The thirteenth century marked a turning point in the history of the Church of Rus, which by that time had existed for over two centuries. The crusader conquest of Constantinople in 1204 intensified tensions between Catholics and Orthodox. The Metropolitanate of Kyiv encountered this challenge directly in the early decades of the century, when the Galician lands – and with them the territory of the Galician bishopric – repeatedly came under the rule of Hungarian (Catholic) kings.
An even more profound challenge – indeed, a devastating blow – for the Church came with the Mongol conquest of Rus. This was not only a matter of the killing of clergy but also of the widespread destruction and looting of churches and ecclesiastical infrastructure, especially during the sack of cities. Contemporary sources attest that during the Mongol advance through the Ukrainian lands in 1239, the invaders killed the bishop of Pereiaslav; in Kyiv, in early December 1240, the Tithe Church – the first stone church of Rus – was heavily damaged, though not yet completely destroyed. These events, which later became emblematic, are preserved in the Suzdalian and Galician-Volhynian chronicles respectively. Yet the true scale of the losses – both in human lives and in damage to church property – was undoubtedly far greater. In the first half of the 1270s, the prominent Ruthenian preacher Serapion offered a somber assessment of the Mongol invasion and the decades that followed:
“Divine churches have been laid waste; the sacred vessels, the precious crosses, and the holy books have been profaned; holy places have been trodden underfoot. Bishops have been given over to the sword, and the bodies of holy monks have been left for the birds to devour. The blood of our fathers and brothers has drenched the earth like abundant water. The strength of our princes and commanders has failed; our knights, filled with terror, fled. Many of our brothers and children were led away into captivity. Our many cities were laid desolate, and our villages were overgrown with thistles. Our grandeur was humbled, our beauty perished, our wealth passed to others’ profit; the fruits of our labor were inherited by the godless; our land fell to foreigners. We were brought to shame before those who dwell at the edges of our land, and we became a mockery before our enemies.”
Beyond the demographic and material losses, Batu’s campaign against Rus’ brought about an institutional rupture in the life of the Metropolitanate. During these years of devastation (1239–1241), the Metropolitan of Rus, Joseph, either perished or left Kyiv – in any case, the Church was left without its archpastor. This led to a temporary paralysis of ecclesiastical life. Even by the mid-1240s, it remained unclear when these hardships would end or what the future would hold.
It is therefore no coincidence that at precisely this moment the princes of Volhynia and Galicia – Danylo and Vasylko, sons of Roman (Romanovychi) – entered into active contact with Pope Innocent IV. Union with Rome, which became the central theme of their correspondence, offered a potential way to overcome the dysfunction of a leaderless Metropolitanate of Rus. The situation was further complicated by the fact that Constantinople – whose patriarchs exercised jurisdiction over the Church of Rus – was under Latin control following its capture during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. At that time, both the patriarchs and the emperors resided in Nicaea in Asia Minor.
In these circumstances, establishing relations with the Holy See may have been the only viable means of preserving the ecclesiastical structure of Rus from collapse and of preventing its Christians from slipping into marginalization and losing their archpastor.
It is noteworthy that from early 1248 the Romanovychi’s correspondence with the Pope comes to an abrupt halt. This likely reflects the consecration of a new metropolitan, Cyril II, in Nicaea around that time, which effectively removed the need to pursue union with Rome.
The unprecedented vacancy of the see – something not seen in the previous two centuries – meant that the new hierarchs of Rus were, in effect, tasked with rebuilding the Church. They had to do so under radically altered conditions, in a land now subject to foreign domination. This unfamiliar situation compelled both secular and ecclesiastical elites to search for ways of understanding the new rulers and their regime.
The earliest ecclesiastical responses to what came to be known as the “Tatar yoke” date from the final third of the thirteenth century—several decades after the conquest.
One of the most vivid such responses comes from Serapion. He served for many years as hegumen of the Kyivan Caves Monastery, and in the final year of his life (1274–1275) he held the episcopal sees of Rostov and Vladimir-Suzdal. Several of his sermons have survived, in which he sought, among other things, to make sense of the devastating Mongol conquest and the subsequent “Tatar yoke.” In one of these, the bishop writes:
“Yet we did not repent, until a merciless people came upon us by God’s allowance; they laid waste our land, took our cities captive, and destroyed our holy churches; they slew our fathers and brothers, and delivered our mothers and sisters over to dishonor.
Now therefore, brethren, knowing this, let us fear this dreadful chastisement and fall down before our Lord, making confession, lest we enter into yet greater wrath of the Lord and bring upon ourselves a punishment more grievous than the former. For He will not long await our repentance […].”
