Tukalsky-Neliubovych, Yosyf

Tukalsky-Neliubovych, Yosyf [Тукальський-Нелюбович, Йосиф; Tukal’s’kyj-Neljubovyč, Josyf], b ? in the Pynsk region, d 26 July 1675 in Chyhyryn. Orthodox metropolitan and political activist. He was archimandrite of the Holy Ghost Monastery in Vilnius in 1657–8, a candidate for the office of metropolitan of Kyiv (1657), and a participant in the 1657 Cossack council in Korsun that elected Ivan Vyhovsky as hetman. He was consecrated bishop of Orsha and Mstsislau (and Belarus), and in 1663 he was elected metropolitan of Kyiv at a council of clergy, nobility, and Cossacks in Korsun. The king of Poland, favoring another candidate (Antin Vynnytsky), refused to confirm his election. In the resulting administrative division of the Ukrainian church province, Tukalsky presided over Right-Bank Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania but not over Galicia, Volhynia, and Podilia. Hetman Pavlo Teteria and the Polish government conspired against him, and he was imprisoned in the Marienburg fortress (1664–6). Hetman Petro Doroshenko secured his release, whereupon he resumed his post as metropolitan and took up residence near the hetman in Chyhyryn. In 1668 the Patriarch of Constantinople confirmed his position as metropolitan and named him exarch. Tukalsky was a close adviser to Doroshenko; he counseled him to enter into an alliance with the Ottoman Empire, and opposed alliances with Russia and Poland. In church affairs he rejected any rapprochement with the Moscow patriarchate and staunchly defended the independence of the Kyiv metropoly, which brought him in opposition to the representative of the Moscow patriarch in Kyiv, Maksym Fylymonovych. He was buried in the Mhar Transfiguration Monastery, and his valuable archives were transferred to the Kyivan Cave Monastery. A selection of his epistles and correspondence was published in 1884 by Bishop Filaret Gumilevsky.

Ivan Korovytsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]