After the Great Schism of Christianity in 1054, the Catholic Church has always strived to acquire the status of the Universal. Of course, by absorbing other religions. This also affected the Orthodox lands, some of which swore allegiance to Rome at the end of the 16th century.
The Reformation dealt a devastating blow to the Vatican, significantly curtailing the scope of its spiritual influence. Important European regions fell away from Catholicism. In order to recover, the Catholic Church, on the one hand, stepped up the process of the Counter-Reformation, and on the other, turned its gaze to the Eastern Orthodox territories, hoping at their expense to replenish the number of its flock. One of the results of such proselytism was the Brest Union of 1596.
Carrot and stick
The main conductor of the Vatican's interests in Eastern Europe was the Rzeczpospolita, formed as a result of the Union of Lublin in 1569 between pagan-Orthodox Lithuania and Catholic Poland. Western Christianity began to spread among the Lithuanians. But if the pagans were persuaded to direct baptism in the Catholic Church, then the Orthodox were only required to recognize the authority of the Pope - while there was no talk of a transition to the Latin rite. For those who converted to Catholicism, the authorities of the Rzeczpospolita granted the right to land ownership practically without any restrictions.
To test the strength of the convictions of Orthodox hierarchs, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth carried out on its territory one of the decisions of the Ferrara-Florentine Council of 1438-1445, equalizing the rights of the clergy of both denominations.
But soon everything changed. It was at this time that the peak of the Reformation fell, and Protestants began to fill the Rzeczpospolita. The Catholic Church was urgently required to strengthen its position. The gingerbread was replaced by a whip. The then king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Stefan Batory began to actively use his right to appoint church hierarchs, including Orthodox. In their ranks, he deliberately chose the impious laity, who were more concerned not with the flock, but with their own welfare. They aroused hostility among the Orthodox, increasing the number of supporters of the union with Catholicism.
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In 1589, Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople visited the Rzeczpospolita and marveled at the decline of local Orthodox bodies. Accusing the majority of hierarchs of debauchery, he established a rule according to which all bishops' chairs could be occupied exclusively by monks. This provoked discontent among church hierarchs in some Western Russian dioceses.
They soon renewed the tradition of local cathedrals, which had not been held for nearly 100 years. At one of them, in 1590, the hierarchs sent a request to the King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Sigismund III to accept them under the authority of the Pope, recognizing him as "the only supreme pastor and true governor of St. Peter." There was no question of readiness to accept Catholic dogmas; they were only interested in preserving their positions and protecting them from sanctions from the Patriarch of Constantinople. But this was enough for Sigismund, and in his answer he guaranteed the dioceses to preserve their ecclesiastical order and structure.
The union process began in 1595. Rome recognized for the Western Russian dioceses the preservation of the Eastern liturgy and the Church Slavonic language of divine services and guaranteed its non-interference in the appointment of bishops. But the dogmas of Catholicism still had to be accepted.
On October 6, 1596, a cathedral was opened in Brest, in which the Metropolitan of Kiev Mikhail Rogoza, as well as bishops from Lutsk, Pinsk, Polotsk and other cities, took part. Together with the papal ambassadors on October 9, they adopted the act of union. This is how the concepts of "Greek Catholicism" and "Uniates" appeared. A very important precedent for the unification of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches through the creation of a “zero option” in the form of Greek Catholic structures has emerged.
But the union did not solve the problem with the oppression of the “former Orthodox”. The national conflict escalated, during which Poles-Catholics in every possible way belittled the status of Belarusians-Catholics and Ukrainian-Catholics. To a large extent, it was this that contributed to the growth of protest sentiments, which resulted in the famous uprising of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, as a result of which the Commonwealth lost the Left-Bank Ukraine, and Rome - the opportunity to crush the Orthodox population of these territories.
Stanislav OSTROVSKY