Yakhymovych, Hryhorii

Yakhymovych, Hryhorii [Яхимович, Григорій; Jaxymovyč, Hryhorij], b 16 February 1792 in Pidbirtsi, Lviv circle, Galicia, d 17 April 1863 in Lviv. Ukrainian Catholic metropolitan, professor, and civic activist. After completing a doctorate of divinity in Vienna (1818) he taught religion and pedagogy at Lviv University and was rector of the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv and a canon of the metropolitan chapter. In 1841 he was consecrated bishop of Lviv and suffragan to Metropolitan Mykhailo Levytsky. In 1849–59 Yakhymovych was the bishop of Peremyshl, and in 1860–3 metropolitan of Halych (see Halych metropoly). In 1848–51 Yakhymovych assumed the leadership of the Supreme Ruthenian Council and became the main spokesperson for Ukrainian interests in Galicia during the crisis period of the 1848 revolutions (see Revolution of 1848–9 in the Habsburg monarchy). He was loyal to the Habsburg monarchy and concerned about the social position of the Ukrainian Catholic clergy. Yakhymovych won some short-lived concessions from the monarchy, but failed to realize a major Ukrainian goal—the partition of Galicia and the creation of a separate Ukrainian crown land. At the same time he was instrumental in keeping revolutionary fervor from spreading into eastern Galicia, and thus helped Ukrainians gain a loyalist reputation within the empire as the ‘Tyroleans of the East.’

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