succeeded: rejected by Moscow in 1448, it became a dead letter when the Turks
captured Constantinople in 1453. The 1596 Union, on the other hand, survived.
It was negotiated between the Vatican and the metropolitan of Kyiv and the
Ukrainian and Belarus’an bishops subordinate to him, at a time when Orthodoxy
in the Commonwealth was desperately in need of revival.
In the late sixteenth century Orthodoxy in the Commonwealth, often called
Ruthenian Orthodoxy (from the Latin root for Rus’,“Rutenes”), could not meet
the challenges of energized Protestantism and post-Tridentine Catholic Church. At
the Council of Trent (1545–63), the Catholic Church had matched Protestants by
laying out a broad plan of confessionalization. It defined the tenets of the faith,
affirming its commitment to ritual, mystery, and grace; it produced a new catech-
ism, edition of Scripture, and instructional and pietistic texts, some in vernacular; it
designed a Latin-based educational curriculum that combined modern disciplines
and language with a newly confident and assertive Catholicism; it then sent out
missionary orders to recapture Catholics across Europe, east and west. Ruthenian
Orthodoxy, on the other hand, was somnolent. Its clergy were ill-educated, it had
no schools of modern learning, its parishioners were as a rule illiterate. It offered few
intellectual or spiritual attractions to elite Ukrainians and Belarus’ans.
Ruthenian Orthodox hierarchs saw union with Rome as a way to reenergize their
faith. Their goal was not doctrinal but practical; they wanted to strengthen
hierarchs’control over parish life and lesser clergy; they wanted to improve pastoral
education; they wanted their bishops to have the same political status (notably
membership in the Senate) and their priests to have the same tax-free and judicial
privileges that their Polish Catholic counterparts enjoyed. They proposed to accept
the supremacy of the Pope in return for keeping aspects of their practice (married
priests, eastern Orthodox rites for sacraments, Slavonic language for liturgy, com-
munion in two kinds). For the few issues of dogma that divided the Churches, they
turned to the Florence-Ferrara accords for precedent, proposing a compromise
interpretation of the“filioque”controversy (the Latin Church had added this phrase
to indicate that the Holy Spirit proceeded“from the Son,”and the Unionists were
willing to concede“through the Son”) and demurring on the new Catholic concept
of purgatory. They rejected some recent innovations in Catholicism, such as the
Corpus Christi holyday and some new saints. In thefinal agreement, however, the
Vatican insisted that Ruthenians accept all the dogma of the Council of Trent in
return for preserving their rites. Pushed to the wall, most Ruthenian bishops
accepted the Union in 1596. King Sigismund III embraced it, declaring it the
sole Orthodox institution in the Commonwealth. Orthodox property was confis-
cated and priests were pressured to accept the Union. Traditional Orthodoxy was
banned.
Reaction was furious. Two Orthodox bishops in western Ukraine refused to
agree and a powerful Orthodox nobleman, Prince Konstantyn Ostrozky, led the
protest in the Parliament and courts of the Commonwealth, joined not by fellow
noblemen (many were converting to Catholicism) but by townsmen. Confratern-
ities in Lviv, Kyiv, and other cities founded schools and printing presses to defend
their faith. Zaporozhian Cossacks provided military support; Orthodox hierarchs
Maintaining Orthodoxy 421