Trakhtemyriv Monastery and Cossacks: The Political Mysteries of the Early 17th Century

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of the existence of the Orthodox monastery in Trakhtemyriv. Attention is drawn to the ambiguity of the statements of historians concerning the reform of the Polish king Stefan Batory in 1578. It is argued that in order to find out the existence of a monastery, a detailed analysis of historical sources is required. The author applied the logical and problem-chronological methods. Due to this, it was found out that the problem of the existence of the monastery in Trakhtemyriv in the early seventeenth century is a political issue, not a religious one. Attention is drawn to the fact that the monastery in this period is never mentioned as a religious structure that carries out religious practice. There is also a complete absence of any signs of the economic activity of the monastery, which also indicates the impossibility of its existence at the appointed time. In addition, it is also noted that no evidence of the transfer of the monastery to the possession of the Zaporozhian historians was made public. On the contrary, everything indicates that this fact has never really happened and could not have happened. A number of documents of the 16th - 17th centuries, in which the monastery was mentioned, was analyzed. It is alleged that it could have occurred about 1620, during the restoration of the Ukrainian church hierarchy.