History and memory in the Basilian school in Uman (1765-1834)

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History and memory in the Basilian school in Uman (1765-1834)

Igor Kryvosheia1, Norbert Morawiec2

Ігор Кривошея1, Норберт Моравець2

1 Уманський державний педагогічний університет імені Павла Тичини (Умань, Україна)

2 Гуманітарно-природничий університет імені Яна Длугоша в Ченстохові (Ченстохова, Польща)

АНОТАЦІЯ mnemohistory uman basilians education

Мета роботи. У статті зроблено спробу показати історичну освіту у Василіанській школі в Умані (навчальні програми, методи, засоби навчання, педагогічна підготовка та робота вчителів-опікунів) і механізми формування культурної пам'яті її вихованців (шкільна та позашкільна діяльність).

Наукова новизна. За допомогою мнемоісторичної рефлексії прагнемо показати культурні елементи, які могли вплинути на конструювання культурної пам'яті уманських учнів. В центрі уваги стан науки/дидактики історії, а також відповідь на запитання - як василіанське «сучасне» ХІХ століття «переслідувало» минуле, як це минуле постійно вигадувалося, моделювалося та реконструювалося педагогами та їхніми учнями.

Висновки. Василіанська педагогіка мала на меті виховати громадянина, здатного функціонувати в багатонаціональній і багатоконфесійній Речі Посполитій. Безперечно, основним елементом василіянського мислення/діяння була так звана ідея єдності. Таким чином, студенти виховувалися в національному дусі, а також у католицькій двообрядовій спільноті (звісно, зберігаючи свою русинсько-уніатську ідентичність). Важливим елементом передаваних знань були криваві події 1768 р. в Умані, і за слідами погрому (монастир, криниця, православна церква, Софіївка) викладачі створили своєрідну «освітню стежку». Ця «доріжка» конструювала іконосферу, а окремі «місця пам'яті» викликали візуальні відчуття, запускали цілу систему асоціацій, емоцій та переживань, про існування яких свідчать описи, що містяться в розповідях та щоденниках колишніх студентів. У стінах школи працювали й світські особи, сповнені новими ідеями, не обов'язково в руслі Василіанських ідей. Вони прищеплювали «світські» ідеї та цінності своїм учням, наприклад захоплення Французьким імператором і всіма рухами, які могли зруйнувати принципи, прийняті після Віденського конгресу: відновлення, легітимність і баланс сил.

Ключові слова: мнемоісторія, Умань, василіяни, освіта, уніати, єдність

“An event becomes such as it is interpreted. Only as it is appropriated in and through the cultural scheme does it acquire an historical significance”

Marshall Sahlins1

INTRODUCTION

The Uman school was a topic of many scholarly publications. It was mentioned in research studies on the history of, among others, the Basilian Order, Basilian mission, education, and scientific activities, the Potocki family, the city of Uman, the monastery itself2, and in historiographic reflection3. After the initial phase of operation and the hiatus due to the bloody events at Uman in 1768, the prospered until its shutdown in 18344.

The school shaped the writing of such poets as Bohdan Zaleski (1802-1880), Seweryn Goszczyсski (1801-1876), Michaі Grabowski (1804-1863), Aleksander Groza (1807-1875); physicians like Jуzef Mianowski (1804-1879); and historians, such as Karol Sienkiewicz (Karol of Kalynivka, 1793-1860), Henryk Franciszek Duchiсski (1817-1886), Sylwester Groza (1793-1849), Jan Krechowiecki (1805-1885). Their memoirs, romantic poems, and scholarly discussions often orbited around Uman and its owners - the Potocki family - and the Basilian school. They recalled the teachers and their educational “methods”, trips to the Sofiyivka Park, yet above all else they were steeped in reminiscing the tales of the defenders of the Kresy, brave Cossacks, and cruel Cossack-peasant rebels5. Their message, in turn, inspired the writing of others, such as Henryk F. Duchiсski's wife, Seweryna (1816-1905), Jуzef Tretiak (1841-1905), Jan Marek Giїycki, pen name Woіyniak (1844-1925), Eustachy Iwanowski, pen name Heleniusz (1813-1903), and Agaton Giller (1831-1887).

We want to use these accounts in this paper to show the mechanisms of shaping the cultural memory of the alumni of the Basilian school in Uman6. We will be interested in how Basilians received, transformed, or rejected the past, how they built history (as a science), how they passed on these historical images as teachers, and how their students reconfigured them. We will also constantly reflect on the relationship between memory and history (or, rather, we will be interested in what Basilians and their pupils wanted to remember or forget, and what kind of “history” they needed to do so). We believe, as Maurice Halbwachs stipulated, that memory is the recollection of actual experiences only in part, because its content is reconfigured to suit contemporary social conditions and cultural concepts7.

