George, secular name Grigori Osipovich Konissky (Russian: Григорий Осипович Конисский, Ukrainian: Григорій Осипович Кониський, romanized: Hryhorii Osypovych Konys'kyi; born November 20, 1717 in Nezhin, died 13 February [O.S. 2 February] 1795 in Mogilyov) was an Orthodox archbishop, preacher, philosopher and theologian.
He was the son of the mayor of Nezhin. He graduated from the Academia Mohileana and later became a lecturer there. He taught poetics, philosophy and theology successively, and in 1751 he assumed the duties of its rector. Three years later he was ordained Bishop of Mstsislaw, Mogilev and Orsha, and became Ordinary of the last Orthodox eparchy within the borders of the First Republic.
Sincerely devoted to Russia, from 1762 he played a significant role in Tsarina Catherine II's policy toward the Republic, collaborating with Russian MP Nikolai Repnin in the campaign for the equality of dissidents. Defending the rights of the Orthodox population was only a pretext for the tsarina to intervene in the internal affairs of the Republic. At the same time, Bishop George acted in defense of the state of possession of the Orthodox Church in the Republic, and on several occasions addressed the Polish kings with memoranda listing the losses suffered by his denomination as a result of the activities of the Roman Catholic and Uniate Churches. He unsuccessfully demanded the legalization of conversion from Catholicism (of both rites) to Orthodoxy. He was one of the founders of the Słuck Confederation. In 1767, he published in Warsaw the Prawa i wolności dyssydentów w nabożeństwie chrześcijańskim w Koronie Polskiej i Wielkim Xięstwie Litewskim. In 1768, he contributed to the outbreak of Koliivshchyna; he and the clergy under him urged Orthodox peasants and haidamakas to rise up against the Bar Confederation, in which he saw a direct threat to his religion.
After the First Partition of Poland, he continued his pastoral work in Mogilev already within the borders of the Russian Empire, but maintained contacts with the Orthodox clergy of the Republic of Poland and, until the end of his life, conducted diplomatic and propaganda activities to improve the situation of his co-religionists in that country. A staunch opponent of the Uniate Church, in 1780, with the support of the tsarist administration, he led to the closure of a number of its parishes in the Mogilev and Mstsislaw lands and the transition of more than 100,000 believers to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Author of textbooks and treatises on Orthodox dogmatic and moral theology, textbooks on poetics and philosophy, homilies, polemical texts against Catholicism, as well as literary works. He wrote in Latin, Russian and Polish.
In 1993 he was canonized by the Belarusian Orthodox Church as a locally venerated saint in the Mogilev and Mstsislaw eparchies. Since 2011, his cult has also been functioning in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.
The Konissky family belonged to the Russian nobility. The future hierarch's father, Joseph, was mayor of Nizhyn. From 1728 (or 1738) he attended the Kyiv Mohyla Academy. During his education, he excelled in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German and Polish. After graduating from the school in 1744, he became a professor of poetics there a year later.
According to various sources, he took his perpetual monastic vows while he was still a student, on 11 April 1744, at the hands of Kiev Metropolitanate Raphael, or only in 1749, when he had already served as prefect of the Mogilev Academy and as a philosophy lecturer for two years. Monk George was ordained a priest in 1747. In 1750 he took part in drafting the revised curriculum of the Mogilev Academy, as well as the detailed content of individual courses.
In 1751 he became rector of the academy and held the position for four years. At that time he also began teaching theology at the academy. At the same time he was the superior of the Brotherhood Monastery in Kiev. In 1752 he received the title of archimandrite.
