THE BULWARK OF CHRISTENDOM 135
The ceremonial Coronation of the Matka Boska at Czestochowa as 'Queen of
Poland' in 1717, the year of the Silent Sejm, was a clear sign that the Roman
Catholic Church was determined to keep its hold over the masses in spite of the
subjection of the country to Russian political interests.
In this same period, devotional literature recovered its role in Polish culture,
countermanding the more obviously secular trends of the Renaissance. Polish
translations of medieval Latin apochrypha and hagiography, especially
concerning the life of St. Adalbert (Wojciech), did much to popularize the ver-
nacular language; whilst Piotr Skarga's Zywoty swietych (Lives of the Saints,
1579) competed with Kochanowski's Polish Psalter published in the same year
for the accolade of the best-known and best-loved Polish works of the succeed-
ing centuries.
The predicament of the Orthodox community was particularly problemat-
ical. In Poland, the Orthodox inhabited the northern flanks of the Carpathians
as far west as Sanok and Krosno. In Red Ruthenia, annexed in 1340, and in the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, they represented the dominant element. In the
united Republic, they counted for roughly forty per cent of the total population.
They belonged to the ancient Orthodox dioceses of Kiev and Nowogrodek.
Yet the Orthodox did not live at peace, least of all among themselves. From
1453, when the Patriarchate of Constantinople fell into Ottoman hands, they
became the constant prey of politically interested parties. On the one side, the
Tsars of Muscovy extended claims of universal patronage. On the other side,
the Roman hierarchy saw hopes of ending the Schism. The result was constant
conflict. In the sixteenth century, after a brief dalliance with Rome under the
Cardinal-Metropolitan Isidore and his successors, the Metropolitans of Kiev
had returned to their former allegiance to Constantinople. The attempts of the
papal legate Antoni Possevini in the years 1581-3 to re-establish Roman control
over the eastern church, rebounded to his discomfiture. In 1589, Tsar Feodor,
acting in concert with Patriarch Jeremiah of Constantinople, created a separate
Patriarchate of Moscow, whose pastoral pretensions spread far beyond the
bounds of the Muscovite state. The Republic's Orthodox magnates, accus-
tomed to administer clerical patronage and church property alike, felt their
position threatened from all sides. In particular, Prince Konstanty Vazyl
Ostrogski (d. 1608), Palatine of Kiev, whose theological academy at Ostrorog
was leading an important revival in Orthodox life and had published the first
printed Bible in Church Slavonic, was disposed to submit neither to Rome, nor
to Constantinople, nor to Moscow. Like most of his co-religionists, he wanted
to be left in peace. He was supported by Prince Andre Kurbsky, who had settled
in Volhynia in 1567, and applied himself among other things to devotional
work. But the issue was forced by the Orthodox bishops. Resentful of the taxes
demanded by Constantinople, and of the autonomy granted to the bratstva or
secular 'brotherhoods', and fearful of the activities of the Patriarch of Moscow,
who was systematically undermining their authority, they made common cause
with their Roman colleagues. Headed by their Metropolitan, Michal Rahoza,