In ancient Ukraine, bursa were an indispensable addition to urban schools. Bursa (lat. Bursa - bag, wallet) were called dormitories for poor and nonresident unsecured students of medieval educational institutions. They first appeared in France, then moved to other countries. They were kept at the expense of donations from patrons, philistines, peasants, monastery incomes and the like. In Ukraine, bursa hostels organized city fraternities at schools, as well as metropolitans, for example, Petro Mogila at Kiev, and then at other colleges.
Kiev-Mohyla bursa
In the paragraphs of the Kiev Consistory of 1768 p., On the bursa of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, it was noted: "Instead of a strange house, an orphanage house was established, generally called" bursa "from the German word bursch in general, as a meeting for adoption not only of natural Russian children and youth who lost their fathers and mothers and all charity and supplies, but also from other countries coming from the Orthodox Greek religion, such as the Greeks, Volokhs, Moldavians, Bulgarians, Serbs and Poles who are pious. of the time, as established by His Grace Metropolitan Peter the Grave, and to this day remains the receivers of the ego"
The authors requested to preserve the bursa, which would exist at the expense of various donations.
In general, it is worth saying that almost all rectors and metropolitans took care of housing "for the poorest students" as an organic part of the academy. For example, Varlaam Yasinsky, during his rectorship in 1665 - 1673, was more worried about the comfort of college students than about teachers who lived in the Bratsk Monastery.
The bursa of the academy and other educational institutions of Ukraine almost never contained all the willing “mendicant” students, secondly, its material support required, to put it mildly, the best, thirdly, it also experienced terrible devastations, - say, throughout the XVII century. her wooden house burned several times. Two hundred men were given a seat in the bursa for free; the room was cramped, damp, without heating and lighting.
1719. With the funds that the Academy bequeathed to Joasaf Krokovsky, and partly from his metropolis, Metropolitan Rafail Zaborovsky allowed the construction of a new wooden bursa house near the Epiphany Church. Until the middle of the 18th century. this building was so dilapidated that it was impossible to live in it even for unpretentious and needy young men. In the then “petitions” of the Bursaks to the authorities it was said that the windows and doors had rotted, the house had deeply sunk into the ground, in the spring and winter it was flooded with water, the students were sick and dying of cold, moisture and crowding.
One of the teachers, the abbot of the church, reported that from Christmas to Easter in 1750 he had to confess and commune the inhabitants of the bursa who were dying three to four times every night. In the winter of 1755, more than 30 students died. Insignificant funds were allocated for the treatment of patients, the repair of furnaces and the food of Bursaks, and even those were sometimes squandered by wicked people. Sick students were put in a house specially designated for the hospital. Caring for them was primitive, and the overseers were constantly forced to turn to the administration for help. So, on December 22, 1769, Senior Bursa Andrei Mikhailovsky and his comrades reported on 44 sick Bursaks and asked for help, for which Rector Tarasy Verbitsky released 20 rubles. The following year, the same Mikhailovsky reported 29 sick Bursaks, and the rector allocated 12 rubles to them.
Bursa was divided into "large", which was located on the premises of the academy and therefore was also called "academic", and "small", which was located in the premises of several parish churches of Podil. On the "Mountain", that is, where the Kiev city elite lived, the Bursaks were allowed only to "Mirkuvati" during major holidays. Students who lived in an academic bursa were sometimes called “academics, ” and outside it, “small bursaks.” The academic bursa was under the direct supervision of the prefect. A superintendent of teachers and senior students of senior classes was appointed as his assistants, who observed the behavior of the Bursaks, their homework, the observance of order in the room, solved minor misunderstandings and the like. Seniors were also intended for small burses. The large stone building of the bursa and the hospital under it were built already in 1778.
