Skybynsky, Hryhorii

Skybynsky, Hryhorii [Скибинський, Григорій; Skybyns'kyj, Hryhorij], b in the 1660s in western Ukraine, d 1716 in Moscow. Theologian. In the 1670s he lived in Moscow. Then he moved, for eight years, to Rome, where in 1688 he converted from Orthodoxy to the Uniate faith. After living in France and Germany and studying Calvinism and Lutheranism for several more years, he returned to Moscow and re-embraced the Orthodox faith (although he remained labeled a ‘heretic’ and ‘Latinizer’). He left several unpublished manuscripts, including ‘Brevis poetica cum prosodia conscripta’; ‘Perechnevoe skazaniie o myri’ (A Listing of the Story of the World); and ‘Kratkoe skazanie i opisanie ... o grade Ryme’ (A Brief Story and Description ... of the City of Rome, 4 parts), a memoir and work of polemical literature criticizing the papacy and attacking Catholicism. A biography, by Aleksei Sobolevsky, and two of his works were published in Chteniia v Imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiskikh (1914, no. 2).

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