12th November 1623 was the day on which Josaphat
Kunsevich, the Archbishop of Polotsk (now in northern Belarus) was murdered by
a mob because he sought to reconcile two divergent parts of the Christian
Church. He was canonized, as Saint Josaphat (or Joseph) of Polotsk, in 1867,
being the first saint from the eastern (Orthodox) church to be recognised as a
saint by the Roman Catholic Church.
He was born in the 1580s at Vladimir, which is now on the
border of Poland and Ukraine. Although his father was Catholic, Josaphat became
a monk in the Orthodox monastery at Vilna and eventually rose to be the abbot.
As such, he practiced the Byzantine rather than the Roman rite in his worship.
In 1617 he was elected as Bishop of Vitebsk and then became
Archbishop of Polotsk. His diocese was riven between two opposing groups,
namely those who sought to preserve the division between east and west and
those who wanted to bring the two sides together in the eventual hope of
uniting the Church. By siding with the latter faction, Josaphat made many
enemies for himself. These even included Catholics who objected to his use of
the Byzantine rite.
Although he never advocated violence in pursuit of his aims,
plenty was used by both sides during years of rioting. Eventually, the
separatists descended on Josaphat’s house, having hatched a plot that would
give them an excuse to remove him once and for all. A mob burst into the
courtyard of his house and, when Josaphat appeared, knowing full well what the
outcome would be, he was attacked with axes and then shot, his body being
thrown into the river.
This sad business, in which Christians were content to
murder fellow Christians, was put into perspective by the fact that lives were
saved by local Jews who rushed in to restore order and prevent more of
Josaphat’s followers from being killed.
© John Welford
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