Charters and Universals of Ukrainian Metropolitans and Archbishops Given to the Nizhyn Greek Community: Source-Study Discourse

The article analyzes the charters of the Kyiv metropolitans, archbishops of Kyiv and Chernihiv as act materials on the history of the Greeks of Ukraine in the second half of the 17th – 18th centuries. On the basis of source study and comparative-typological analysis, their evolution and significance for the church structure of the Nizhyn Greek Brotherhood, which was under the authority of the Metropolitan of Kyiv and the Archbishop of Chernihiv up to the end of the 17 century, and from the beginning of the 18 century it was subordinate only to the Kyiv metropolitanate, is considered. From the very beginning of the Greek settlement in Nizhyn, the church authorities looked positively on their needs and provided them with all possible assistance. Evidence of this were the numerous charters, universals, orders, “oprichna letters” of the Kyiv metropolitans, archbishops of Kyiv and Chernihiv, orders of the Kyiv Orthodox Consistory Church. Most of them were published in the collection of acts by Professor A.A. Fedotov-Chekhovsky, which was published from the archives of St. Michael’s Church in Nizhyn. The collection contains Greek and Slavic texts of 24 charters of Orthodox Greek and Ukrainian hierarchs of 1680-1784, which gave the Greeks the right to establish their own church brotherhood or confirmed such a right. Textological and source analysis of A.A. Fedotov-Chekhovsky’s publication and five universals given to the Nizhyn Greeks by L. Baranovich, published by an unknown author in 1865 in the “Chernihiv Eparchial News”, and M. Storozhevsky’s materials has revealed textual and chronological differences