15.07.2025

New Translation of an EGO article by Alfons Brüning

The article "Networks of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy" by Alfons Brüning has been translated into English by Joe P. Kroll and the translation has been published on European History Online (EGO) under the auspices of the IEG. In 1631 Petro S. Mohyla (ca. 1596–1647), archimandrite of the Orthodox Kyiv Pechersk Lavra (Monastery of the Caves), founded an institute of higher learning modelled on Western colleges. This college, which was officially granted the status of an academy in 1701, functioned as a mediating instance between Europe's Western and Orthodox cultures, facilitating the circulation of people and ideas alike.

It soon became one of the foremost seats of learning in Europe's Orthodox Christian East, its renown extending not only across the Russian tsar's domains but as far as Romania, Moldavia and parts of Western Europe. Graduates of the Kyiv Academy enriched Europe's "scientific community" and for decades provided the bulk of the East Slavic episcopate, lower hierarchy and priesthood. Moreover, many alumni of the Academy could be found among the secular elite of the Ukrainian Cossack Hetmanate and the Russian Empire. The theological approaches developed by its teachers made a decisive contribution to bringing Orthodox theology up to date at the threshold of the modern age and continued to shape the character of the Russian Orthodox Church into the 19th century.