Metropolis of Kyiv
Eastern Orthodox metropolis
The Metropolis of Kyiv (Greek: Μητρόπολις Κιέβου, romanized: Mitrópolis Kiévou; Ukrainian: Ки́ївська митропо́лія, romanized: Kyivska mytropoliia; Belarusian: Кіеўская мітраполія, Kijeŭskaja mitrapolija) was an autonomous metropolis of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople with center in Kyiv after its formation in 988 as a result of the Christianization of Rus by Volodymyr the Great until January 6, 2019, when it received the Tomos on Autocephaly.
In 1596, the Union of Brest was adopted which transferred the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the metropolis from the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the Holy See. As a sui juris Eastern Catholic particular church, the metropolis retained its ancient rights; in time, it came to be known as the Ruthenian Uniate Church. Some clergy and laity in the Commonwealth continued to give their loyalty to Constantinople but had no hierarchs to support them. In 1620, the Ukrainian Cossacks, led by Hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, secured the restoration of the Orthodox hierarchy in the Commonwealth as the Metropolis of Kiev, Galicia and all Rus'.
In 1685, the Moscow Patriarchate began the annexation of the Metropolis of Kiev of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, ordaining Metropolitan Gedeon of Kiev in Moscovy. In 1686, through simony, Ecumenical Patriarch Dionysius IV (who was later anathema) issued a Synodal letter granting the right to ordinate the Metropolitan of Kiev to the Moscow Patriarch in the manner of austerity elected by the council of clergy and the faithful of his diocese. It was obligatory that the Metropolitan of Kyiv should mention the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople as his First Hierarch in any service, proclaiming and confirming his canonical dependence on the Mother Church of Constantinople, but none of these conditions were met. The Metropolis of Kiev actually became one of the ordinary dioceses of the Moscow Patriarchate, when Peter the Great in 1722 elected Barlaam (Voniatovych) in the rank of archbishop, not metropolitan. The Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the process of granting autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine during its meeting on October 11, 2018, canceled the Synodal Letter of 1686 due to simony and its gross violation.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Metropolis of Kyiv” as eastern Orthodox metropolis. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1191388. VIAF identifies the subject as 4888151433043456420004. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2019, 1596, 1620 and 1685.
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This entry incorporates text from “Metropolis of Kyiv” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.