Thus, looking at the work of Uman teachers we have observed - following Aleida Assmann - that they did not lock up the past safely in history books, nor stow it away in libraries, but instead continually reclaimed and transrormed it, trying to turn it into a potential resource used to build the identity and policy of power8.

I. SLAVIA RUTHENICA UNITA

The Uniate Church in the territory of the Commonwealth formed a particular third- culture variant of Slavia Ruthenica Unita, different from both the Slavia Occidentalis and Slavia Ortodoxa9. The Basilian Order played an important role in that culture.

The monks - founded in 1617 and organised like Catholic orders - became the backbone of the Uniate Church, whose main purpose was to spread the Catholic faith among the Orthodox population10. Therefore Basilians approached the Ruthenian nobility11, organised pastoral, catechetical, mission, and scientific and research activities as well12 (each monastery was to have a hospital, a shelter, and a pharmacy)13. Many monasteries chronicled events, recorded the deaths of monks, but also produced monastery histories14. In that context they organised research, queried all archives, collected books and printed them15 (in Pochaiv, Supraњl, and Vilnius, among others)16. Basilians published religious, historical, and legal literature, fiction, calendars, various dissertations, philosophical and theological treatises, and schoolbooks in Church Slavonic, Polish, and Latin17. For instance, in 1767 the publishing house in

Supraњl printed the textbook “Krуtkie zebranie historii i geografii polskiej” [Short anthology of Polish history and geography] by Teodor Waga (1739-1801)18.

Even though the publishing activity of monastic orders was not unusual in that period, one issue separated Basilians from other monks. As Uniates, they founded their identity on the idea of denominational unity, which gained a state dimension (even an ethnic and national one) during their 200 years of existence in the Commonwealth. They understood the Polish nationality in terms of the former Commonwealth, both as the “resident population of a state” (without taking into account their origins) and the Polish nobility nation (a political nation, meaning only the part of the society endowed with political privileges and participating in political life).

In this light it is understandable that Basilians strove to gain broader political powers within the estate system and society of the Commonwealth (access to the Senate for its hierarch, rejection of the idea of “peasant faith”). They could do it by showing their order as salvific for the existence of the Commonwealth, connecting Ruthenians with Polishness and Catholicism, but also - in the face of the constant threat from Orthodox citizens (the Cossacks) - as the only force able to ensure national and religious peace in the state. It did not stop them, however, from building a Ruthenian cultural identity with a sense of distinctness from both Roman Catholics, those “Lachians” (lords) and Orthodox Muscovites (ignorants, aggressors)19.

The Basilian identity was therefore a certain function of national (Polishness) and denominational (Catholicism) unity and national (Ruthenianness) and denominational (Eastern Rite Catholicism) distinctness. Nonetheless, it was the intent to demonstrate the unificatory role of the order in the political and denominational conflicts of the Commonwealth that determined the thinking-acting of Basilians, while the idea of unity (Ruthenian-Polish, and of Catholics of both rites) constructed all narrations and visualisations20.

These works illustrate the process of metaphorisation of historical images through the idea of unity mentioned above. They showed the Uniate Church and Uniates in the context of a Catholic two-rite unity, presented the Union of Brest as a reference to the Union of Florence and the baptism of Vladimir, and confirmed the Catolic dimension of the confession of Ruthenians. At the same time they glorified Uniates, showed them as citizens - equal to Roman Catholics - and the sole defenders of the Commonwealtd from threats both external (Orthodox Muscovy) and internal (Orthodox Cossacks, Haydamaks, Koliyivshchyna).

Still, it is worth to set the Basilian historiography in the perspective of mnemohistory to notice that the idea of unity can be found in the all works and activities of Uniates, scholarly writing (theology, history, and hagiography) and fiction, homiletics, calendars, letters, memoirs, in the selection of saints commemorating them, but - also - in education. Basilians were, above all, teachers and educators.

One can discern four levels in their educational activities: 1) education of its own monks; 2) seminars for parish clergy; 3) colleges for lay youth; 4) parish schools. They prepared candidates for consecration in their own seminars, where the studies lasted three years and included dogmatic and moral theology, the study of Scripture, history of the Church, canonical law, catechism, liturgy, and a number of secular subjects21.