In connection with the desire of young people for knowledge, overcoming material difficulties, small bursa at parish schools also quantitatively grew at the end of the XVII - XVIII centuries. were a noticeable real phenomenon. At the same time, the administration of the academy and the ecclesiastical authorities could not help but see the impoverished schoolchildren, therefore they were allowed to "Mirkuvati", or simply to beg. Almost daily, younger schoolchildren at lunchtime went under the yards of prosperous Kievites and singing spiritual songs and edgings, which began with the words: “Peace of Christ be installed in your hearts with our prayers, ” our father asked for a piece of bread. Some researchers believe that it was from this that the word "Mirkachi" came from; others derive it from the ancient word "mirkuvati", which meant asking for handouts, hunting, and others from the opening words of the school greeting "Peace be to this house, " "Peace be to you, " "Peace be to the master and mistress." Senior students went out to "hunt" in the evenings. They also sang psalms, earning money for food, and if this method did not succeed in obtaining bread, then students also allowed "reprehensible means to acquire food", that is, to steal
On the "peace" of Ukrainian schoolchildren and a wide network of education in the middle of the XVII century. attention was drawn to the Antioch traveler Pavel Aleppsky, who wrote in 1654: “In this country, that is, the Cossacks have countless widows and orphans, because from the time of the appearance of the hetman Khmelnitsky, terrible wars have not yet subsided. For a whole year in the evenings, starting from sunset, these orphans went to fight from house to house, singing in a pleasant choir, such that it captures the soul, singing the hymns of the Blessed Virgin; their loud singing can be heard at a great distance. near which they sang I’ve cooled down with money, food or the like, which was suitable for maintaining their existence until they finish schooling. The number of literate people has especially increased since the appearance of Khmelnytsky (God forbid him to live long!), who liberated these lands, saved these millions of innumerable Orthodox from enemies faith, damned Poles"
For mockery and slavery, violence against women and daughters of the Orthodox, for ambitiousness, insidiousness and cruelty over Christians brothers Christians were punished by Khmelnitsky
If on weekdays, perhaps, not all students from large and small bursa took part in the “peacekuvanni”, then on holidays, and especially during the main Christian Christmas holidays, established in honor of the birth of Jesus Christ, which coincided with the ancient Slavic carols, and Easter, or Easter - on the day of the "miraculous resurrection" of Jesus Christ from the dead there was almost no such Bursak and generally a schoolboy who would refuse the pleasure of going home with a "star", with a nativity scene, a district committee, presenting dialogs and "school" dramas sing psalms and edging, recite Christmas and Easter comic verses in the living room, pronounce funny orations. In this way, they evoked a general festive mood among the inhabitants, and they themselves celebrated, receiving as a reward cakes and pies, tortillas and donuts, dumplings and dumplings, buckwheat and buns, fried or live chicken, or duck, several coins, or even a beer or a glass of vodka. By the way, for the special penchant for beer Ukrainian students, like all Western vagantas, they and themselves often called them “pivorises”.
About dramatic performances and in general about the life of Kiev Bursaks in ancient times and at the beginning of the XIX century. MV Gogol wrote that they resorted to playing dramas and comedies, where some theologian student “a little shorter than the Kiev bell tower” represented Herodias, or the wife of the Egyptian courtier Pentefriy with the tragicomedy “Joseph, the patriarch..”. "Lawrence Gorky. As a reward, they received a piece of linen, or a bag of millet, or half a boiled goose and other stuff. All this learned people, the writer continued with humor, both the seminary and the bursa, between which there was some kind of hereditary dislike, was extremely poor in food, and also incredibly gluttonous; so it would be completely impossible to count how many each of them ate dumplings at dinner; and therefore, the voluntary donations of wealthy owners could not be enough. Then the Senate, consisting of philosophers and theologians, escorted grammars and rhetoric, led by one philosopher, and sometimes communed himself, with bags on his shoulders to empty other people's gardens. And pumpkin porridge appeared in the bursa"
In addition to the "peace", the Bursaks received a small fee for what akathists sang and read in the church, taught elementary letters in church parishes and thereby competed with parish clerks and priests. The rectors of the churches, with the help of clerks, fiercely dealt with the Bursaks, beat them, drove them out of parish schools and orphanages, destroyed school supplies, issued them to the city authorities, bishops and even the Moscow patriarch and the tsar. The former rector, and then the Kiev metropolitan Varlaam Yasinsky, professor and prefect Mikhail Kozachinsky, other professors of the academy tried in every possible way to protect their pets from the savagery of parish priests and clerks. For example, Mikhail Kozachinsky obtained a punishment from the consistory for reprisals against students: one parish priest sowed flour for a whole week, tied it with a chain in the bakery of the cathedral, and flushed the clerk and clerk with whips in front of the school
Yes, and students of the "academic" and small bursa allowed themselves sometimes rude jokes, atrocities and antics, made devastating raids on Kiev bazaars, shops and cellars with food, stole firewood from bourgeois yards, sometimes even large logs from the city fence, to burn in bursa. “Big” and “small” Bursak students often resolved conflicts with townspeople, burmisters, archers with the help of fists and batons. They defended their dignity also before the administration, boycotting the lectures of cruel and unjust professors, seeking their expulsion from the academy.
