The History of Roman Sheptyts’kyi’s Choice

Abstract

In this monograph, Polish historian Magdalena Nowak depicts the influence of Roman (later Metropolitan Andrei) Sheptyts’kyi’s family, education, and friendships during his years at university on the formation of his personality. In it she tries to answer the question why the young count, who was a Polish patriot and a deeply faithful Roman Catholic, decided to switch rites and become a monk of the Greek Catholic Church, whose flock was made up almost exclusively of Ukrainians (Nowak refers to them to as “Ruthenians/Ukrainians”). Nowak is inclined to believe that the motivation was Sheptyts’kyi’s profound understanding of his duty as a land-owning aristocrat toward the common people who lived alongside him and from his family arose, as well as his desire to make a great contribution to the growth of Catholicism in the Russian Empire. While still a student, Sheptyts’kyi switched from officially stating he was a “Pole” to saying he was a “Ruthenian”. Nowak attempts to trace this change in national self-identification as Sheptyts’kyi became a Greek Catholic monk and later a Greek Catholic bishop, the archbishop of Lviv, and, in 1901, the metropolitan of Halych, all the while increasingly identifying with his church’s Ukrainian faithful. Although she concludes her study with the year 1914, Nowak devotes much less attention to the events of 1901–14, absolutizes the metropolitan’s Polish circles of private interaction, and marginalizes the impact of “Ukrainian” factors on the change in his identity. Nonetheless, her book is a valuable and significant contribution to the study of the life and activities of Metropolitan Andrei.