After completing the novitiate, future monks could study theology, philosophy, and rhetoric in various monastic centres and with varying intensity. Elementary knowledge of geometry, arithmetic, history, economy, canonical law, and fine arts was injected into the main educational stem. Besides Latin and Hebrew, German and French were taught. The more talented went to continue their studies in Rome. This intellectual background allowed Basilians to work in the seminars where parochial clergy were educated. Basilians also ran secondary schools, or colleges, and there was a parochial school at each monastery. Since youth of two Catholic rites were educated in Basilian schools, monks had to treat both groups skillfully, avoid all conflicts, and teach harmonious coexistence, so important for ethnic and religious borderlands22.

It is worth stressing as well that theoretical reflection upon the adopted pedagogical assumptions was of great importance to the monks (they followed the rules from the “Basilian school” by Piotr Mennite, translated by Basilians and published by them in Vilnius in 1764)23. As Beata Lorens underlined, since the educational system of the time placed ideological and moral values above material ones, students were instilled with the “piety and faithfulnes to their religion, attachment to the country, belief that it must be defended, awareness of the importance of the nobility, and respect for education”24. The Basilian formation greatly emphasised the combination of faith and reason, while the Basilian monasticism - particularly in the late 18th century - was distinguished by its Enlightenment intellectual achievements in science, art, and above all in education (enlightened Catholicism)25. The aim of the Basilian pedagogy was to raise a citizen able to function in the multi-ethnic and multi-denominational Commonwealth. The necessity of performing duties towards the state and society was considered as equal to the honest fulfilment of the duties of clergy. Breaching them involved the loss of salvation. The didacticism of Basilians included the concern with maintaining social order, preserving its hierarchy and the strong role of the Church, yet taking into account honest and mutually respectful relations between members of individual estates, age groups, and genders26.

II. COLLEGE AND HISTORY

It was Franciszek Salezy Potocki, arms-bearing Pilawa (1700-1772), the owner of the city of Uman at the time, who brought Basilians to his estates. In subsequent years he supported the foundation of the monastery, then of the school within it (1766). He expressed the wish that at least four monks from the Uman monastery should educate youth there, from the earliest class up to theology. The Uman school, opened by September 1765, enjoyed a great interest. Its first rector was Father Herakliusz Kostecki (1721-1768). There were 150 students who acquired knowledge of theology, Church history, law, and ethics.

In 1768, in the brutal massacre committed by the units of Ivan Gonta and Maksym Zalizniak, the Basilian monks in Uman and students of their school were killed. The bloody massacre perpetrated against Basilians cast doubt on the future of the monastery, mission, and college. The next period in the operation of Basilian schools were the years 1773-1794. It was due to the suppression of the Jesuits by Pope Clement XIV and the establishment of the Commission of National Education (KEN) to oversee education facilities in the Commonwealth27. The school was counted among the sub-department schools and included in the Ukrainian school district (whose centre was Vinnytsia). Between 1782 and 1784, there were 400 students and six teachers in the school. In 1788 the number of teachers and classes was reduced, but Basilians opened a study in the school where they taught philosophy. At first, to nine students. The educational system in Basilian schools followed the rules of the General Chapters of Brest (1772) and Torokanie (1784). Following the Second Partition of the Commonwealth, Right-bank Ukraine, including Uman, was incorporated into the Russian Empire. In 1793 nobles swore fealty to Catherine II in the rooms of the monastery, a year later both the monastery and the school were closed. In 1796, however, the Basilian monastery was reopened. According to an 1801 account, the

Uman school, considered as one of the best in the Kresy, had 163 students. Their number increased to 448 in 1816. In 1830, the Basilian poviat school in Uman reported to the director of the gymnasium of Kyiv. Among its 800 students (or 600, according to the memoirs of Ignacy Њwirski of 20 November 1886), organised into seven classes, there were but six Uniates and thirteen Orthodox. After the November Uprising, the school and the monastery were closed (1834)28.

As Lorens indicated, the Basilian school system was not original but rather followed the organisation and programme of Jesuit colleges. The need to develop a didactic and educational plan and to define the responsibilities of teachers in Basilian schools were discussed during the general chapters in the 17th and 18th centuries, yet finally no Basilian model in education was produced. Learning at the colleges was based on humanities, in line with the Jesuit Ratio studiorum of 1599.