Occupation of the Belarusian cathedral
On 14 October 1754, Jerome, the Orthodox Bishop of Mstsislaw, Mogilev and Orsha (Belarusian), head of the only Orthodox administration in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, died suddenly. After his death, Uniate Metropolitanate Florian Hrebnicki made a determined effort to subjugate the last Orthodox pastoral posts in the country. Appealing to the king to incorporate the Belarusian eparchy into the Archeparchy of Polotsk-Vitebsk, he used a false privilege from Sigismund III Vasa, who supposedly sanctioned this solution. The document was a blatant forgery, since the Belarusian eparchy was not erected until 1633, when Sigismund III Vasa was already dead. Nevertheless, the efforts of Metropolitanate Florian Hrebnicki were supported by Pope Benedict XIV, who sent a papal brief to King August III demanding the liquidation of the Belarusian eparchy by incorporating it into the Uniate Church.
The efforts of the Catholic bishops were opposed by Tsarina Elisabeth of Russia. August III, under pressure from Gross, the Russian deputy in Warsaw, confirmed the rights of the Orthodox to the eparchies of Mstsislaw, Mogilev and Orsha. In an agreement between the Russian side and the Republic, a candidate was named as its new Ordinary, who became George (Konissky). The King granted him the privilege of the Belarusian bishopric on 23 March 1755; according to another source, this did not happen until 3 June 1755. On 23 May of the same year, the Most Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church announced his episcopal appointment. The episcopal chirotony, on the other hand, took place on August 20 of the same year at Kiev's Saint Sophia Cathedral. Metropolitanate of Kyiv, Timothy, took part in the rite as the main consecrator. The bishop's ceremonial entry into Mogilev, where his residence was located, took place on October 26, 1755.
Pastoral activities in Mogilev
Immediately after taking office, George (Konissky) undertook intensive political activity in defense of Orthodoxy. He obtained funds for the ongoing development of the eparchy from Russia. As early as February 1756, he sent to the Most Holy Synod hieromonk, Johann of the Resurrection Monastery in Shklov, with letters informing them of the material situation of his administration. In them, he complained about the poor technical condition of the Cathedral Sobor of the Transfiguration in Mogilev and the bad impression the local Orthodox churches made compared to the well-maintained and lavish Catholic churches and Jewish schools. After sending to the Synod a project for the expansion of the cathedral, commissioned from architect Johann Christoph Glaubitz, Bishop George obtained a subsidy of 10,000 rubles for its expansion, but the money did not arrive in Mogilev until 1758. The hierarch received additional funds for the organization of a seminary in Mogilev; in his letter to the Synod, he pointed to the low intellectual level of the clergy and the lack of educated priests as a major problem.
In the first years after George (Konissky) took office as Belarusian bishop, there was an expansion of his authority to control monasteries located within the eparchy's borders. According to the acts of foundation, some of the monasteries operating in the territory under the authority of the Belarusian bishops were subordinated directly to the Constantinopolitan Patriarchs or their exarchs (Metropolitanates of Kiev). Attempts to change this situation and subordinate all monasteries located within the borders of the eparchy to its ordinaries had already been made by Bishop George's predecessors, but their efforts did not bring the expected result, and only caused competence disputes and personal conflicts that dragged on for years. Meanwhile, in 1756, Kyiv Metropolitanate Timothy relinquished control over the monasteries of Buinichi and Barkulabov and transferred his existing powers to the Belarusian bishop. Bishop George then asked him to make a similar decision with regard to the other monasteries with the same status. In a letter to the Metropolitanate of Kiev, he argued that only as the direct head of the monastic communities would he be able to bring the necessary discipline and order to them, citing cases of their violation in the monasteries of Tupichevshchina and Kutein near Orsha. The Belarusian hierarch's request was granted by Metropolitanate Timothy's successor at the Kyiv Cathedral, Metropolitanate Arsenius, in 1759. The solutions introduced in this regard were informal. Monasteries previously controlled by the Kiev metropolitans de iure remained under their jurisdiction; it was they who approved candidates for community superiors and had the right to dismiss them. De facto, the daily activities of the monasteries were supervised by the Belarusian bishop. Formally, the retention of the Kiev Metropolitanate's jurisdiction was intended to provide the monasteries with Russian protection and defense in the event that Catholics made claims against them.