Konysky, Heorhii

Konysky, Heorhii [Кониський, Георгій; Konys’kyj, Heorhij] (secular name: Hryhorii; aka Yurii), b 20 November 1717 in Nizhyn, d 13 February 1795 in Mahiliou, Belarus. Orthodox bishop and church figure of noble descent. Konysky graduated from the Kyivan Mohyla Academy in 1743, then served there as a professor of poetics, rhetoric, philosophy, and theology (1745–55) and as rector (1752–5). He was consecrated bishop of Mahiliou and Belarus in 1775 and elevated to archbishop in 1783. In these posts he tried to return Uniates to the Orthodox church. In 1757 he founded a theological seminary in Mahiliou.

A prolific writer, Konysky wrote many baroque poems; the play Voskreseniie mertvykh (Resurrection of the Dead, published in Letopisy russkoi literatury, 1860); a philosophical textbook Philosophia peripatetica quadripartita (1747–51), which remained unpublished; and historical works such as Prawa i wolności obywatelów Korony Polskiej i Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego (The Rights and Freedoms of the Citizens of the Polish Kingdom and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 1767), Istoricheskoe izvestie o Belorusskoi eparkhii (Historical Information about the Belarusian Eparchy, 1776), Zapyska ... o tom, chto v Rossii do kontsa XVI veka ne bylo nikakoi unii s Rimskoi Tserkoviu (A Note... about the Fact That until the End of the 16th Century There Was No Union with the Roman Church in Russia, published in 1847). Konysky was also considered by some scholars to have been the author of Istoriia Rusov. His collected works, in two volumes, were published in 1835 (2nd edn 1861) and his sermons in 1892.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kashuba, Mariia. Georgii Konisskii (Moscow 1979)

Arkadii Zhukovsky

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