The curriculum of school subjects was divided into five forms in a seven-year cycle (with two classes of two years)29. The beginning first form (Pol. poczynaj№ca) taught the skills of reading and writing, introduced basic information on grammar, artithmetic, and catechism30. The following first form (Pol. postкpuj№ca) taught basic grammar, spelling, calligraphy, arithmetics, basic geography, adding collections of source texts in Latin by classical authors as teaching resources called excerpts (Pol. wypisy). The second form introduced elements of general history. The third grade added Polish- Latin grammar along with excerpts from the works of Cornellius Nepos and letters of Cicero and Pliny; arithmetic introduced elements of geometry, general history added the history of Assyria, with excerpts. Elementary knowledge of “garden and medicine plants” was introduced, so were the works of Lucius Columella on domesticated animals31. The fourth form (two years) taught speaking, complemented the knowledge of geography, started algebra, introduced elements of astronomy, zoology (Linnaeus) and elements of agrarian teaching (from Columella), and Greek history and geography. The fifth form (two years) imparted the knowledge of logic (based on the works of Condillac32), introduced the elements of physics, and taught about “fiery mountains and animals from hot countries” based on Pliny the Elder's “Natural history”. In rhetoric classes the texts of Cicero were uses, texts sourced from Livy, Quintus Curtius Rufus (most likely his Historiae Alexandri Magni, or the biography of Alexander the Great in Latin), and the works of Tacitus; the course transitioned to the history of Rome with geography and excerpts from classical authors33.

Religion, understood as the course of the principles of faith for the lower forms and dogma for the higher, was taught throughout the college course. Religion was taught on Sundays, whereas one weekday was devoted to recreation (open air games and activities were organised). The highest forms in colleges were philosophy and theology34.

After KEN assumed the supervision of schools, Basilians committed to implement a teaching program in line with the learning itinerary and organisation for each type of school. The predominant role of Latin in the programme was limited to benefit Polish, the scope of mathematics was broadened, natural sciences and elements of physics, geography and history were separated. The latter was further divided into world history and the history of Poland. General history lessons were limited to ancient history, with an emphasis on the history of Greece and Rome. The history of Poland was not taught in separate classes: the knowledge was added when referring to history, e.g., while teaching the history of world and Polish literature. Little is known, however, of the history lessons of the early 19th century. World history was taught more broadly after 1815. In the fifth form - according to Giїycki - the course ended at the beginning of the 17th century (i.e., the death of the Queen of England Elizabeth I in 1603), “provided that the continuation, up to the French Revolution, was postponed for the following year”35. We do not know either how the history of Poland was addressed in teaching world history36.

It is worth to remark at this point that, even though history was not visible as a separate school subject in the curriculum, its elements were inserted in the teaching process by integrating them with associated disciplines of knowledge. The aim was to impart on students enough knowledge and skills to enable them to learn to find connections betbeen history, literature, art, philosophy, and music - and therefore to gain the ability to understand the world surrounding them and the culture created by man. Efforts were made to make didactic aids fit this idea.

In June 1782 the school was visited by rev. Szczepan Hoіowczyc, canon of the collegiate church in Warsaw37. He remarked in his report that the education followed “still much of the old ways, though the statutes of the Education Commission were already known and some elementary books obtained”. Therefore, he recommended that monks-teachers should bring appropriate books to the school. Among history books he named the “History” by Teodor Waga and the “History of the Kingdom of Poland” by Jan Chrzciciel Albertrandi (1731-1808)38.

The students could use a library, supplied according to the financial means of the school. In 1818, the library held the books of Holy Scripture (10), works on theology (121), law (43), medicine (15), geography (20), mathematics and philosophy (220), poetics and rhetoric (460), grammar (48), and 290 books on historical subjects39.

Information about history teachers in Uman is, however, vestigial. From 1814 on, the subject was taught by rev. Klemens Hryniewiecki, who had a “sound opinion on the works of rhetoric and learning adorned with true modesty”40.

In the school year 1824-1825, history was taught by Teodozy Kozaczewski (b. 1788). He studied in Krzemieniec (until 1808), joined the order, studied at monastic schools and the University of Vilnius, worked as a teacher in various Basilian schools, then from 1827 on was a preacher in Pochaiv. Sources indicate that in the Third form he presented the origins of history, the general terms of history and geography, then the history of Assyrians, Medes, Persians; in the fourth form he imparted the history of Greece; in the fifth of Rome, until Constantine the Great (he also translated the Jugurtine War to Polish)41, then the history of Poland and of Alexander of Macedon in the sixth (probably - 2nd year five forms).

