Hilarion, the first metropolitan of Kyiv from Rus’, 1051–1052

Hilarion, the first metropolitan of Kyiv from Rus’

In 1051 or early 1052 Yaroslav gathered the bishops in St Sophia and had them install the priest Hilarion of Berestove as metropolitan of Kyiv — the first head of the Rus’ church born in Rus’, consecrated without the Patriarch of Constantinople. Hilarion is the author of the Sermon on Law and Grace, one of the earliest original works of Rus’ literature.

Date

1051 … February 1052exact date unknown: an interval is given

Place

St Sophia Cathedral, Kyivtoday: Saint Sophia of Kyiv national reserve, Kyiv, Ukraine · Eastern Europe

Participants

Hilarion of Kyiv, Yaroslav the Wise, Kievan Rus’

Threads

Rus (11th–12th c.)

Also known as

Ilarion; Larion Rusin; Sermon on Law and Grace; Kyiv Monastery of the Caves; Kyiv Pechersk Lavra; Ларион Русин; Слово о законе и благодати; Киево-Печерский монастырь

Hilarion was a priest of the princely church of the Holy Apostles at Berestove outside Kyiv, ‘a good man, learned and given to fasting’, as the chronicle calls him; on the hill above the Dnieper he dug a small cave where he prayed in secret. After his elevation the monk Anthony settled in that cave, and around it grew the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves. Under the year 6559 — March 1051 to February 1052 — the chronicle records that Yaroslav ‘appointed Hilarion, a Rus’ by birth, metropolitan in St Sophia, having gathered the bishops’, and a note by Hilarion himself says that he was consecrated and enthroned in Kyiv by pious bishops. Metropolitans of Kyiv were usually Greeks sent from Constantinople. Historians differ on what the appointment meant: M. D. Priselkov, Ya. N. Shchapov and others saw in it Yaroslav’s striving for church independence or a conflict with the patriarch, while others believe it did not challenge the authority of Constantinople. After Yaroslav’s death in 1054 Hilarion disappears from the sources; in 1055 the metropolitan is the Greek Ephraim.

Before his elevation, between 1037 and 1050, Hilarion wrote the Sermon on Law and Grace: the church of the Annunciation it mentions was built in 1037, and Yaroslav’s wife Irina, who died in 1050, is spoken of as living. The Sermon contrasts the Law of the Old Testament with the Grace of the New, presents the baptism of Rus’ as the coming of grace to a new people equal to the other Christian nations, and closes with a eulogy of Vladimir and Yaroslav and a prayer. It is regarded as the oldest known original work of Rus’ literature, and its style was widely imitated.

Sources