Autonomy Lost and Regained: The Ukrainian Orthodox Metropolia of Kyiv, 1633-2019Main MenuIntroductionOverviewExarch of the Apostolic Throne(before 1685)Autonomy Lost(1685 to 1905)The Struggle for Autocephaly(1905 to 2019)the Ukrainian History and Education Centerb536a53657e04c4edda7414158720b005f01afa8This exhibition was made possible by a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.
1media/mohyla-arms-cropped.jpg2021-05-05T17:23:39-04:00Mohyla, Moldovan Aristocrat10plain2021-06-08T19:11:12-04:00 Petro (or Petru) was born into the Movilă family, the Movilești, which had been granted noble status in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1593. His father Simion and his uncle Ieremia had been variously Princes (or "Hospodars") of Wallachia and Moldavia.
After his family's Moldovan fortunes fell, Petro took refuge in the Ruthenian Voivodeship of Poland. He received a typical education for an aristocrat of his time, learning Latin, Greek, Polish, Church Slavonic, and Ruthenian. He was equally comfortable writing in Ruthenian, Slavonic, and Polish, and could produce on demand the allusions to classical Roman writers and to Greek and Roman mythology that were demanded by the florid prose style of his day.
As a member of the nobility, he brought a "legitimacy" (at least in the eyes of his fellow aristocrats) to the position of Metropolitan of Kyiv.