In 1825-1826 history was taught by Rev. Jozafat Moczarski42. He finished the course in the sixth form at the French Revolution43. In the final years of the school, history was taught by Rev. Skibowski (in the third form) and Rev. Roliсski (in the fourth)44.

Alas, besides the teaching programme we do not have any outlines or notes from either teachers or students, which might reveal to us the elements comprising the knowledge and historical memory of the alumni. It seems that - since monks were often transferred to various schools - they built it in the axiological context of the idea of unity presented above.

Still, when writing about historical education in the Uman school, it is worth mentioning the activities of teachers outside of the curriculum. Much information on this topic can be found in the memoirs and accounts of Basilian alumni. However, secular teachers are mentioned more often than monks. It was the former who instilled new ideas and values in young people and explained present and past events in their context. The need to regain national independence was the topic of constant talks, so was the tradition of the Polish Legions, very current at the time. As Seweryna Duchiсska wrote, “the memory of Napoleon was living in Ukraine: Legionnaires eagerly told stories from the historical events (…), almost every student could draw a portrait of Napoleon from memory”45. Faced with the fall of the Emperor of the French, students discussed the necessity of arousing the interest of the Ottoman state in the independence of Poland. In the later half of the 1820s, they could meet in Uman Turkish soldiers, who were taken into Russian captivity during the war46. Many prisoners of war returned home from Kyiv, where they worked on fortress walls. Students used such meetings to talk about “old and new relations between Poles and Turks”. Consequently, they reinforced their belief that “Turks stood up in defence of Poles against the Muscovy” since the times of Peter I, and that this friendship grew stronger with the growth of Russia and the failures of Turkey and the Commonwealth47. Finally the role of Russia in the fall of the Commonwealth was commonly discussed. Is cultural, civilisation, and denominational foreignness were discussed (particularly in relation with the so-called “reunification” of Uniates with the Orthodoxy, performed in the Uman lands in the 1790s)48. The most important and constantly discussed event, however, was the pogrom of 1768. This issue merits particular attention.

III. EDUCATIONAL TRAIL

The Koliyivshchyna went down in the history of Uman as the largest and most horrific of several Haydamak raids on the city49. No wonder that Basilians, who were the victims of prosecution, started creating a certain myth of the “massacre” - based on the metaphor of unity - soon after the bloody events. As Agaton Giller wrote, recalling Duchiсski's stay at the Basilian school: “The beautiful town of Uman, full of memories of the times of Koliyivshchyna and the Potockis, made a deep yet sad impression in the hearts of school boys”50. They constantly reminisced the bloody event, talked to its living participants51, visited the arenas of skirmishes and the place of the massacre with their teachers and tutors, discussed the accounts of the pogrom issued in print. Roman Koropeckyj noticed that the material topography of the massacre remained the same in all descriptions: “the drawbridges, palisade, and towers, where the people of Uman, armed with cannons and firearms, tried to defend on the first day of the siege; the gate through which the panicked governor Mіadanowicz, driven by a naive instinct for self- preservation, allowed Zalizniak and Gonta to enter the town; the citadel, town hall, Roman Catholic church, Basilian chapel, and synagogue, where many city inhabitants were killed, trying in vain to find shelter from the rampaging haydamaks; the Orthodox church of St. Michael, in which Catholics and Jews, determined to survived, agreed to be baptises in the Eastern rite; and finally the dry well, to which the decaying corpses were thrown in a day after the massacre”52.

It can be said that these places became a sort of (Pierre Nora's) “sites of memory” for the people of Uman, the students of Basilians, and visitors already in the late 18th century. With time Uman changed, spread out. The drawbridges, fortified gates, the citadel of the governor, and the wooden palisade surrounding the town disappeared.

Which is why maintaining the memory of the old topography of the massacre was so important.

