Education and Academic Career
Konissky studied at the Kiev Theological Academy, the leading center of Orthodox learning in the region, where he is said to have acquired several languages including Latin, Polish, Greek, Hebrew, and German. He took perpetual monastic vows in 1744, the same year he completed his studies, and remained associated with the Kiev Caves Lavra.
He joined the academy's teaching staff as professor of poetics in 1745 and later taught philosophy and theology. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1747, received the title of archimandrite in 1752, and served as rector from 1751 until his consecration as a bishop in 1755. He authored textbooks on theology, philosophy, and poetics, writing in Latin, Russian, and Polish.
Episcopate and Defense of Orthodoxy
Consecrated in 1755 for the see of Mstsislaw, Mogilev and Orsha, Konissky led an Orthodox diocese situated within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where the Orthodox faced sustained pressure to accept union with Rome. He became the most prominent advocate for their rights, working with the Russian envoy Nikolai Repnin, presenting a twenty-point memorandum to the Polish government in 1765, and helping to found the Sluck Confederation in 1767.
When invited to the 1762 coronation of Catherine II, he used the occasion to press the cause of the Orthodox under Polish rule. As the partitions of Poland brought territory under Russian authority, large numbers of former Uniates returned to Orthodoxy; sources record an increase of 112,578 between 1781 and 1783. In 1783 he was elevated to archbishop and made a member of the Most Holy Synod.
He was active as a builder of Orthodox institutional life, reported to have opened a printing house in 1757 and established schools in towns such as Bykhov, Gomel, Mstislavl, Orsha, and Rogachev. His preaching is said to have addressed social questions, including the condition of serfs, and he opposed Freemasonry. He also produced homilies and polemical works directed against Catholicism.
Relics and Glorification
Konissky was buried in the Transfiguration Cathedral in Mogilev. According to tradition his body was found incorrupt in 1875. The cathedral was destroyed in the twentieth century, and his tomb is reported to have been lost following its demolition.
He was glorified on August 5-6, 1993, in Mogilev by the Belarusian Orthodox Church as a locally venerated saint, with his commemoration kept on February 13.
