From the time of the acceptance of Christianity by the Roman Empire in the fourth century and through the subsequent spread of this faith throughout the European continent, the interrelatedness of politics and religion had been a fun­damental component of the development of western civilization.

After 1054, the Christian world was divided into two spheres - the Catholic, with its seat in Rome, and the Orthodox, with its seat in Constantinople. Between the two spheres, there was an important difference in the relationship of church and state.

As the Roman Catholic church’s political and economic power increased, so too grew the kind of abuses often associated with temporal power. More and more, it seemed to certain committed Roman Catholics, the religion professed by the church was little other than an ideological facade erected to preserve the solidly entrenched vested interests of the priesthood and of the ecclesiastical and secular governments allied to the church. Moral abuses were particularly discon­certing to pious laypersons, because they seemed to contradict the Christian ideals professed by the church.

The Protestant Reformation

There were several attempts to reform the Roman Catholic church from within, led especially by certain monastic orders. But when these attempts failed to bring about substantial change, the movement for reform passed beyond the parame-

Reformation, Counter Reformation, and the Union of Brest 161 ters of the church into a more public arena.

More influential was the activity of the German priest and religious reformer Martin Luther, who in 1517 posted on the doors of the cathedral in Wittenberg his famous theses protesting abuses in the Roman Catholic church. He was fol­lowed soon after in France and Switzerland by the theologian John Calvin. Although the followers of these men, subsequently described as Lutherans and Calvinists, were divided over certain theological issues, they all had one common purpose: to protest what they considered the extensive temporal power of the Roman Catholic church and to reform that organization. If reform was not possi­ble, then they were prepared to establish new organizations that would be respon­sible only to God and not to the pope in Rome or to any other earthly hierarch. The source of their inspiration was the Bible, and they believed every individual had a duty to study the Bible as a source of inspiration and truth. Because they were opposed to or in protest against Rome, the followers of this movement were called Protestants, and the movement itself, originally inspired by the need for change or reform, came to be known as the Reformation.

The Reformation spread rapidly through central and western Europe, where from the beginning it was inextricably involved in politics. Several princes and other local leaders took up the Protestant cause as a way of rebelling against their Roman Catholic secular superiors. If an individual local ruler converted to Protes­tantism, his people were made to follow - a reflection of the contemporary princi­ple of cuius regio, eius religio (the religion of the ruler is made the religion of the land).

The Reformation reached Poland and, notably, Lithuania during the first half of the sixteenth century. Even the Teutonic Order along the Baltic, an order founded for the purpose of exercising Roman Catholic zeal against heathens, vol­untarily accepted the Reformation in 1525 and transformed itself into a secular state, becoming a vassal of Poland the following year. Poland’s age-old military struggle with the Teutonic state came to an end, although Prussia now became a center of Lutheranism, the influence of which radiated southward and eastward from centers like the University of Konigsberg (est. 1544). The Reformation was particularly successful among the magnates of Lithuania, including both Roman Catholic and Orthodox families such as the Radziwill-Chornyis, the Khodke- vyches, the Volovyches, the Sapiehas, and the Vyshnevets'kyis, all of whom adopted some form of Protestantism.

Moreover, in Poland-Lithuania there was a great variety of movements from which to choose. Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Unitarianism (or Anti-Trinitarian- ism) were among the major sects, although all of them, in what became typical of Protestantism, were further divided and subdivided into numerous subgroups. The success of the Reformation was in large part due to specific contemporary conditions in Poland-Lithuania. King Zygmunt II Augustus (reigned 1548-1572) prided himself on upholding the Renaissance ideals of humanism and tolerance. Moreover, because those groups who embraced Protestantism - the magnates and some gentry - were already independent of the king, the Reformation in Poland- Lithuania did not become an excuse for political action. Accordingly, the strident overtones of religious developments in western and central Europe were initially avoided, with the result that at least during the first three-quarters of the sixteenth century Poland and Lithuania witnessed the generally peaceful coexistence of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.

In Ukrainian lands, Protestantism did not have the same kind of impact, in numbers of converts, as in Poland or even Lithuania, although a recent estimate suggests that there were as many as 400 Protestant congregations (the vast major­ity Unitarian or Socinian) on Ukrainian territory, especially in Volhynia, at vari­ous times between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Nonetheless, Protestantism had an important indirect impact in that its existence stimulated and heightened intellectual discourse on religious issues. Its most direct impact was on education.