The monastery, which doubled as the school building, was also its witness. In the words of Duchiсska, “On the first floor of the building (…), traces of bitter combat of students against the disgusting rabble were visible. Particularly on the iron bound door. The defending boys broke chimneys, threw bricks and stones down on the haydamaks”. As she accentuated, the heroic defence by the students of the Uman school became the topic of their successors' everyday conversations as well as an axiological model, a point of pride53. Even the building itself was mnemonic, with its chapel, monks' cells, corridors, school rooms, and didactic aids. Describing the works of Bohdan Zaleski and musing how intramural traditions of the school shaped the imaginations of the future poet, Jуzef Tretiak wrote: “The monastery had three great wings (…). The building had two floors, with thick walls, barred windows on the lower floor, long and vaulted corridors. On both floors of the north wing there were schools, a church, or rather a big chapel (…); the south and west wings contained the cells of monks (…), library, offices etc. In the front of the south wing, with windows facing south and east, there was the three-room apartment of the rector (…)54. What drew the attention of the students traversing the corridor, however, was the portrait of Rev. Herakliusz Kostecki and the paintings of saints Basil, Nicolas, Onuphrius, and Josaphat, “shot and stabbed through during the Uman massacre”55. The picture of Rev. Kostecki, murdered by haydamaks, must have made an impression on young men: “It Showed Father Herakliusz standing on two bloodied spears, with two wounds in the chest; a crucifix in his left hand, the Most Blessed Sacrament in his right (…). Haydamaks are butchering kneeling monks and students, throwing their bodies into the nearby well. The martyr's demeanor is sublime, noble, his countenance serene, beautiful, bearing marks of mortified life. The inscription below saying crudeliter occisus (brutally killed), was later removed during the prosecution of Uniates”56. It is also worthwhile that Rev. Kostecki was shown besides the effigies of people of extreme importance for the Eastern monastic life, particularly Josaphat Kuntsevych - also martyred - the symbol of the struggle for church unity. The latter became a model of religious heroism for the Uniate (Greek Catholic) community. Researchers emphasised that his martyrdom in 1623 defined the identity of Uniates, separating them from both the Orthodox and Russians57.

The chapel where Rev. Kostecki died also played a special role. In Basilian accounts, the martyr supposedly died in the midst of celebrating the Eucharist, which was reminiscent of the death of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett (1118-1170) and the patron saint of Poland, Stanislaus of Szczepanуw (1030-1079). Basilians made efforts to increase the religiousness of students too (choir). Tretiak pointed out that the Catholic service in the school chapel, in which students participated every day, was “an important detail of the external facet of school life”. It was celebrated in the Uniate rite, therefore in the Slavic language, only sermons and church songs were in Polish, while litanies were prayed in Latin58. Having left the school building, one encountered more “sites of memory”. A garden lay there “separated from the brickyard by a wooden fence, and from the city by a medium height wall”, a courtyard, a wall, a belfry with a wicket gate, the great southern entry gate with a wicket, and the moat, “now filled in, through which Gonta and Zalizniak entered the city by deceit”59. This place had a specific undertone in the accounts. There was still a debate on the reasons why the attackers penetrated the city walls (especially when confronted with a large number of survivors of the pogrom)60. The governor and administrator of Uman, Rafaі Despot Mіadanowicz, was either accused of ineptitude or - to the contrary - praised for his merits, while blaming an unfortunate coincidence which nobody could control61.

The negative role in the students' account was played by the Orthodox church, where many Catholics and Jews rejected their faith to save their lives. Their bearing became a test of heroism, of devotion to “God and the Fatherland” (particularly after the Polotsk Act of 1839, when Uniates were forced to abandon Catholicism en masse). In this perspective, Paweі Mіadanowicz's account describing the brutal death of his father's first wife's sister, Konstancja Jankiewiczуwna, must have been telling. Tortured by Gonta for refusing to convert, she was to die crying to others: “Perish (…). There is no death more beatuiful than to die for confessing the doctrine which the holy apostolic Roman Church teaches to us”62. The students were specially impressed, however, by the dried well itself (some accounts speak of two wells), where decaying corpses were thrown in the next day after the massacre. Still accessible in 1779, it disappeared under the new town hall soon after. Duchiсski's account, recorded by Giller, tells us it was like a place of worship. Even more so, Basilians themseves took young people there to discuss the bloody events. We read: “In the courtyard of the Basilian monastery, there were two wells filled with stones. Basilians showed them saying that the bodies of students, cruelly murdered in their school by bloodthirsty Gonta, were thrown into those wells by Haydamaks. Young people liked to stop by those wells, so did Franciszek Duchiсski in particular, who thought he heard the calls of the victims”63.