“I beseech you, brethren and children, be changed for the better; be renewed with a good renewal. Cease from doing evil; fear God who created us; tremble before His dread judgment! […] Why do we not perceive what has befallen us, even while we yet remain in this life? What have we not brought upon ourselves? What punishments from God have we not received? Has not our land been seized? Have not our cities been taken? Did not our fathers and brothers soon fall as corpses upon the earth? Were not our wives and children led away into captivity? And were not we who remained subjected to this bitter bondage by foreign peoples?
Behold, nearly forty years of suffering and torment have passed; the heavy tributes laid upon us do not cease; famine and pestilence take away our lives; we cannot eat our bread with gladness, and our sighing and sorrow dry up our bones. Who has brought this upon us? Our lawlessness and our sins, our disobedience and our lack of repentance. I beseech you, brethren, each one of you: enter into your thoughts, behold with the eyes of your heart your deeds; hate them and cast them away; come to repentance, and the wrath of God shall cease […]
What has not befallen our people? Wars, famines, pestilences, and earthquakes; and in the end we have been given over to foreign peoples – not only to death and captivity, but also to bitter bondage. All this comes from God, and through it He works our salvation. Now, therefore, I beseech you: repent of your former folly.”
The central message of these pastoral exhortations is that the subjugation of Rus by a “merciless people” was understood as a punishment from the Lord for human sin. Though formally baptized, the people remained far removed from the standards of Christian life and continually provoked God’s wrath.
“Our Own” Pagans
Thirteenth-century Ruthenian chronicles – especially the Galician-Volhynian, Novgorodian, and Suzdalian chronicles – likewise recount the Mongol conquest in a tone of lament, describing the invaders as “accursed,” “godless,” and “lawless.” This hostility toward the conquerors is reflected in their later entries, which detail Tatar punitive campaigns, the fiscal exactions of the Horde administration, and other forms of oppression. Yet these chronicles do not articulate a coherent program of resistance or liberation. Instead, they lament the grave plight and seek to explain the internal – above all spiritual – causes of this “external” catastrophe. Whether or not such ideas circulated among secular elites or other social groups, the Church, it seems, adopted a more restrained stance.
In this context, it is worth revisiting the hagiographical account of the killing of Prince Mykhailo of Chernihiv at Khan Batu’s camp in early autumn 1246. This thirteenth-century text was intended to glorify a new martyr who refused to perform pagan rites. At the same time, however, it portrays Mykhailo as fully acknowledging the authority of the khan: “To you, O emperor, I bow, for to you God has entrusted the rule of this world.” It remains unclear what Mykhailo actually said, and whether the religious issue was the primary cause of his execution or merely a pretext. The text, however, appears above all to reflect the position of the Church.
It is also noteworthy that Ruthenian authors of the second half of the thirteenth century, while acknowledging the paganism of the Mongols, did not emphasize it as strongly as their predecessors had – for example, in their treatment of the Cumans. The Mongols (Tatars) were no longer simply hostile neighbors or raiders belonging to the “external world.” They had become the rulers of Rus, which itself had been incorporated into the political order they established. However harsh this order may have been, it appeared at the time to be enduring; the Church therefore had to come to terms with the new realities and reinterpret them in ways that were as advantageous as possible.
In this context, Christian Rus found itself under pagan rule. Yet as these rulers, of necessity, became in some sense more “familiar,” it became inappropriate – except in the most extreme cases – to stress their paganism. Authors of the later thirteenth century instead identified other, more “convenient” pagans, against whom the Church could more readily support warfare. In the lands of present-day Ukraine, especially Volhynia, these were the Baltic peoples: the Yotvingians, Lithuanians, Samogitians, and others. Significantly, in the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle of this period, the vast majority of references to “pagans” concern these groups rather than the Tatars.
An Attempt to Convert the Pagans and Dialogue with the Khans
After the initial shock of their violent encounter with the Mongols, the Ruthenian ecclesiastical elite came to recognize that if the rule of the pagans could not be overthrown, it might instead be possible to convert them to Christianity. This stance aligned with the policy of the Roman Church, which from the mid-1240s began exploring – and even planning – missions aimed at the conversion of the Mongols. A landmark development was the transfer of the residence of the bishop of Pereiaslav from the devastated Ruthenian city to the seat of the Golden Horde khans – Sarai Batu on the Lower Volga – in 1261. Thus emerged the Sarai diocese, the first located beyond the traditional territory of the Metropolitanate of Rus. Significantly, this occurred in the very year of the restoration of the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople. The bishops of Sarai (or Pereiaslav-Sarai) were to play an important representative role for the Church of Rus, and indirectly for the Patriarchate of Constantinople as a whole, within the Horde, while also promoting the conversion of the Tatars. The establishment of this new diocese points to a mutual recognition: of the Church by the Horde, and of khanly authority by the Church.
