of the eighteenth until the beginning of the 20th centuries. (Ukrainian) Ivano-Frankivsk: Ivano-Frankivsk State Medical University. Such people identified themselves primarily as priests, rather than nobles. Thus, the local native society was composed principally of priests and peasants. In an attempt to limit Polish pressure, the Union of Brest (1595/1596) saw the creation of the Uniate Church (later the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church) in the former parts of Kyivan Rus' under Polish rule. Like other Eastern Catholic Churches, the Uniate Church maintained the liturgical, theological and devotional traditions such as a married priesthood of the Orthodox Church despite its new allegiance to Rome.
History
The centuries of Polish rule were characterized by a steady erosion of the economic and social status of most of the local Galician clergy. Prior to the Habsburg reforms, a very small number of Greek Catholic clergy, often Polonized nobility, were linked to the Basilian order. The Order was independent of the Greek Catholic hierarchy and continued to enjoy certain wealth and privileges which it did not share with the rest of the Church. In striking contrast, the Galician priests who were not of noble origin, although not serfs, were frequently forced to work for the Polish nobles and treated little better than peasants by them, and these priests' sons who did not follow their fathers' vocation were often placed under the same feudal obligations as were hereditary serfs.Jean-Paul Himka. (1986). The Greek Catholic Church and Ukrainian Society in Austrian Galicia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Such circumstances fostered a sense of solidarity and closeness between the priests and the peasants. There were cases of Ukrainian priests or their sons participating in or leading armed insurrections against Polish nobility.Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak. (1988). Feminists despite themselves: women in Ukrainian community life, 1884-1939 . Edmonton, Alberta: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies press, University of Alberta. pp. 47-49 The situation changed when the region of Galicia was annexed by Austria in 1772.
Travelling the lands newly acquired from Poland in 1772, Austrian emperor Joseph II decided that the Greek Catholic clergy would be ideal vehicles for bringing about enlightened reform among the Ukrainian population. With this in mind he undertook major reforms designed to increase the status and educational level of the Ukrainian clergy in order to enable them to play the role he assigned for them. The Greek Catholic Church and its clergy was raised in status in order to make it legally equal in all respects to its Roman Catholic counterpart. The previously independent Basilian Order was subordinated to the Greek Catholic hierarchy. Ukrainian Catholic priests were granted stipends by the Austrian government, liberating them economically from the Polish nobles who were now prevented by the Austrians from interfering with them. Ukrainian priests were also allotted larger tracts of land that further contributed to an improvement in their financial situation. Whereas previously the Ukrainian priests had typically been taught by their fathers, the Austrians opened seminaries specifically for Ukrainian Catholic students in Vienna (1774) and Lviv (1783) that provided subsequent generations of priests with University-level education and a strong exposure to Western culture. The sons of priests who served in the bishop's administration were given the same rights to state offices as had the sons of nobles.Stanislaw Stepien. (2005). Borderland City: Przemysl and the Ruthenian National Awakening in Galicia. In Paul Robert Magocsi (Ed.). Galicia: A Multicultured Land. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 52-67 As a result of the Austrian reforms of the late 18th century, the Ukrainian Catholic priests thus became the first large educated social class within the Ukrainian population in Galicia.Himka, John Paul. (1999). Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine. McGill-Queen's University Press: Montreal and Kingston. Pg. 6.
The Austrian reforms granting education, land, and government salaries set the stage for the clergy's dominant position in western Ukrainian society for several generations. Both significant Ukrainian social movements, that of the Russophiles who sought to unite Ukraine with Russia and of the Ukrainianophiles, who supported Ukrainian independence, were dominated by members of the clergy. The Supreme Ruthenian Council which represented the Ukrainian people in dealing with the Austrian authorities, consisted primarily of clergy and met in the consistory of St. George's Cathedral, the "mother church" of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. The first non-clerical secular intelligentsia to emerge among western Ukrainians (lawyers, writers, doctors) were typically the children of priests, which served to perpetuate clerical influence among western Ukrainians. Because priests served as the only conduit between the cities and the peasants of the villages, urban Ukrainian intellectuals seeking to reach the peasants were forced by circumstances to work through the priests. They thus tended to be deferential to them and sought to avoid antagonizing the clergy.