www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Ruthenian?

I'm curious - would anyone care to offer one or more definition(s) of the term "Ruthenian"?

Fr. Serge

In terms of ethnicity I tell people that the Ruthenians are a group of Slavic people wose originak homeland lies in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, mostly where Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania intersect.

Ruthenia is a magical land like Brigadoon that exists south of Poland, west of Ukraine, east of Slovakia and north of Hungary. It last appeared in 1919 and vanished shortly thereafter. Rumors of its reappearance appear to have been exaggerated.

Ethnically more or less what sielos said; politically what Stuart said.

I understand the word's meaning has changed over the centuries. Like Anglican originally was a Latin way of saying simply English (in the Middle Ages before there was an Anglican Church as we know it*), Ruthenian meant Russian. It once was used to refer to Byelorussians as well as who we now call Ruthenians/Rusyns/Carpatho-Russians/Slavish/po-našemu etc.

*Like the Byzantines didn't call themselves Byzantines but Romans (Rhomaioi) and were named that by the 19th-century British, I understand Anglicanism wasn't named that until the same period by the same people, when the British Empire spread that church beyond the motherland and necessitated a name.

Interesting so far - I'm startled by the assertion that Ruthenians are a group of ethnic Slovaks. That would make the group much smaller than it is normally assumed to be, and I know of no evidence to support it.

The equation of Ruthenia with Brigadoon is quite attractive!

The meaning of the word Ruthenian has certainly changed over time; that is in the nature of such terms. But the specific word in question warrants a thorough study, though it may not deserve one and is unlikely to receve it.

It is easy to demonstrate that well within my own lifetime the Holy See used the term in a much broader way than Pittsburgh does, and in a much broader way than the Carpatho-Rusyn enthusiasts would prefer. It clearly included the Ukrainian Greek-Catholics and some other groups who did not and do not care to have it applied to them. Its sudden limitation/reduction in the nineteen-sixties does not necessarily affect its applicability in an ethnic reference.

Indicative to the problem is Professor Magocsi's choice of title for his book on this community in the USA: Our People.

By the way, the Greeks of Constantinople still call themselves Romans, to this very day. The Greeks of the revived independent Greek state also called themselves Romans until those pushing "Hellenic" managed to get the support of the government and the educational establishment - the reason for this was to claim a direct continuity with the pre-Christian Hellenes. Visit the museums and cultural institutions in Athens and get set to be annoyed at the blatant downplaying of the Constantinopolitan connection.

Meanwhile, please keep the discussion on the term "Ruthenian" going. My thanks to those who have so far contributed.

Fr. Serge

Who here claimed they're Slovaks? sielos said Slavic.

Yes, before 1924 Rome counted the Ukrainians in America as Ruthenians, before setting up a separate church there for them.

Wasn't the 1950s-1960s - in Nicholas Elko's brief, tense time as the de-ethnicising Ruthenian supremo in the States - when his church stopped calling itself Ruthenian Greek Catholic and started calling itself Byzantine Catholic? Come to think of it, I think I learnt here that the change dates from the start of their seminary in the 1950s.

I'm taking the part about the Greeks to a new thread to stay on topic.

Actually, the first use of the word "Byzantine" to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire can be found in an Italian work of the mid-16th century. The use of Byzantine as an adjective (and not a positive one) dates to the Enlightenment. Most of the bad things people think about the Rhomaioi can be traced to Edward Gibbon, a brilliant writer with an axe to grind.

In the lands of former Czechoslovakia, Ruthenian is taken to mean the Slavic people who live in Podkarpatska Ukraine which, if you ever get to see a pre-WWII map of Europe, was the tail end of Czechslovakia (before Stalin decided he needed a border with Hungary and added this region to the USSR). The term Ruthenian is also used to describe the Eastern Christians of far Eastern Slovakia both Orthodox and Greek Catholic (who, as it were, somewhat spill over the border of modern day Ukraine) who are related to the slavs in Karpathian Ukraine but who often times nowadays refer to themselves as Slovaks. Most of my friends in Eastern Slovakia who are Eastern Christian and have Ruthenian grandparents today speak only Slovak and refer to themselves as Slovaks. It's a shame to me but according to some reports, Ruthenian language in Slovakia is looked upon as a dying language something the old folks speak while the younger generation opt for the more "Western" Slovak.

An autonomous church sui iuris, using the old Hungarian term for a certain group of peoples out near the Carpethian border with the Ukraine, who came into Union with rome as an eparchy, and have grown to 5 by diaspora.

Overlaps highly with Carpetho-Rusyn.

I think there was a series of unions with Rome but wasn't the best-known Ruthenian one, Užhorod in 1646, a group of priests doing it on their own (for protection from their then-Calvinist Hungarian rulers) not one or more whole dioceses like the union of Brest-Litovsk in 1596? (The Ukrainian Catholic Church was at first much bigger than now, including the metropolitan of Kiev and including Byelorussia; Russian expansion including, yes, persecution, reduced it to Galicia, its homeland today.)

"Ruteni" (Eng. "Ruthenian") is merely a Church Latin term for all Eastern Slavs. The best known union with the Ruteni was the Treaty of Brest. The Union of Uzherod is so badly documented that the original act of union itself does not seem to exist.

True of Ruteni and Užhorod and good catch on the best-known union; using the older meaning of Ruteni Brest is No. 1.

The Treaty of Brest was in 1918 and part of the end of World War I; the Union of Brest started the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

There probably was a "Union of Uzhhorod", but no one has been able to find the document or documents. That makes it difficult to know who promised what to whom.

Fr. Serge

The agreement ending the Russo-German portion of World War I is technically "The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk". The "Union of Brest" really is a "Treaty"--it is written as a formal diplomatic (vs. theological) document, and is an agreement between the "Ruteni" bishops and the Kingdom of Poland as much as it is with the Holy See (which really knew very little about it beforehand).

On the Union of Uzherod, it is assumed the terms and conditions were similar to those of Brest, but probably with the restrictions and definitions contained in the 1598 Bull Magnus Dominus, by which the signatories of the Union of Brest were hung out to dry. But, as Father Serge, notes, nobody really knows. Convenient for both sides, that is.

The Union of Uzhorod by Michael Lacko SJ, Professor at the Pontifical Institute for Oriental Studies.

He documents it quite well, the scanty records being kept in the archives of the Diocese of Eger.