THE CHURCH REGISTERS OF THE ODESA HOLY TRINITY (GREEK) CHURCH AS A SOURCE FOR THE STUDY OF THE GENEALOGY AND SURROUNDINGS OF THE FAMOUS GREEKS OF ODESA IN 19TH CENTURY

Abstract

The article describes the church registers as a historical source for research on the genealogy of the Greek community representatives in Odesa in the 19 century, the value of which is that it combines information about families, generations of descendants and about religious and national communities in general. Church registers as acts of records of births, marriages and deaths are carriers of information about a particular person in the historical process and the set of information is important for historical, local lore, demographic and archeographic researches, their statistical array contains information for compiling family histories. The actuality of the topic of Ukrainian-Greek relations for historical and local lore researches which has both theoretical and applied significance is emphasized. In order to identify and analyze the information potential of the church registers of the Odesa Holy Trinity (Greek) Church as a documentary base for the study of the genealogy and surroundings of the famous Greeks of Odesa in the 19 century, a number of archival and published materials were processed. The peculiarities of the form of records keeping in the Greek Church are presented. Following the prosopographic approach and the biographical method of historical research, information about the families of Procopeus, Iconomidi, Papadato, Papudov, Latri, Katakazi is given and thus the information potential of church registers is illustrated. It is concluded that the church registers of the Odesa Holy Trinity (Greek) Church are a valuable historical source for a genealogy determination, and on this basis for elucidation of aspects of socio-political, socio-economic and cultural life of Odesa’s Greeks. The introduction of information from the Greek Church registers into scientific circulation allows to expand the source base and increase the scientific works in the history of Greek communities in Ukraine. On the base of family facts church registers help to trace the social and economic ties of city dwellers. Further explorations that can be aimed at expanding the information potential of church registers in the direction of onomastics, ethno-confessional history, demography are outlined.