Armed brotherhood of Lutsk townspeople

Emblem of the Lutsk Brotherhood. Photo: UOJ

In 1621, Catholics launched the first attack on an Orthodox hospital in Lutsk. The residents of the shelter repelled the attack themselves. Several years later, a bloody clash with Jesuits erupted right outside the monastery gates. In 1634, Brotherhood members Princes Yuriy and Mykhailo Puzyna filed a formal protest over yet another attack on the Brotherhood Monastery of the Exaltation of the Cross. Similar attacks followed in 1639 and 1644.

Defending the faith in Volhynia at the time meant being constantly prepared for street fighting. Lutsk’s Orthodox residents went longer than those in other regions without organized support. Their isolation was largely the work of Bishop Kyrylo (Terletskyi) of Lutsk and Ostroh. One of the chief architects of the Union of Brest of 1596, he openly obstructed initiatives by the city’s Orthodox population.

It was not until 1617 that they succeeded in establishing a legal organization. One of the founders of the Lutsk Brotherhood was Schema-monk Gregory (Mikulych), who donated valuable icons, printed books and liturgical vestments to the community.

Later, on February 20, 1619, King Sigismund III formally authorized local townspeople to establish a charitable brotherhood with a hospital and school. On September 1 of that same year, 47 members of the association, including nobles and clergy, entrusted the day-to-day “watch and work” to Lutsk’s townspeople. Townsman M. Babych described the Brotherhood as having arisen “by the grace and blessing of God.” On January 14, 1620, a royal document described the ruined hospital, the Church’s humiliated position and the shared desire of nobles and commoners to have a brotherhood of their own.

A roll of princely titles and artisans’ names

During his stay in Kyiv in 1620, Patriarch Theophanes IV of Jerusalem granted the community stavropegial status. The document guaranteed its independence from the local bishop. In 1623, Patriarch Cyril I Lucaris of Constantinople approved the Brotherhood’s charter. Its rules broke through the rigid class barriers of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Article 15 of the charter established a strict procedure for entering names in the memorial book. Anyone could join the community, “whether a commoner or of noble estate.” The Brotherhood’s commemoration book was read aloud during memorial Liturgies and throughout Great Lent. Beneath the church vaults, the names of the poor were heard alongside the titles of the nobility.

Archival records bear this out. Historians have counted more than 350 people in the commemoration book. Of these, 176 were commoners, 87 belonged to the nobility, and more than 100 were members of the clergy.

Responsibilities were divided according to the strengths of each estate. By 1648, representatives of 55 noble families and four princely houses – the Puzynas, Voronetskys, Kurtsevychs and Sviatopolk-Chetvertynskys – had joined the Brotherhood. The noble families handled high-level politics at regional assemblies, while leaving the Brotherhood’s day-to-day affairs in the hands of ordinary townspeople.

Firing a negligent cleric – by the book

Article 18 of the Lutsk charter laid down strict rules for the conduct of the clergy. This set it apart from the statutes of other brotherhoods, where priests received far less attention. A Brotherhood priest was expected to care for his flock and show the utmost sensitivity toward them. In return, the community pledged to obey him without question.

The procedure, however, required the blessing of the ruling bishop, the sole representative of ecclesiastical authority recognized in the charter. The townspeople had no right to dismiss a priest on their own.

Parish priests celebrated the Liturgy daily and cared for sick townspeople at the Brotherhood’s shelter. In 1624, the Lutsk Brotherhood Monastery of the Exaltation of the Cross was established at the church.

Tens of thousands of zlotys for armed charity

The organization needed substantial financial backing to survive. The period leading up to 1648 was one of prosperity for the Brotherhood, which received some 100,000 zlotys in donations. Its largest contribution came from a foreign merchant. A Greek named Alexander Mozella donated 72,830 zlotys to the common treasury. Financial contributions from members of the nobility are also recorded. Between 1648 and 1702, Volhynian landowners bequeathed another 23,795 zlotys.

The money helped support the Brotherhood school. Its two school charters proclaimed a commitment to Orthodoxy. Students learned reading, writing and arithmetic and practiced church singing. Older pupils studied rhetoric and advanced dialectics. The curriculum included Greek and Church Slavonic and largely followed the educational model of the Lviv Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood’s flourishing era came to an end with the outbreak of the Cossack wars. A prolonged decline followed. In 1713, under Bishop Joseph (Vyhovsky), the organization formally entered the Unia. The Orthodox brotherhood had ceased to exist entirely by 1730 following the forced change of rite.

It was not until February 2, 1871, that the Brotherhood was formally revived. The traces of this remarkable alliance survive in court records and half-decayed commemoration books.

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