The great emphasis placed by the Protestants on individual reading and study of the Bible required a literate population and the wide availability of Bibles. Wherever Protestantism spread, therefore, so too did schools and printing presses, and these contributed to a rise in the cultural level of given areas. Princi­ples of Protestant education greatly influenced intellectual centers in Ukraine such as the Ostroh Academy. In fact, many of the members of the Orthodox intel­lectual circle at Ostroh became either Protestants or Protestant sympathizers. Accordingly, it is no surprise that among the most significant projects undertaken at Ostroh was a translation of the Bible into Church Slavonic. Nevertheless, while there were some attempts to translate parts of the Bible into contemporary Ukrainian (the Peresopnytsia Gospel, 1556-61), the Protestant thrust toward pub­lication in the vernacular (the reformers Hus and Luther were also primary for- mulators of literary Czech and German respectively) was not followed in Ukraine. The leading Ukrainian writers of the time, Herasym Smotryts'kyi, Lavrentii Zyza- nii, and Ivan Vyshens'kyi, noted primarily for their religious polemics, all used Church Slavonic. Church Slavonic had prestige because it had been the ecclesias­tical language since Kievan times. In no way, however, did it reflect the common speech of the contemporary Ukrainian population. But since Orthodoxy, unlike Protestantism, did not rely on intellectually persuasive argumentation, there really was no need to raise vernacular Ukrainian to the level of a literary language.

The Counter Reformation and Orthodox Ukraine

The rapid spread of the Reformation through Europe could not go unchallenged by the Roman Catholic church, and by the second half of the sixteenth century a reaction had begun which came to be known as the Counter Reformation. One

Reformation, Counter Reformation, and the Union of Brest 163 result of the Counter Reformation was the outbreak of religious wars, in which much of Europe was devastated in the name of Roman Catholic or Protestant reli­gious truth. The conflict continued until as late as the seventeenth century. On the intellectual front, the Counter Reformation was spearheaded by the newly founded Jesuit order, which used Protestant techniques - education and the dis­semination of learning - in an effort to reconvert to Roman Catholicism those who had fallen into what was considered Protestant ‘apostasy.’ The Jesuits arrived in Poland in 1564 to begin their work on behalf of the Roman Catholic church.

The Ukrainians in Poland had not converted en masse to Protestantism, but from the Roman Catholic point of view they too were unacceptable because they were Orthodox. And in their bid to rid Poland of Protestantism and thereby to transform Poland into the eastern bastion of Roman Catholicism, the Jesuits and their supporters in the government decided to address the ‘Orthodox problem’ at the same time. The ‘Orthodox problem,’ of course, was an issue not of recon­version, but rather of church union.

The period since the 1054 split between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy had seen efforts, albeit unsuccessful, to unify the two halves of the Christian realm. Ukraine had always played a key role. For instance, during the heyday of the Galician-Volhynian Kingdom in the mid-thirteenth century, Prince Danylo had initially promised to support church union in return for the pope’s support in his crusade against the Tatars. Even more significant had been the activity of Metropolitan Izydor (reigned 1436-1441), the last Kievan hierarch resident in Moscow to be appointed by the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople.

In the atmosphere of the Counter Reformation prevailing in late sixteenth­century Poland, the idea of church union was revived once again. This time its ideological proponents were the Jesuits. Since their arrival in Poland in 1564 and in Lithuania in 1569, the Jesuit ideological thrust had been focused on education and publication. The Jesuit school system (including colleges, the first founded in Jaroslaw in 1575, and twenty-two more on Ukrainian lands before 1648) quickly became renowned. Moreover, it was not long before the sons of Orthodox and recently converted Protestant nobles who had been sent to Jesuit educational institutions converted to Roman Catholicism. Jesuit brotherhoods and printing presses also turned out much polemical material directed at both Protestants and Orthodox. In their anti-Orthodox polemics, Jesuit writers, the most famous of whom were Piotr Skarga and Antonio Possevino, focused on the theme of church union. In the course of their ideological onslaught, the Jesuits also pushed for the

universal adoption of the Gregorian calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. This seemingly technical matter met with strong opposition from the Orthodox, who viewed the Julian calendar as integral to their traditional religious life and something not to be given up easily, if at all.

Nonetheless, despite the Jesuit call for church union, the actual initiative came not from the Roman Catholics, but from the Orthodox themselves. Coinciden­tally, it was at this very time in the 1580s that Orthodox patriarchs from the Otto­man Empire, traveling to Muscovy in search of financial assistance, visited the church in Ukraine, where they decided to grant wide-ranging responsibility to the Stauropegial Brotherhood at the Dormition Church in L'viv. In fact, in 1589, at the very time that the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople Jeremiah II granted stauropegial status to the L'viv brotherhood, he also accepted its com­plaints regarding abuses in the local church hierarchy. As a result, the ‘Lithua­nian’ metropolitan of Kiev resident in Navahrudak, Onysyfor Divochka (reigned 1579-1589) - himself twice married before his consecration - was removed from office, and all clergy accused of bigamy were defrocked.

