“Against the hated papism”: images of Catholicism in the works of Mychailo Maksymovych.

Abstract

Purpose. This paper aims to characterize the images of Catholicism in the works of Mykhailo Maksymovych (1804–1873), a famous Ukrainian intellectual, and the first rector of St. Volodymyr University in Kyiv.

Methods. The research methodology is based on the principles formulated by the representatives of the Cambridge School of Intellectual History, modern theories of metaphor, which were used following the directions of building a “theory from below” described by Ewa Domanska, and the methods of quantitative content analysis implemented with the MAXQDA-2022 program. The study is based on Mykhailo Maksymovych's published works, letters, and unpublished notes, saved in the Institution of Manuscript of Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine (Kyiv).

Scientific novelty. The author reveals how Maksymovych’s perception of Catholicism as a “wrong faith” was combined with his disgust with “hateful papism” as a socio-political force. The typicality of various contexts where the scholar mentioned the “Latin faith” is statistically determined. The author clarifies how the images of Catholicism in Maksymovych’s works were combined with various ethnic, territorial, and other characteristics and how the images of Roman and Greek Catholics were correlated in the scholar’s works.

Conclusions. Mykhailo Maksymovych created entirely negative images of Catholicism. The only exception is the mentions of the Crusades with positive connotations, which was due to the influence of the romantic historiography of the Crusader movement on the scholar's vision. The socio-political dimension of Catholicism is criticized in the published works of Mykhailo Maksymovych. However, there are mentions of the liturgical features that caused controversy between Catholics and Orthodox in Mykhailo Maksymovych’s unpublished notes. Mykhailo Maksymovych used the concept of “ancestral faith” to criticize the conversion from Orthodoxy to Catholicism. The symbolical linking of the images of Catholicism to the images of Lithuanians and Poles was typical in the works of Mychailo Maxymovich. The scholar symbolically separated “Catholics” and “Uniates”. He described "Uniatism" as a phenomenon that emerged due to betrayal and that had to return to the parental faith. Mykhailo Maksymovych’s religious views, the general context of socio-political and cultural life in Ukraine in the first half and middle of the 19^th century, the influence of romanticism, and global processes of nation-building that took place during the "long" 19^th century determined the specificity of the images of Catholicism constructed by Mykhailo Maksymovych.