Botsian, Yosyf

Botsian, Yosyf [Боцян, Йосиф; Bocjan, Josyf], b 10 March 1879 in Busk, Kaminka-Strumylova county, Galicia, d 21 November 1926 in Lviv. Religious leader and rector of the Greek-Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv from 1910 to 1914. He was ordained the bishop of Lutsk eparchy by Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky in 1914 in Kyiv, but was prevented from taking charge of his eparchy by being exiled to Siberia and then by a prohibition from the Polish government. In 1925 he was nominated auxiliary bishop of Lviv. He wrote De Modificationibus in Textu Slavico Liturgiae Sancti Ioannis Chrysostomi apud Ruthenos Subintroductis (1908) and a commentary to 60 pastoral letters of Metropolitan Andrei (Bohosloviia 1926). He also translated the Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. Botsian co-edited the journals Nyva, Bohosloviia, and Katolyts'kyi Vskhid, in which he published articles on the history of the Greek Catholic church.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]