History of Christianity in Ukraine
The history of Christianity in the territory today known as Ukraine dates back to the earliest centuries of the history of Christianity, to the Apostolic Age, with mission trips along the Black Sea and a legend of Andrew the Apostle even ascending the hills of Kiev. The first Christian community on territory of modern Ukraine is documented as early as the 4th century with the establishment of the Metropolitanate of Gothia, which was centered in the Crimean peninsula. However, on territory of the Old Rus in Kiev, Christianity became the dominant religion since its official acceptance in 989 by Vladimir the Great, who brought it from Byzantine Crimea and installed it as the state religion of medieval Kievan Rus, with the metropolitan see in Kiev.
Although separated into various Christian denominations, most Ukrainian Christians share a common faith based on Eastern Christianity. This tradition is represented in Ukraine by the Byzantine Rite, the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches, which have been at various historic times closely aligned with Ukrainian national self-identity and Byzantine culture.
Being officially eliminated since the end of World War II, the recent revival of Ukrainian national religions started just before dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989 with reestablishment of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church which also triggered recovery of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church movement out of diaspora and transition of the former Russian Orthodox Church clergy who were native Ukrainians. Today, there are three national Ukrainian churches: the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Additionally, there is a smaller number of Byzantine rite adherents in the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church who were dominated by the Kingdom of Hungary in the past. Western Christian bodies including the Latin Church of the Catholic Church and several Protestant denominations have had a limited presence on the territory of Ukraine since at least the 16th century and represent a minority of Christians in the country.
Early history
Andrew the Apostle
the apostle is believed to have travelled up the western shores of the Black Sea, to the area of present-day southern Ukraine, while preaching in the lands of Scythia. Legend has it that he travelled further still, up the Dnieper River, until he came to the location of present-day Kiev in AD 55, where he erected a cross and prophesied the foundation of a great Christian city. Belief in the missionary visit of Andrew became widespread by the Middle Ages, and by 1621, a Kiev synod had declared him the "Rus'-apostle". Titus, a disciple of Andrew, is also venerated in Ukrainian churches, as are three "Scythian" disciples, Saints Ina, Pina and Rima, who accompanied him to Kiev. Both the 18th-century Church of St Andrew and an earlier structure from 1086 it replaced were purportedly built on the very location of the apostle's cross, planted on a hill overlooking the city of Kiev.Although the Primary Chronicle refers to the apostle continuing his journey as far north as Novgorod, Andrew's visit to any of these lands has not been proven, and in fact may have been a later invention designed to boost the autocephalic aspirations in the territories where the upper clergy continued to be dominated by Greeks for several centuries.
These first half-legendary Christian churches on the territory of present Ukraine were eliminated by the Gothic invasion in the third century. The head of the "Scythian bishopric" presented at the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 325 probably in fact was Bishop Cadmus from the Bosporan Kingdom.
Crimean roots
was exiled to Chersonesos on the Crimean peninsula in 102, as was Pope Martin I in 655. Furthermore, it has been definitively recorded that a representative from the Black Sea area, the "head of the Scythian bishopric", was present at the First Council of Nicaea in 325, as well as the First Council of Constantinople in 381; it has been surmised that this representative would have to have been Bishop Cadmus of the Bosporan Kingdom. Ostrogoths, who remained on present-day Ukrainian lands after the invasion of the Huns, established a metropolinate under the Bishop of Constantinople at Dorus in northern Crimea around the year 400. A bishop's seat had also existed since 868 across the Strait of Kerch, in the ancient city of Tmutarakan. The Polans and the Antes cultures, located so close to the Crimea, surely became familiarized with Christianity by this time.Cyril and Methodius
The relics of Pope Martin were allegedly retrieved by the "Equal-to-apostles" brothers Cyril and Methodius, who passed through present-day Ukraine on their way to preach to the Khazars. Sent from Constantinople at the request of the ruler of Great Moravia, these brothers would add to foundation of Christianity in Ukraine by creating the Glagolitic alphabet, a precursor to the eponymous "Cyrillic script", which enabled the local population to worship God in Old Church Slavonic, a language closer to the vernacular Old East Slavic language than the Greek used to worship in Constantinople, or Latin in the west.In response to local disputes with clerics of the Latin Church, Cyril and Methodius appealed in person to the Bishop of Rome in 867, bringing with them the relics of Pope Martin from Chersonesos. Their labors and request were met with approval, and their continued efforts planted the Christian faith into Ukrainian Rus. By 906, they had founded a diocese in Peremyshl, today a diocese of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Przemyśl, Poland. Their efforts, and those of their apostles, led to the translation of Christian Scriptures and service from Greek to Slavonic, and the eventual development of the modern Cyrillic alphabet.