Further sites of memory on the Uman trail were located outside of the city walls. Gosczyсski visited places where Cossack-peasant rebels “blessed their knives”. “I saw an

old wooden shrine,” he wrote, “belonging to a monastery in the Lebedyn Forest, near the town of Shpola, where a similar ceremony was held”64. Whereas Eustachy Iwanowski (Helleniusz) described a house - in the village of Oradivka by the Uman road, owned by the Andruszkiewicz family - the supposed dwelling of Gonta's wife65. The most important site, however, was the Sofiyivka itself, the park founded in 1796 by Stanisіaw Szczкsny Potocki (1751-1805) for his wife Zofia Potocka (1760-1822), located by the southern end of the famous “Greek woods”, the Haydamak campsite during the siege of Uman. For the Uman alumni, Sofiyivka became the subject of emotional reminiscences articulated in their writing. They admired - as Aleksander Groza specified - the huge rocks and the woods, the vase of pink granite, the pond where “gold, silver, black, crimson Chinese fish play”, and the “white statue of Belisarius”66. Whereas Duchiсska argued that “the delightful Sofiyivka garden, its lavishness and luxury, made a strong impacts on the hearts and minds of youth (…). The conversations of their superiors did not escape them: the memories evoked by this wondrous place”67. Let us remark that these “conversations of superiors” took place during educational walks. We read therefore: “During these walks students collected and discussed stones, insects, and plants, making herbariums of the latter”68. The park was obviously an excellent place to acquaint students with ancient mythology and history, to inform their knowledge of Latin and Greek. “For here, the innumerable statues and temples gave them the first glimpses of Greek mythology. Inscriptions, imbued with pompous classicism, spurred many a debate between professors. The boys listened to them with curiosity”69. The tutors, on the other hand, “reminisced the martyrdom of poor peasants, herded here together from all Uman estates; those peasants who, often cold and hungry, hauled up those cragged rocks, those artificial ruins, who struggled to dig those vast lakes and subterranean channels, as once did the peoples of Egypt under Pharaohs' whip”70.

Researchers show how different was the impact of the park on the works of Zaleski, Goszczyсski, and Grabowski, how it created their idyllic or infernal meditations71. Yet, when describing the cultural identity of students, they point out the link between “the pogrom” and “the park”. The former created cultural categories marked with blood and death, which yet forced a reckoning with the difficult Polish-Ukrainian past. Whereas the latter built categories carrying the mood of nostalgia and melancholy, familiar but also Gothic, frenetic, producing macabre and beauty, magic and geometry, craft and violence, fashion and tradition, chaos and order, but also the pre-historic and the historical72. According to the local legend, recorded by Alexander Groza in his 1860 poem Њmieciсski, “there was a deep well full of superb water in the Basilian courtyard, yet when a single drop of innocent blood fell into it, the water vanished, and the slaughterers filled the empty source with students' bodies. Then this water was revealed in the ravine where Sofiyivka was founded”73. It seems that the link between “the pogrom” and “the park” had a purpose. In one cave there was a couplet “whereunder a stream ran its splashing waters: Lose the memory of your misfortune here, accept an augury, And if you are virtueous, be virtuous even more”74. A reflection upon the forgetting, denial, and tabooisation of the past is visible in these words. Still, this forgetting - constructed in the Christian cultural tradition - had to follow a mutual forgiveness (along with repentance, confession, and penance for the sins). Among the trees and fountains of the park, and by that pink vase, students reckoned with the sins of the nobility against Ruthenian people, of Roman Catholics against Uniates, of corrupt magnates against the Commonwealth. They also linked the prospect of gaining forgiveness to accepting conscious penance. They probably followed the example of Aleksander Potocki, who inherited Uman and Sofiyivka after the death of his mother Zofia Potocka in 1822. He supported the school financially and accentuated his Polishness to clean his family name tainted by the Targowica treason. At his initiative the statues of Tadeusz Koњciuszko and Prince Jуzef Poniatowski were erected in the garden. Alas, Aleksander's patriotic stance during the November Uprising (he allegedly raised a regiment of cavalry from his means) cost him the loss of his estates75.

CONCLUSION

In the words of Marek Tamm, “The past is not simply `received' by the present. The present is “haunted” by the past and the past is modelled, invented, reinvented, and reconstructed by the present. In the perspective of mnemohistory, then, the key question of historical research is not about the original significance of past events, but rather about how these events emerge in specific instances and are then translated over time, and about their everyday actualisation and propagation. More precisely, mnemohistory asks questions such as: What is known of the past in the present?”76

In this paper we wanted to show how the Basilian “now” of the 19th century was “haunted” by the past, and how that past was constantly being reinvented, remodelled, rediscovered, and reconstructed by the present of the tutors and their pupils.

Browsing through the education programme of the Uman school, one can notice that the monks tried to integrate the knowledge and skills served to students, so that they might learn finding connections between history, literature, art, philosophy, and music, and thus to perceive and create the surrounding world in a certain axiology. The aim of the Basilian pedagogy was to raise a citizen - able to function in the multi-ethnic and multi-denominational Commonwealth - respectful of the social order and the strong role of the Church. Indubitably, the idea of unity as described above was a fundamental component of Basilians' thinking-acting.

