Zamostia, Synod of

Zamostia, Synod of [Замойський синод; Zamoiskyi synod]. A synod of the Uniate Church held in August–September 1720 in Zamość (Zamostia), during the tenure of Metropolitan Lev Kyshka. It was a provincial synod of the Uniate Kyiv metropoly, the goal of which was to review church life and the liturgical customs of the Belarusian and Ukrainian Catholic church. Preparations for it began in 1715; it was initially to have been held in Lviv but was moved because of an epidemic. The synod was approved by the pope and presided over by his nuncio, Grimaldi. It was attended by the metropolitan, 7 bishops, and 129 priests and monks, and the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood sent 2 lay representatives. Metropolitan Kyshka and Bishop Atanasii Sheptytsky were particularly influential participants in the deliberations. The synod condemned the Russian Filipian heresy, widespread in Ukraine and Belarusia at the time. It also ratified several important changes concerning church rite and discipline, including the addition to the Creed of the filioque clause used in the Roman Catholic church, and commemoration of the pope. The synodal decrees upheld the strong Latinization trend in the church, and were approved by the Holy See in 1724. The synod regulated church administration, made efforts to improve the education of priests, and ordered all Uniate monasteries in the province to join the Basilian monastic order. Most of the resolutions were reconfirmed by the Lviv Synod of 1891.

The Synod of Zamostia resolutions entered the canon law of basic church law. The act and resolutions were published as Synodus Provincialis Ruthenorum habita in civitate Zamosciae anno 1720 (1724 and several subsequent editions).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Khrustsevich, G. Istoriia Zamoiskago sobora (1720) (Vilnius 1880)
Bilanych, I. Synodus Zamostiana a. 1720 (Rome 1960)

 Isydor Patrylo

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]