Church register (метрична, або метрикальна, книга; metrychna, or metrykalna, knyha). Record of civil acts such as births, marriages, and deaths. For centuries the register was kept by church officials, but later civic or state agencies took over the function. An excerpt from the register was popularly known as the metryka, and officially as the ‘certificate of birth and baptism’ (or of marriage and death). In Ukraine registers were kept from the 17th century. Church sobors such as the Orthodox sobor of Kyiv in 1646 and the Uniate Sobor of Zamostia in 1720 ordered priests to keep an accurate register. Bishop Yosyf Shumliansky furnished models of registry records in Metryka, albo reiestr na poradu tserkvy sviatoi i snadneishoi informatsie dukhovnym, svietskym ... (Registry [or Register] for the Welfare of the Holy Church and for Better Information for Clergy, Laity ... , 1686–7). Only the church kept a register in Ukraine under the Russian Empire (beginning in the 18th century), under the Austrian Empire, and, later, under Poland. In Transcarpathia under Czechoslovakia and in Bukovyna under Romania the church register was merely a supplement to the state register. In the Ukrainian SSR the church was separated from the state, and the church register was not recognized by the state.

At first the church register was written in the Ukrainian redaction of Church Slavonic, then, under Russia, in Russian. In Galicia, by the end of the 18th century Church Slavonic and Latin were used, and in the 20th century, Ukrainian. In Bukovyna the register was kept in Church Slavonic and then in German.

In the diaspora the Ukrainian churches keep registers, but these are for unofficial, internal, church statistics. Only if other documents are lacking are these registers accepted as evidence by state authorities.

Vasyl Markus

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]