The legitimation of the new order also rested on a tangible administrative foundation. In the mid-1240s, the Mongols conducted the first comprehensive census in the history of the Ukrainian lands. In the second half of the 1250s, similar measures were extended to the Volga–Oka region (Suzdal and Ryazan) and the Ilmen region (Novgorod). Soon afterward, Ruthenian authors began referring to the Mongol ruler as tsisar (emperor). Initially, this term reflected the steppe title of the ruler of the Great Mongol Empire – qa’an (Great Khan). From the late 1260s, following the empire’s fragmentation, tsisar came to be used as an equivalent of the title borne by the rulers of the Ulus of Jochi (the Golden Horde) – khan. The census provided the basis for establishing a regular system of taxation in the conquered lands of Rus, thereby enabling a deeper institutionalization of Horde rule.
After imposing tribute and other obligations on most of the population, the Mongols exempted the Church from taxation. Previously, its material resources had depended heavily on princely treasuries and the support of the secular elite. In an unintended consequence of the conquest, the Church of Rus thus became more economically independent. From the 1260s onward, its legal status was defined by khan-issued decrees – yarliks. Alongside tax exemptions, these charters guaranteed the inviolability of church property and books, in return for prayers and blessings for the rulers.
At the same time, these external changes were mirrored in the Church’s internal life, which came to rely more on written documentation than on ritual and custom. The earliest evidence for the systematic use and dissemination of manuscripts known as Nomocanons – collections of canon law – dates from the last third of the thirteenth century. Based on Byzantine models (in Church Slavonic translation), they were supplemented with local Ruthenian provisions.
In 1273, a church council was convened under the leadership of the metropolitan. Making use of the freedoms granted by the Mongols, it affirmed the autonomy of the ecclesiastical hierarchy from secular authority, which had previously interfered in the appointment of priests and bishops. In its decrees, the rule of foreign pagans was interpreted as a manifestation of divine wrath, to which the proper response was the reform of internal failings: corruption, liturgical abuses, and the persistence of pagan elements within society.
The Era of “Peripatetic” Metropolitans and Mongol Policy
For the Church of Rus, the Mongol period became an era of “peripatetic” metropolitans. Cyril II was already a case in point. Shortly after his appointment, he departed for the Vladimir-Suzdal principality. Over the course of his nearly thirty-five-year tenure, until his death at the end of 1280, he spent most of his time on extended journeys, mainly in the Suzdalian region. Yet the metropolitan see – his official residence – remained in Kyiv.
One reason for this mobility was the catastrophic devastation of Kyiv and the Dnipro region by the steppe invaders. Another, and perhaps more decisive, factor was Mongol policy. After consolidating their power on the Lower Volga, the Mongols designated the Suzdalian prince Iaroslav Vsevolodovych as the “senior” among all Ruthenian princes and granted him Kyiv. After Iaroslav’s death, both this seniority and Kyiv passed to his son Aleksandr (known as Nevsky). Yet neither of them ever went to Kyiv. Aleksandr, although prince of Vladimir-Suzdal from 1252 and nominally prince of Kyiv, resided in Vladimir.
In the conquered lands, the Mongols deliberately constructed a political order in which the Ruthenian prince they recognized as highest in status was based in the Suzdalian region and exercised his primacy there.
In the Eastern Christian – more precisely, Byzantine – tradition, ecclesiastical structures were expected to mirror political ones, and the metropolitan of Rus’ adapted quickly to the new realities. As early as the year after Aleksandr’s appointment as prince of Kyiv (1250), the newly appointed Metropolitan Cyril II moved to Suzdalia, where he remained for about a decade. This set a fateful precedent.
Cyril’s successor, Metropolitan Maximos, arrived in Rus’ in 1283 and went first to Sarai, then on to the Vladimir-Suzdal region. Over the next sixteen years, he rarely stayed in one place for long. Then, after another stay in Kyiv in 1299, Maximos “fled from Tatar violence” (as one chronicle puts it), once again heading northeast. This time, however, it was not just another journey, but the relocation of the metropolitan see along with its entire administration.
The context of this event was shaped entirely by developments within the Horde. In the 1290s, the Ulus of Jochi was marked by a situation of dual rule: in the east, on the Volga, the formal khan Tokhta held power, while in the west, in the Pontic steppe, authority belonged to the military commander and de facto leader Nogai. Kyiv fell within Nogai’s sphere of control.