Jeremiah’s actions reflected a general policy of attempting to restore the authority of the ecumenical patriarchate over the Orthodox church within the Rus' world. As part of the process, Constantinople’s long-standing alienation, since 1458, from the Kievan metropolitans resident in Moscow was finally healed in 1589, when it recognized the autocephaly, or independence, of the Orthodox church in Muscovy, to be headed henceforth by its own patriarch. Yet at the same time the ecumenical patriarch issued decrees for the governance of the Orthodox church in Poland-Lithuania, and his action sent a clear message to Moscow’s new patriarch that the Kievan metropolitanate in Belarusan and Ukrainian lands was to remain under the jurisdiction of Constantinople.

Not surprisingly, the seeming high-handedness of Constantinople’s ecumeni­cal patriarch vis-à-vis the Orthodox church in Ukraine and his courting of the L'viv Stauropegial Brotherhood caused great dissatisfaction among certain local hierarchs, especially the bishop of L'viv, Gedeon Balaban (reigned 1569-1607). As a result, Balaban turned to the Polish Roman Catholic archbishop of L'viv, whom he begged in 1589 - the same year the L'viv Dormition Brotherhood was granted stauropegial status - ‘to liberate [our] bishops from the slavery of the patriarchs of Constantinople.’¹

The Union of Brest

Dissatisfaction with Constantinople prompted greater interest in Rome, and as early as 1590, at a synod of the Metropolitanate of Kiev in Poland-Lithuania, Bala­ban joined three fellow Orthodox bishops in signing a letter to the Polish king Zygmunt III (reigned 1587-1632), in which they indicated their readiness to rec­ognize the supremacy of the pope and their intention to unite with the Catholic church of Rome. The four Orthodox bishops realized that their efforts on behalf of church union would not be successful without the support of the Rus' mag­nates. In this regard, their own ecclesiastical ranks expanded in 1593, when the magnate Adam Potii (reigned 1593-1613), the former secretary to the king of Poland and the holder of several governmental offices, was consecrated under the name Ipatii as Orthodox bishop of Volodymyr.

But it was Potii’s patron, the powerful magnate Kostiantyn/Vasyl' K. Ostroz'kyi, whom the bishops needed on their side if the idea of church union was to be a success. As founder of the Ostroh Academy, Prince Ostroz'kyi had already expressed interest in the idea of church union, which he saw as a means of improving the status of the Orthodox church in what otherwise was becoming an increasingly Roman Catholic-oriented Polish-Lithuanian state. Ostroz'kyi’s understanding of union, however, implied the participation of what he con­sidered the ‘whole Ecumenical Church,’ that is, the entire Roman Catholic and Orthodox world, including the ecumenical and other eastern patriarchs as well as neighboring Moldavia and Muscovy. He passed on his own plan for union to his protege, Bishop Potii, for presentation at a regional episcopal council.

It was at this critical juncture that relations between Ostroz'kyi and the pro­union Orthodox bishops broke down. Instead of promoting Ostroz'kyi’s all­encompassing approach, Bishop Potii, together with Bishop Kyrylo Terlets'kyi of Luts'k (reigned 1585-1607), issued two letters of intent (December 1594 and June 1595) pledging allegiance to Rome. The letters of intent were then approved by the Polish king. In response, Ostroz'kyi condemned what he called ‘our faithless pastors, the metropolitan and bishops, [who] through the evil and cunning work of the ever-malign devil [have become] tempted by the glories of this world, and blinded by their desire for pleasures... have forsaken our holy patriarchs and gone over to the Latin side.’² Ostroz'kyi’s criticism did have an effect, since even Bishop Balaban of L'viv, one of the earliest initiators of the movement, now repu­diated the idea of union.

Nevertheless, the pro-union bishops, joined by Metropolitan Mykhail Rahoza (reigned 1589-1599), pressed forward, and in June 1595, during an episcopal synod at Brest, they approved a document containing thirty-three articles that set forth their understanding of union with Rome. This document later came to be considered the ‘constitution’ of the Kievan metropolitanate for union with the church of Rome, and it addressed theological, liturgical, ritual, administrative, and interchurch matters. The underlying concern was that the union with Rome would not change Eastern church practices, such as use of the liturgy of St John Chrysostom, the Slavonic rite, the Julian calendar, a married clergy, and adminis­trative autonomy.

In December 1595, Bishops Potii and Terlets'kyi took the two episcopal letters and the Brest articles to Rome. It is important to note that the pope neither approved nor rejected the proposed articles. Instead, on 23 December he issued a papal decree (Magnus Dominus el laudabilis) recognizing ‘all sacred rites and cere­monies which the Ruthenian [Rus'] bishops and clergy use’ as long as they were ‘not opposed to the truth and doctrine of the Catholic faith.’³ Thus, what later members of the Uniate or Greek Catholic church believed to be their historic rights guaranteed by the Union of Brest were nothing more than their own demands, which could be approved or rejected at the discretion of the pope and