Zörnikau, Adam

Zörnikau, Adam (Zernikav), b 1652 in Königsberg, Germany, d 1691 in Baturyn, Cossack Hetman state. Orthodox monk and theologian. A wandering German intellectual who had lived and studied throughout Western Europe, he became convinced that he would find spiritual truth in Orthodoxy and set off for Moscow in 1679. En route he stopped in Chernihiv, where Bishop Lazar Baranovych baptized him into the Orthodox faith and placed him as an army engineer for Hetman Ivan Samoilovych. A trip to Moscow in 1683 disillusioned Zörnikau completely and persuaded him to remain in Ukraine. After the fall of Samoilovych in 1687, Zörnikau took monastic vows and settled in Baturyn. He is renowned for a series of tracts written in Latin in 1682 under the title De processione Spiritus Sancti, which argue that the Holy Spirit descended from God the Father. The work was published in 1774 in Königsberg, translated into Ukrainian in the mid-18th century by monks at the Kyivan Cave Monastery, and published in Russian translation in two volumes in 1902 (Pochaiv) and 1906 (Zhytomyr).

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