Diecezje łucka i żytomierska w świetle schematyzmu na 1832 rok (3). Duchowieństwo

Abstrakt

We present another text concerning the situation of the Latin Rite Catholic Church in Russia before the fall of the November Uprising, based on schemata, supplemented and verified based on sources (especially visitation records). The previous ones discussed the schematism of the Kamieniec diocese in 1831 and the Lutsk and Zhytomyr diocese in 1832, as well as issues related to the organization of the Lutsk, Zhytomyr and Kamieniec dioceses and the Catholic clergy from Podolia. This text presents the clergy incardinated in the autumn of 1831 in the Łuck and Żytomierz dioceses. Based on schematism, it was established that there were 161 priests in these dioceses at that time, most of whom were involved in pastoral care at parish churches and public chapels. In the first three decades of the 19th century, the number of clergy in Volhynia significantly decreased. In 1801, 329 priests belonged to both dioceses. However, it is worth to remember that at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, the chancel of both dioceses was joined by 116 clergymen who had changed from the Greek-Uniate to the Latin rite, due to government restrictions and the lack of freedom in conducting Catholic pastoral ministry in the Eastern Rite, which resulted in the transition of many Uniate parishes on Orthodoxy. In 1831, 15 priests out of this number were still alive. Thus, In Podolia, in the dioceses of Lutsk and Zhytomyr, there were not enough priests to fill pastoral positions. Most of the priests operating in Volhynia in the fall of 1831 came from the Ukrainian lands, although there were also clergymen from Lithuanian-Belarusian lands. Many of them, choosing the priesthood, chose the Volyn seminaries due to the lack of clergy in both dioceses. The priests who came from Volhynia mainly came from the nobility and obtained secondary education close to their family home. Few of them had a university education and had an academic degree. Usually, those alumni of Volyn seminaries, whom the bishop sent to the Main Seminary in Vilnius and to study theology at the Imperial University, constituted the elite of the clergy. They became members of chapters, officials of the consistory and lecturers of theological seminaries, and in later years provosts and priests in prominent parishes. Half of the described priests lived to the age of 60.