Common history and religion of Rus and Moskovia in the appeals of the Kyiv Hierarchs to the Moscow tsars and the Moscow patriarchs (1620s – 1680s)

Abstract

The contacts between the Orthodox population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the population of the Moscow Kingdom originated at the end of the sixteenth – early seventeenth century. In particular, the Orthodox nobles and representatives of the Kyivan Mertopolitanate appealed to the Moscow rulers and Moscow patriarchs with requests to assist in the fight against Roman Catholics and Uniates. The first documented mention of the such embassies of the representatives of the Kyivan Mertopolitanate dates back to 1583 when the hieromonk and the elders of the Kyiv-Pechersk Monastery arrived to Moscow. These contacts intensified after the non-recognition of the restored Orthodox hierarchy in 1620 by the Polish king Sigismund III. From now on, representatives of the Kyivan Mertopolitanate sought financial assistance from Moscow. They sent embassies and petitions with requests for alms to Moscow rulers and Moscow patriarchs. Instead, the Kyivan plaintiffs, as all the Ukrainian population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, were heretics for the representatives of the Moscow royal court. These attitudes encouraged the representatives of the Kyivan Mertopolitanate to resort to different strategies of conviction in their letters and petitions. These rhetorical means had to convince Moscow rulers and Moscow patriarchs of the need to assist the Orthodox churches and monasteries of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. We can mention a particular strategy of conviction among such rhetorical means and formula-cliches – appeals to the joint history and religion of the Ukrainian lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Moscow Kingdom. We attempt to characterize this rhetorical instrument and analyze, in which situations and how successfully the representatives of the Kyivan Mertopolitanate used this strategy of conviction. Article received 18.02.2019