Early Rus' period
By the 9th century, it is known that the Slavic population of western Ukraine had accepted Christianity while under the rule of Great Moravia. However, it was the East Slavs who came to dominate most of the territory of present-day Ukraine, beginning with the rule of the Rus', whose pantheon of gods had held a considerable following for over 600 years.Following the 860 assault on Constantinople by Rus' forces under the command of Askold and Dir, the two princes were baptized in that holy city. Returning to Kiev, the two actively championed Christianity for a period of 20 years, until they were murdered by the pagan Prince Oleg in the inter-princely rivalry for the Kiev throne. Patriarch Photios purportedly provided a bishop and priests from Constantinople to help in the Christianization of the Slavs. By 900, a church was already established in Kiev, St. Elijah's, modeled on a church of the same name in Constantinople. This gradual acceptance of Christianity is most notable in the Rus'-Byzantine Treaty of 945, which was signed by both "baptized" and unbaptized Rus'", according to the text included in the Primary Chronicle.
Establishment of the Kiev Metropolitan
Christianity acceptance among the Rus' nobility gained a vital proponent when Princess Olga, the ruler of Kiev, became baptized, taking the "Christian name" Helen. Her baptism in 955 in either Kiev or Constantinople was a turning point in religious life of Rus' but it was left to her grandson, Vladimir the Great, to make Kievan Rus a Christian state. Both Vladimir and Olga are venerated as the Equal-to-apostles saints by the Eastern Orthodox Church.Princess Olga of Kiev shortly after her baptism appealed to the Holy Roman emperor Otto the Great to send missionaries into Kievan Rus. Adalbert, a Latin missionary bishop from Germany, was sent, but his missions and the priests who missionized along with him, were stopped. Most of the group of Latin missionaries were slain by pagan forces sent by Olga's son, Prince Svyatoslav, who had taken the Crown from his mother.
Christianity became dominant in the territory with the mass Baptism of Kiev in the Dnieper River in 988 ordered by Vladimir. That year is considered as the year of establishment of the Kiev Metropolis and part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The exact date of establishment is not clearly known as the Kiev eparchy is mentioned as early as 891. The first cathedral temple, Church of the Tithes, was built in 996.
Following the Great Schism in 1054, the Kievan Rus that incorporated some of the modern Ukraine ended up on the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine side of the divided Christian world. Early on, the Orthodox Christian metropolitans had their seat in Pereyaslav, and later in Kiev. The people of Kiev lost their Metropolitan to Vladimir-Suzdal in 1299, but gained a new Metropolitan in Halych in 1303. The religious affairs were also ruled in part by a Metropolitan in Navahrudak,.
After the breakup of the Kievan Rus
In the 15th century, the primacy over the Ruthenian Orthodox Church was moved to Vilnius, under the title "Metropolis of Kiev and all Rus'". One clause of the Union of Krevo stipulated that Jagiello would disseminate Catholicism among Orthodox subjects of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, of which Ukraine was a part. The opposition from the Ostrogskis and other Orthodox magnates led to this policy being suspended in the early 16th century.Following the Union of Lublin, the Polonization of the Ukrainian church was accelerated. Unlike the Catholic Church, the Orthodox church in Ukraine was liable to various taxes and legal obligations. The building of new Orthodox churches was strongly discouraged. The Catholics were strictly forbidden to convert to Orthodoxy, and the marriages between Catholics and Orthodox were frowned upon. Orthodox subjects had been increasingly barred from high offices of state.
Union of Brest and its aftermath
In order to oppose such restrictions and to reverse cultural polonization of Orthodox bishops, the Ecumenical Patriarch encouraged the activity of the Orthodox urban communities called the "brotherhoods" . In 1589 Hedeon Balaban, the bishop of Lviv, asked the Pope to take him under his protection, because he was exasperated by the struggle with urban communities and the Ecumenical Patriarch. He was followed by the bishops of Lutsk, Cholm, and Turov in 1590. In the following years, the bishops of Volodymyr-Volynskyy and Przemyśl and the Metropolitan of Kiev announced their secession from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which was increasingly influenced by the Ottomans. In 1595 some representatives of this group arrived to Rome and asked Pope Clement VIII to take them under his jurisdiction and unite them to the Apostolic See of Saint Peter.In the Union of Brest of 1596, a part of the Ukrainian Church was accepted under the jurisdiction of the Roman Pope, becoming a Byzantine Rite Catholic Church, a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, colloquially known as the Uniate Church. While the new church gained many faithful among the Ukrainians in Galicia, the majority of Ukrainians in the rest of the lands remained within Eastern Orthodoxy with the church affairs ruled by then from Kiev under the metropolitan Petro Mohyla. The Orthodox Church was made illegal, its property confiscated, and Orthodox believers faced persecution and discrimination which became an important reason for large numbers of Ukrainians to emigrate to Tsardom of Russia following the Union. The eastward spread of the Union of Brest led to violent clashes, for example, assassination of the Greek Catholic Archbishop Josaphat Kuntsevych by the Orthodox mob in Vitebsk in 1623.