Talk:Annexation of the Metropolis of Kyiv by the Moscow Patriarchate

Annexation: search for a more POV term

"Annexation" is inappropriate for two reasons: 1. it refers to a territory, not an ecclesiastical jurisdiction; 2. it is not NPOV. We need a new title.

Options

• A Absorption
• B Transfer
• C Disestablishment
• D Other. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:43, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, the Kyiv metropolitan’s jurisdiction was over a territory: Ukraine. Annexation seems strictly correct, but does sound a bit odd in this context.

How is it not neutral?

What do the sources say?  —Michael Z. 17:04, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

"Annexaction" refers to secular rule over a territory. Bishops don't rule (apart from Prince-Bishops), they minister to their flock. It's not neutral because Moscow would claim that the process was entirely amicable and agreed. Others might say that it was done through bribery and terrorism. Somewhere in the middle is a neutral term. Laurel Lodged (talk) 20:50, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

No, annexation just means addition (to another territory). The territory of the Hetmanate was de facto added to the territory administered by the Moscow patriarchate. (At the same time it was rule, because Russia enforced its rule over Ukrainian territory, including religious prohibitions.)

For neutrality it doesn’t matter what Moscow would claim, whether in 1686 or in 2023, but what reliable sources say. “Somewhere in the middle” between accepted fact according to reliable sources and lies according to the Kremlin is a false balance. It also doesn’t matter because Moscow had gone far beyond the right to appoint bishops which is all that had been actually granted, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate declared it illegal, annulled, and retracted it.

Reliable sources tell us it was part of the tsars’ colonization of Ukraine. Yekelchyk (2019), for example, says “over time, the empire slowly eliminated Ukrainian political and social institutions,” listing examples including “from 1686 the Orthodox Church in the Hetmanate was de facto subordinate to the patriarch of Moscow” (34) and “the Muscovite government arranged with the Ottomans in 1686 to pressure the patriarch of Constantinople into transferring these lands to Moscow canonical jurisdiction” (65).  —Michael Z. 22:21, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

@Mzajac: With the exception of Prince-bishops in the Holy Roman Empire, no prelate in eastern Europe exercises secular rule over a geographical territory. To rule means to have the power to tax, to coerce, to judge, to approve death sentences; prelates have none of these powers. Their ministry is pastoral, their powers soft and limited to preaching, exhorting and imposing decisions or their fellow believers. None of these decisions is enforceable by coercion or on pain of death. In short, prelates do not rule a territory; they cannot, therefore, be subject to annexation since the geographic remit of their diocese is purely descriptive by a private association. One cannot annex that which does not exist. It is more accurate to say that a man is a bishop in Kiev that to say that he is a bishop of Kiev. Since he does not in any meaningful way rule Kiev, then Kiev cannot be annexed from him. When a man is deprived of his episcopal office, something else happens: he is tranferred, he is deposed, etc. This article should avoid the lexicon of war which is inappropriate to an ecclesiastical article. Laurel Lodged (talk) 18:15, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Sources tell us the ROC was part of the tsarist establishment of rule. The imperial government did tax, coerce, judge, and approve death sentences, and it did use the church as an instrument.

Anyway, that’s academic: my dictionary’s definition of annexation and annex do not say they mean “rule”. They mean “add to one’s territory.” —Michael Z. 20:06, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Google Books returns 30 pages of sources for “bishop of Kiev,”[1] but only 11 for “bishop in Kiev,”[2] so apparently the former is quite accurate enough.  —Michael Z. 20:10, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

References

The lead

@Laurel Lodged, your edit[3] restores a first sentence that is equivalent to “‘annexation’ refers to annexation.” Please read WP:REFERS to see why the defining statement on a real subject should say is, not refers to (which implies the subject is a term).

Boldface in the lead is optional. WP:BOLDLEAD tells us to use it “if an article's title is a formal or widely accepted name for the subject.” But it gets awkward when the subject doesn’t have a name but is described by a longish descriptive phrase. See WP:BENOTBOLD.

The current first sentence is a hard-to-parse and potentially confusing mass of words. My version is imperfect, but I think an improvement to help readers understand what the subject is.  —Michael Z. 22:34, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

I changed it from "refers" to "describes". Laurel Lodged (talk) 09:09, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

FFS, would you just read the first sentence of the guideline I linked to? And then the rest of them?  —Michael Z. 14:35, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

WhenWhy don't you present your preferred wording for the first sentence here? And do try to avoid the low-level aggression please. Laurel Lodged (talk) 15:39, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

What do you mean “when don’t you”? I edited the lead to a preferred wording with a link to the guideline in my edit summary, and you reverted it. I went to talk and directed you to a guideline again, and in response you changed from one bad version to another explicitly discouraged by the guideline.

(I’ll also refer you to MOS:REFERS, which I see is distinct from WP:REFERS.)

I can’t tell whether you are refusing or simply unable to understand, but there’s not much else I can do short of repeating myself.  —Michael Z. 17:30, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

There is nothing in any of the policies quoted above that precludes the edit the I made to the lead sentence; quite the opposite in fact. You may not WP:IDONTLIKEIT, but that does not mean that it is incorrect. Laurel Lodged (talk) 18:23, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Again, yes there is: you ignored my edit summary and restored “refers to,”[4] then when I pointed it out ,you changed it to “describes,”[5] both of which WP:REFERS warns against using: “Phrases such as refers to, is the name of, describes the, or is a term for are sometimes used inappropriately in the first sentence of Wikipedia articles.”

The article is about the annexation, not about the title “Annexation of the Metropolitanate of Kyiv by the Moscow Patriarchate.” The name refers to or describes something. But the subject of the article, the event, merely is.  —Michael Z. 19:57, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

The other problem per WP:BENOTBOLD is that the title is a descriptive phrase and not a formal name, and so doesn’t need to be reiterated in bold. It doesn’t appear in a single book indexed by Google Books[6] or scholarly article indexed by Google Scholar.[7] —Michael Z. 20:02, 8 January 2023 (UTC)