Now, if we take into account, on the one hand, the low level of education in Moldova and Wallachia at the time in question, and on the other, the fact that the city of Lvov at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 16th century was the center of education in southwestern Rus', and the Lvov fraternal school served as a source of science not only for the Orthodox southern Russian population, but also for neighboring peoples of the same faith with it, then the news about The upbringing of the Moldavian voivodech in the environment of the friendly Lviv brotherhood in his surname should be recognized as very
‘) Drink. under 1602
*) Ibid., under the year 1607.
3) See Letop. Lviv brotherhoods under 1609, 1610, 1613 and 1627. Zarrietepe ai Nizhogiae Vizviae topiteika.I.I SIDXX1X—CXCI1, Acts related. to the history of the south. and zap. Russia vol. 1, no. 222.
*) Letop. Lviv brotherhood under 1624
6) Ibm. around 1613
“OGRHPHICAL SVOD. ABOUT PETER GRAVE BEFORE POOV. HIS IN THIS ARCHNM.
plausible. And this is all the more so since Peter Mohyla’s subsequent relationship with the Lvov brotherhood was the most friendly and he (as befits a student) had deep respect for the fraternal school, which was especially clearly expressed during the founding of his own collegium: it is known that the first teachers of this collegium were fraternal scientific teachers from Lvov *).
But, while recognizing in this way the news about Peter Mogila’s upbringing in the Lvov fraternal school as very plausible, we at the same time cannot deny the reliability of other news that attributes a Western European education to the Metropolitan. If the first news finds sufficient support for its recognition in the friendly relations of the Mogil family in the Lviv brotherhood, then no less compelling data can be presented in defense of the reliability of the other.
Although in the middle of the 16th century there already existed a sufficient number of schools in southwestern Russia, and in some of them (such as Lviv) the range of subjects taught was quite extensive; but since these schools, being founded on different principles than the Polish and Western European colleges, did not have that external splendor, and hence the popularity for which the latter were famous, the southern Russian aristocrats, under the influence of Western European civilization, considered the education received in their homeland not to fully correspond to the requirements of the time. Therefore, although they sent their children to their native schools for initial education, they did not limit their education to this. Every noble gentleman of that time considered it as his indispensable duty, after his son left the local school, to send him to colleges and universities abroad to complete his education. True, some strict zealots of Orthodoxy were strongly armed against such a custom, arguing that the delicacy of Latin wisdom, the simplicity and exuberant wisdom of God, dishonors, that cunning, the Nogai, red-blooded Aristotle, the Babylonian passions of music and in general everything that comes from the pernicious West, removes from piety, with heresies poisons and apostates from the right-
*) Description Kyiv-sof. cathedral; Chronicle of lions. brotherhood of Zubrncki under 1631
S. T. DOVE,
makes glorious faith; and therefore, instead of false dialects, philosophical swinging and other flower-growing potions (which, in their opinion, the West was so abundant in), they offered their Orthodox flowers, meaning by them the circle of church liturgical books. But it was difficult to fight against the spirit of the times. The rules of Western European colleges began to gradually penetrate into the very southern Russian schools. The South Russian Orthodox clergy itself became consider trips to the border for scientific purposes necessary.