Gizel, Innokentii

Gizel, Innokentii [Ґізель, Іннокентій; Gizel', Innokentij], b ca 1600 in East Prussia, d 28 November 1683 in Kyiv. Orthodox church and cultural figure of German descent; brother of Yevstakhii Gizel. After graduating from the Kyivan Mohyla College in 1642, Gizel continued his studies at the Zamostia Academy and abroad. From 1646 to 1656, he was the hegumen of a number of Kyivan monasteries, as well as a professor of philosophy and rector of the Kyivan College (1645–56). As archimandrite of the Kyivan Cave Monastery (1656–83), he was director of its printing house (see Kyivan Cave Monastery Press). In the 1650s he participated in negotiations with Russian church leaders on the status of the Ukrainian Orthodox church. He may have been responsible for the publication of the Kyivan Cave Patericon in 1661 and 1678, and the author of the Sinopsis (1674), the first handbook of Ukrainian history. Gizel wrote a textbook of general philosophy, Opus totius philosophiae (1647), for his courses and Myr s Bohom choloviku (Man's Peace with God, 1669, 1671), which summarized his views of contemporary ethical and religious standards. He also wrote several polemical works against Catholicism (see Polemical literature). One of the most erudite scholars of the Kyivan College, Gizel was referred to by his contemporaries as the ‘Aristotle’ of Kyiv. He is the subject of an extensive biography by Mykola Sumtsov in Kievskaia starina, 1884, no. 10.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]