Korsak, Rafail

Korsak, Rafail (Корсак, Рафаїл; secular name: Микола; Mykola), b ca 1600, d 1640 in Rome. Uniate Catholic church leader of Belarusian noble descent. As a young man he converted to Catholicism. He studied at the Jesuit Zamostia Academy and at Catholic colleges in Braunsberg and Prague before joining the Basilian monastic order and continuing his studies at the Greek Collegium in Rome (1621–4). Korsak became the protoarchimandrite of the Basilian order in 1625, and the next year the Kyivan metropolitan Yosyf Rutsky named him bishop of Halych, although his appointment was delayed by the Polish king. In 1631–7 he was bishop of Turiv-Pynsk eparchy and coadjutor to Metropolitan Rutsky. When Rutsky died in 1637, Korsak became metropolitan of Kyiv. As metropolitan, he defended the rights of Uniates in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and attempted to extend the Church Union. He translated the works of Meletii Smotrytsky into Latin, and wrote a biography of Metropolitan Rutsky. He was buried in the Church of SS Sergius and Bacchus in Rome. His correspondence with the Vatican has been published in Epistolae Metropolitarum Kioviensium Catholicorum R. Korsak, A. Sielava, G. Kolenda (1637–1674) (1956).

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