Abstract

The historical retrospective of formation of the non­religious phenomenon «new Christianity» in the conteThe article examines the impact of the educational and scientific activities of famous church historians on the expansion of knowledge in the history of church, development of historical studies, religious and secular education in Ukrainian territories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The analysis of the biographies, activities and scientific papers of such well­known scientists as Aleksey Dmitriyevskiy, Ivan Sokolov, Kostiantyn Kharlampovych, Vasyl Bidnov and Oleksandr Lototskyi shows that the scholars made a great contribution to the expansion of historical knowledge in the history of church and Byzantine studies. They achieved it by finding and publishing new sources, studying new topics that had not been covered earlier, applying the historical comparative method and analysing the local history within the context of general history of humankind. Furthermore, just by reviewing the list of offices held by the above scholars, subjects they taught, and scientific journals where they worked as authors and editors and understanding what role they played in preserving church antiques during the period when objects of historical importance were expropriated and used for other purposes, you can appreciate not only their contribution to fostering a great number of well­educated broad­minded and scientifically oriented researchers and clergy members, but also the importance of the position they took on social issues. Because of the social principles they defended the scholars were often persecuted by the Bolsheviks, which caused their premature death or forced emigration.