VANDALS OR GUARDIANS: THE ORTHODOX CLERGY OF VOLHYNIA IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 19TH – EARLY 20TH CENTURIES AND MUSEUM AFFAIRS WITH BUILT HERITAGE CONSERVATION SECTOR

Abstract

The article attempts to assess the interaction between the Church and museums, as well as the involvement of the Orthodox clergy in museum and heritage conservation activities. The territorial scope of the study is limited to historical Volhynia, and the time frame is the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century.The source base from the author's personal collection, consisting mainly of decrees of the Volhynian Spiritual Consistory, as well as responses to them from priests of the Ostroh region, sometimes reveals far from pleasant facts about the behaviour of individual clergy members in relation to objects and buildings that were or pretended to be historical and cultural heritage. At the same time, these same sources attest that other representatives of the same clergy played a decisive role in preserving and creating opportunities for research into the aforementioned artefacts and monuments.The details of the clergy's involvement in the formation of the historical and artistic collections of the ancient repository are also considered. The criteria and types of items that the clergy offered to transfer to the museum are highlighted. It is noteworthy that among these were items not only from Orthodox churches, but also of “Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church origin”.It has been established that the clergy subordinate to the Volyn Spiritual Consistory participated in financing the creation of the Volyn ancient repository in Zhytomyr, i.e. a museum. At the same time, they sometimes did so voluntarily.The amounts of money collected for this cause by individual parishes and how they were rewarded for this by the church leadership are demonstrated. At the same time, the paper highlighted egregious cases of negligent and destructive behaviour by the clergy towards architectural objects that pretended to be historical and cultural monuments. These buildings were both secular and ecclesiastical. It was determined that such cases of vandalism by the clergy were recorded both in the second half of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. Priests were also often unaware of the historical value of church interior items that could have been added to the museum's collection.