Thus, Basilians educated students in the sense of a two-rite community, both national and Catholic (clearly maintaining their own, Ruthenian and Uniate, distinctness). Therefore, in the Uman school, not only Uniate and Roman Catholic, but also Orthodox youth took part in prayers and services in the Slavonic language and Uniate rite, being educated in the sense of Polish-Ruthenian brotherhoos, which only the Orthodox Muscovy could threaten. In the thinkin of the monks, it was the lack of that unity in the 17th and 18th centuries, which led to the fall of the Commonwealth. The intended remedy was not to recreate but rather to create a community around the idea of national and denominational unity, and to destroy anything which could negate that unity. The 1768 pogrom was the symbol of such negation. In the opinion of Basilians, it resulted not from the aversion of Ruthenians (Cossack - peasant rebels) to Uniates, but rather from the Russian policy aimed at expunging Catholicism. However, due to the meagre scope of historical knowledge in the school's didactic programme, and the fear of Russian censorship, that memory was built through extracurricular activities. We may even risk a hypothesis that, at the Basilian school, there was a sort of “educational trail” tracing the pogrom. It comprised the sites of memory linked to the massacre (the monastery, the well, the Orthodox church, Sofiyivka), while its descriptions in students' accounts attest to its existence. This trail built a complete iconosphere, with individual sites evoking visual sensations, triggering a whole system of associations, agitations, and emotions.

Nonetheless, the quality of Basilian education was not defined solely by the monks. The school had secular employees, filled with new ideas, not always compliant with the Basilian charism. They instilled in young people “secular” ideas and values, such as the adoration for the Emperor of the French and all movements which could tear down the rules established after the Congress of Vienna: restauration, legitimism, and the balance of power. This influence is noticeable in the views of the alumni, who, as poets and writers, were to become members of the Ukrainian school of Polish Romanticism (Zaleski, Goszczyсski, Grabowski, Groza), develop the future of Polish science (Mianowski), as well as build the visions of its past (Krechowiecki), determined by the turannical Muscovites (Duchiсski).

Thus, to conclude our discussion, let us look at them from a multi-, inter- or trans- cultural perspective. They were raised “at the boundary” of epochs, marked by the fall of the Commonwealth. The Tsarist policy made a false impression that the nobles could enjoy full autonomy within Russia, keep their Polish language, have their own schools and self-government, independent Catholic Church (of both rites), legal system (Statutes of Lithuania), and maintain power over the peasant (serfdom). This apparent independence led to a sense of security, encouraged cultivating the old lifestyles and traditions of nobility, but also generated a longing for the past, different - let us add - of the monks' longing. Therefore, however much Basilians praised the Potockis as their protectors and benefactors, students despised them for their magnate arrogance, blamed them for the fall of the homeland. They also saw Ruthenians-Ukrainians differently. Not in the context of mission work but instead - as landowners or their descendants - of serf economy.

The Basilian school injected elements of the idea of unity into their cultural memory. They perceived Ruthenians in the context of the national and denominational community, proclaimed the need to confess the historical guilt of the nobility against the “commons”, and the need to “enlighten”. On the other hand, they put different emphasis in their memoirs and accounts. They were written after the school was shut down, after Nicholas I abolished Polish “distinctnesses”, in the face of persecutions after the November Uprising and the Ukrainian national and denomiational (Greek Catholic) distinctness, more visible with each passing year. The alumni realised the possibility of losing Rus' and Ruthenians, both in the national and denominational sense (particularly after the 1839 act of “unification” of Uniates with the Orthodoxy) and economic (seizure of estates). They believed that only by negating the aspirations of Russia towards Rus', confessing their own sins, mutual forgiveness and reaching national and religious concord, it would be possible to restore the Commonwealth. Only “through Rus'” - as wrote Duchiсski - Poland would regain independence. This very pursuit of that concord was owed to Basilian education (the idea of unity). Without any doubt, through their poetic, literary, and scholarly work, Uman alumni contributed to constructing the cultural memory of the next generation of Poles. However, due to the rise of the modern ideas of the Polish and Ukrainian states, and the associations between Polishness and Roman Catholicism, and between Ukrainianness and Greek Catholicism and Orthodoxy, their actions and thoughts were no longer understandable to the majority of the Polish and Ukrainian communities (still delighted by their poetic, literary, and scholarly excellence).

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