Nieznana relacja o rzymskokatolickiej diecezji kijowskiej z roku 1659

Abstract

In view of the historical studies about the Roman-Catholic Kiev diocese, which have come out so far, the author presents the contents of a document he himself had discovered in the Orsini family’s archives in Rome (the archives stored in Archivio Capitolino). The document is in the Jesuit Marcin Hincza’s report on the state of the diocese before the Cossack insurrection in 1648. This piece of information was written in 1659, on demand of by card. Wirginiusz Orsini, protector of Poland in the Roman Curia, with regards to the efforts made by Tomasz Ujejski, bishop of Kiev, to establish a Kiev suffragan see for Stanisław Giannotti, a Varsovian of Italian origin. The paper discusses in turn the following: the territory of the diocese, the number of Catholics (ca 13.000) and their main clusters, education run by Jesuits in their colleges, successes in the work on converting the Orthodox believers to Catholicism and the reasons why they succeeded, as well as the attempts to convert Arians in the landed property of the Niemirycz family made by the Jesuits from Owrucz. The author supplements the data by a piece of information about other orders working in the diocese (Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians and discalced Carmelites). Then, comparing Hihcza’s report with a well-known report about the state of the diocese of 1636, he proves that they supplement each other perfectly, showing how extremely dynamic was in those years the Roman Catholicism’s expansion into the Kiev region, an expansion which was irreparably halted by the Cossack insurrection organized by Bohdan Chmielnicki in the years 1648-1654.