The Union of Brest

The Union of Brest was an extended process consisting of several phases. It began with a letter issued by several Orthodox bishops declaring their inten­tion to recognize the supremacy of the pope (1590).

The declaration pronounced at Brest reasserted that only the pope, not the ecumenical patriarch, was head of the Rus' church, whose traditional liturgy and rites, moreover, were not to undergo any changes. The rights and privi­leges spelled out in the thirty-three articles of 12 June 1595 included the fol­lowing:

1. Since there is disagreement between the Romans and the Greeks over the pro­cession of the Holy Spirit, which greatly prejudices union for no other reason than that we mutually do not wish to understand each other, we, therefore, request that we be not compelled to any other faith but that testified to by the Gospels and the writings of the Holy Fathers of the Greek faith, that is, that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from two principles nor through a double procession but proceeds from one principle as source, from the Father through the Son.

2. The Divine Liturgy as well as all morning, evening, and nocturnal prayers shall remain unaltered according to ancient custom and tradition accepted in the Eastern Church.

3. That the mystery of the most Holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ remain for all time unaltered and intact as it has been until now under both spe­cies of bread and wine.

6. We accept the new calendar (Gregorian) if the old calendar cannot be used, on the condition, however, that the time and manner of celebrating Easter and other feasts will be preserved and remain whole and intact as it was during the time of unity.

9. The married priesthood shall be preserved intact, except for bigamists.

10. The offices of metropolitan, bishop, and other ecclesiastical ranks shall be conferred only upon those of the Ruthenian or Greek nation and that would be of our faith. Our ecclesiastical canons state that offices such as that of the metropoli­tan, the bishops, and other similar ranks be filled by appointments made by eccle­siastical authorities rather than civil authorities.

16. Marriages between Ruthenian Catholics and Roman Catholics shall be a free affair and neither party shall be coerced to accept the rite of the other because they are members of the same church.

19. In keeping with ancient custom, archimandrites, ihumens, monks and their monasteries will be subject to the bishops in whose eparchies they reside...

21. Archimandrites, ihumens, priests, archdeacons, deacons, and other ecclesi­astics of our rite should receive and enjoy the same honor and respect enjoyed by the Roman Catholic clergy and enjoy the ancient freedoms and privileges granted by King Wladysiaw. They shall be free from all taxation as regards both their per­sons and ecclesiastical properties (not as it has been unjustly until now).

33. Therefore, we the undersigned desire to establish a holy union for the glory of God and peace in the Church. We consider these articles necessary to our Church and require their approval from the highest bishop and His Royal Majesty.·

Twelve of the thirty-three articles were directed to the king of Poland (including 10, 16, 21 and 33, given above); the remaining twenty to the pope (including I, 2, 3, 6, 9, 19, and 33, given above). While the pope accepted the ‘Ruthenian bishops and nation’ into the Catholic church, he did not accept the list of thirty-three articles the bishops put forth as a constitution. He merely admitted that he ‘considered and understood’ their ‘petitions and offers.’ In fact, only the articles that pertained to liturgical matters (2 and 3, given above) were accepted by Rome, since they were, in the words of the papal decree Magnus Dominus et laudabilis, dated 23 December 1595, ‘not opposed to the truth and doctrine of the Catholic faith.’

In essence, the Union of Brest, which the Uniate (later, Greek Catholic and then Ukrainian Catholic) church claimed as the legal basis for its distinct exist­ence, became a twofold source of future conflict. Those Orthodox Rus' who refused to join the union never acknowledged the legitimacy of the decision at Brest. For its part, the Roman Catholic church, while acknowledging the Union of Brest, never accepted the 1595 ‘constitution.’ The pope, after all, who is responsible only to God, does not enter into contracts with anyone. At most, he had merely ‘considered and understood’ the ‘petitions and offers’ of the Uniates.

•Russel P. Moroziuk, Politics of a Church Union (Chicago 1983), pp. 17-21.

The basic polemic was as follows. The Roman Catholic king supported the union and the concept that the bishops, as leaders, must decide religious ques­tions, and the people must follow. The Orthodox side countered that religious questions cannot be decided without the approval of the faithful; since the pro-

Reformation, Counter Reformation, and the Union of Brest i6g union bishops apparently did not have that approval, they had acted illegally and therefore had lost their authority as bishops.

Not surprisingly, the king accepted the decisions of the pro-union bishops. Their agreement came to be known as the Union of Brest of 1596. In a sense, the Union of Brest was the equivalent in the cultural sphere of what had been achieved in the political sphere in 1569 with the Union of Lublin. While it is true that the creation of the new Uniate church may not have been what the Jesuits and other advocates of the Counter Reformation in Poland hoped to achieve, in the circumstances, given that outright conversion seemed an impossible goal, Uniatism appeared an acceptable compromise.

With the Polish government on its side, some Uniate hierarchs, especially Bishop Podi of Volodymyr (who for his efforts on behalf of the union was made metropolitan of Kiev in 1599), confiscated property from the now-illegal Ortho­dox church and increased their pressure on the two remaining Orthodox bishops in the region, Balaban in L'viv and Kopystens'kyi in Przemysl, to join the union. In Volhynia, several dozen prominent Orthodox nobles did join. The Orthodox cause was left in the hands of the brotherhoods and of magnates and gentry led by Prince Ostroz'kyi. The Orthodox nobles carried on their struggle in the local dietines and the Polish Diet, where they worked in alliance with the other belea­guered religious group, the Protestants. Their efforts were partially successful: in 1607 the Polish Diet granted the Orthodox church legal status once again and agreed not to interfere in the appointment of Orthodox hierarchs. But despite such protection, many Orthodox eparchial sees remained vacant, and in general, Orthodoxy was in a much weakened position vis-à-vis the Roman Catholic and Uniate churches, both of which had the full support of the king and certain other sectors of Polish society.

Thus, within less than three decades, the Orthodox cultural revival, which had begun with such promise in the 1570s, found itself in a situation in which the insti­tution it defended seemed on the verge of disappearing. The valiant efforts of Rus' townspeople (through the brotherhoods) and magnates (through schools and printing presses) could not stem the overwhelming power of Polish society to attract, whether by means of its sociopolitical and secular cultural life or through the religious accommodation of the new Uniate church. In order to survive, Orthodoxy and the Rus' culture it represented needed some more powerful pro­tector. That protector would be found among the lower echelons of society, which by the early seventeenth century had succeeded in creating an increasingly influential military and political force - the Cossacks.