Rohatynets, Yurii

Rohatynets, Yurii [Рогатинець, Юрій; Rohatynec', Jurij], b ? in Rohatyn, Galicia, d 1608 in Lviv. Religious activist. He was a wealthy burgher of Lviv and a leading member of the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood (coauthor of the statutes of the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood School). He maintained good relations with Prince Kostiantyn Vasyl Ostrozky and Ipatii Potii. Although he defended Ukrainian Orthodoxy in letters to the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood (1596) and the Vilnius Brotherhood (1599), he advocated moderation in religious polemics. In 1604 Ivan Vyshensky spoke out against Rohatynets’s wealth. Some scholars (including Ivan Franko in Z dziejów synodu brzeskiego 1596 r. [From the History of the Berestia Synod of 1596, 1895], and Yaroslav Isaievych) attribute the authorship of the anti-Uniate pamphlet Perestoroha to Rohatynets, but many others (eg, P. Yaremenko) dispute that claim.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]