Duchowieństwo greckokatolickie w świetle leksyki z XVII w.
Greek Catholic clergy in the light of the 17th-century lexis

Summary/Abstract: The sacral terminology relating to the Greek Catholic clergy in 17th-century Polish texts is genetically heterogeneous and consists of two categories of terms: 1) lexemes deriving from the language of the Orthodox Church, of Greek and Church-Slavonic origin, e.g. archimandryta ‘a superior supervising several Orthodox monasteries’, hospodyn ‘priest’ or świeszczenik ‘priest’; 2) lexemes deriving from the language of the Catholic Church, of Latin and Czech origin, np. kapłan, ksiądz ‘priest’, prezbiter ‘presbyter’. The terms form synonymous chains (e.g. pop ‘priest’ : hospodyn : świeszczenik : kapłan : ksiądz : pasterz ‘shepherd’; władyka ‘bishop’ : biskup ‘bishop’; ihumen ‘prior’ : przeor ‘prior’), in which Orthodox Ukrainian terms were being successively replaced with sacral terminological equivalents from the Polish lexis of the Catholic Church. The formation process of the Greek Catholic sacral terminology, and of the names for the clergy in Eastern Rites, happened in several stages. First, Polonized Latin church terms began to penetrate to the Ukrainian and Byelorussian languages of Greek Catholics, and replaced the Greek-Slavic religious terms. Then, because Ukrainian and Byelorussian Greek Catholics spoke Polish, they transferred to it the Orthodox religious lexis from the colloquial and Church varieties of Byelorussian and Ukrainian. That layer met with religious terms of Latin church. Both lexical strata contain an innovative semantic component connected with a new status of the Greek Catholic clergy. The genetically heterogeneous 17th-century terminology relating to the Greek Catholic clergy bears witness to the continuation, by the Eastern Christian priests, of two religious traditions: Orthodox and Catholic, linked by the Union of Brest.

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