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The main character of the new book by the famous Ukrainian writer from Volyn, winner of the Chornovil Prize, Ivan Korsak, Arseniy Matsiyevich (1697-1772), is a representative of the second wave of Ukrainian enlightenment in Russia. The son of a priest from the Volyn gentry. The last of the opponents of Peter the Great's church reforms. Member of the Holy Synod. Metropolitan of Rostov for 20 years (for Rostov, this was "the brightest era in its history"). A great preacher: he left 217 sermons. He persistently defended the rights of the Church from interference by the state authorities.

The long struggle ended in defrocking and life imprisonment.

The metropolitan was tried for seven days "for perverse and outrageous interpretations of the Holy Scriptures and for encroaching on the peace of his subjects." After the first trial, Catherine II sent him as a simple monk to a monastery near Arkhangelsk. The second time, he was put on trial as a political criminal ("worthy of torture and deprivation of life"), and the same queen ordered him to be walled up in the casemates of the Revel fortress.