In 1299/1300, however, Tokhta defeated Nogai, who died soon afterward. The unity of the Golden Horde was restored, and power was fully consolidated on the Lower Volga. The prince of Vladimir-Suzdal at the time, Andrei (son of Aleksandr Nevsky), had long been a protégé of Tokhta. As a result, both he and his principality rose in status after his patron’s victory. It was at precisely this moment that Metropolitan Maximos moved his residence to Vladimir.
The Far-Reaching Consequences of the Metropolitan’s Move to Vladimir
For church life in the Ukrainian lands, this brought about profound change. For the first time in three hundred years, the archpastor had left them. The effects were felt most acutely in Volhynia and Galicia, where the loss of contact with the metropolitan once again threatened to paralyze the local bishoprics. The response was swift. In 1303, Patriarch Athanasios of Constantinople issued a charter establishing a separate Galician Metropolitanate, intended to encompass the domains of the Romanovychi dynasty. Its first head was Nifont.
In the official documentation of the patriarchal chancery, the newly created metropolitanate became known as “Little Rus” (Μικρά Ῥωσία). It was indeed territorially smaller and included fewer dioceses than the other Metropolitanate—“Great Rus” (Μεγάλη Ῥωσία), which comprised the remainder of the former Metropolitanate of Kyiv, whose de facto administrative center was now in Vladimir-Suzdal.
Two years later, the first Metropolitan of Halych died, and a native of Volhynia, Peter, traveled to Constantinople to become his successor. However, in 1308 the patriarch consecrated him not as Metropolitan of Halych, but as “Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Rus,” thereby reuniting the recently divided Metropolitanatees. After a brief, largely ceremonial stay in Kyiv of about a year, Peter departed for Suzdalia, continuing the policy of Maximos. Moreover, shortly before his death in 1325, he transferred the metropolitan residence from Vladimir to Moscow.
After 1299, Kyiv for a long time ceased to function as a real ecclesiastical center – a role it had held for three centuries. Peter’s successor, the Greek metropolitan Theognostos, never even visited Kyiv. Although he bore the title of Metropolitan of Kyiv, he was in practice based in Moscow. In 1330–1331, he made a pastoral visit to Volhynia. Such temporary presence served as a substitute for the absence of a separate Metropolitanate of Halych: the patriarchs simply did not appoint its heads.
This was done again only in the 1340s, but soon afterward the Metropolitanate was abolished altogether. This intermittent existence of the Metropolitanate of Halych, together with the subsequent unions and divisions of the Metropolitanate of Kyiv and, ultimately, the final separation of the Moscow Metropolitanate from Kyiv in the mid-fifteenth century, were distant yet direct consequences of Mongol policy in the thirteenth century.
Local Contexts
The attitudes of the metropolitans and their administration toward the political realities of the Mongol period differed – sometimes considerably – from those of the episcopate, clergy, and monastic communities, and varied by region. Particularly valuable, though fragmentary, are the testimonies from the western Ukrainian lands preserved in the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle, which was undoubtedly compiled by clerics.
While accepting Mongol rule as a punishment from God for sins (to some extent regarded as justified, or at least understandable), the authors of the chronicle were highly critical of initiatives by the secular elite to cooperate with the Tatars. What was considered appropriate was to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” when required and not to fear the conquerors. At the same time, it was generally preferable to avoid interaction with them. This pattern of behavior – fulfilling necessary obligations while avoiding cooperation – is exemplified by Prince Volodymyr Vasylkovych of Volodymyr, who is portrayed favorably in the text (presumably not only because the chronicle was compiled in his city, in a scriptorium under his patronage).
By contrast, Prince Lev Danylovych is criticized for initiating and encouraging Tatar campaigns through Ruthenian lands against Poland and Lithuania. The passage of Horde forces – engaged in plunder, extortion, and killings – inflicted serious harm on the local population. In particular, during the presence of Tatar troops in Lev’s lands in Galicia in 1287/1288, some 12,500 people were killed or taken captive.
Overall, it can be said without exaggeration that during the Mongol period (from the 1240s to the 1360s), and in the wake of an unprecedented military catastrophe, the Metropolitanate of Rus faced an unparalleled intellectual challenge and a profound institutional crisis – the beginning of its fragmentation. The Ukrainian dioceses, particularly in the west, were subjected to especially severe trials. Strained relations with the metropolitans, with whom contact could be lost for long periods, encounters with pagan powers – the Horde and the Baltic peoples – as well as the constant influence and at times pressure from western Catholic neighbors – all of this confronted the clergy with a series of existential choices.
The Church had to grow stronger in order to adapt to these conditions. To survive, it had to change.
Vadym Aristov
