Shyshatsky, Varlaam

Shyshatsky, Varlaam [Шишацький, Варлаам; Šyšac'kyj], b 12 March 1750 in Shyshaky, Poltava region, d September 1821 in Novhorod-Siverskyi, Chernihiv gubernia. Orthodox churchman. He probably studied at the Kyivan Mohyla Academy before taking his monastic vows in 1776. He was prefect and rector of the Pereiaslav College. At the same time he served as hegumen of the Moshnohiria Monastery and Saint Michael’s Monastery in Pereiaslav. He served as rector (1785–7) of the theological seminary at the Novhorod-Siverskyi Transfiguration Monastery, overseer of the Holy Spirit Monastery in Vilnius (1787–9), and head of several other monasteries in the Novhorod-Siverskyi region. He was associated with the Novhorod-Siverskyi patriotic circle. In 1795 Shyshatsky was consecrated bishop of Zhytomyr. Subsequently he was bishop of Volhynia eparchy and of Mahiliou and Belarus (1805) and archbishop of Mahiliou and Vitsebsk (1808). In these positions he often supported the principle of autocephaly for the Ukrainian-Belarusian Orthodox church, independent of the Moscow Patriarchate. During the French army’s occupation of Mahiliou in 1812, he became a supporter of Napoleon Bonaparte and praised him in sermons. After the Russian army recaptured the town in 1813, Shyshatsky was defrocked and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Novhorod-Siverskyi Transfiguration Monastery.

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