Peter Mohyla

Saint Peter Mohyla (Petru Movilă), hierarch, was Metropolitan of Kyiv, Galicia and all Rus’ from 1633 to 1646, son of a Romanian prince of Moldavia, defender of Orthodoxy and founder of the Kyiv Collegium, which became the Kyiv-⁠Mohyla Academy. He is commemorated on 31 December (the day of his death) and on 15 July; the Russian Orthodox Church entered his name in its calendar in 2005, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church canonized him in 1996.

Family and youth

He was born at Suceava, in 1596, in the family of the Movilești boyars, from which came several rulers of Moldavia and Wallachia. His father, Simion Movilă, ruled in Wallachia and then Moldavia; his mother, Marghita, later became a nun, with the name Melania. His uncles Gheorghe Movilă, Metropolitan of Moldavia, and Ieremia Movilă also stood at the head of the country. He was a descendant of Stephen the Great through Petru Rareș. After his father died, in 1607, Peter and his mother sought refuge in Poland, at Kamianets-⁠Podilskyi and then, from 1608, in the castle of Stanisław Żółkiewski, where they stayed sixteen years. He studied at the school of the Orthodox Brotherhood in Lviv, learned Latin, Greek, Slavonic and Polish and the sciences of the time. According to the custom of Polish nobles, he bore arms and took part in the battles with the Turks at Țuțora (1620) and Khotyn (1621-1622).

Monk and archimandrite

Under the influence of Metropolitan Job Boretsky and of the archimandrite of the Pechersk Lavra, Zacharias Kopystensky, he decided to become a monk. After spiritual preparation on his estate at Rubezhivka, where he built a church dedicated to Saint John the New of Suceava, he received the tonsure at the Pechersk Lavra, in 1625, and in 1627 was elected archimandrite, at thirty-⁠one. It was a time of turmoil: after the Union of Brest many nobles passed to Greek and Roman Catholicism, many schools were closed and printing had dwindled. Peter Mohyla restored the monasteries and the caves with relics at the Lavra and strengthened the press, which put out Orthodox books not only in Slavonic but also in Latin.

Metropolitan and builder of culture

In 1632, as envoy of the Orthodox clergy at the Sejm in Warsaw, at the election of King Władysław IV, he obtained recognition of the Orthodox Church in Poland, with four dioceses and the metropolis of Kyiv, freedom of services, the right to build churches, brotherhoods, schools and presses. The monasteries of Kyiv were also given to the Orthodox metropolitan. He was confirmed Metropolitan of Kyiv, keeping the archimandrite’s office, and ordained at Lviv, in 1633. Also in 1632 he founded at the Lavra a school for young monks, with teaching in Latin, then merged with the school of the Brotherhood of Kyiv; from it came the Mohyla Collegium, today the Kyiv-⁠Mohyla Academy. Students came from noble, clerical, Cossack and peasant families and studied Slavonic, Latin, Greek, Polish, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, music and history. He set up a network of schools and colleges and created a consistory in the Orthodox Church. In 1635, at the request of the prince of Wallachia, Matei Basarab, he sent him a press and printers.

His role was important at the Synod of Iași in 1642: the Orthodox Confession of Faith, written by him with others in 1640, was approved at Kyiv (1640), and at Iași, with the participation of the six oldest patriarchates, was received in a corrected form. He is author of a Euchologion (Trebnyk), printed in 1646. He died at Kyiv on 31 December 1646 (1 January 1647) and was buried in the Dormition cathedral of the Pechersk Lavra, as he wished.