136 ANTEMURALEby the exarch Cyril Terlecki, and by Hipation Potij, formerly Castellan and now
Bishop of Brest, they addressed a letter to the Pope. It was a request in the name
of all the faithful to be admitted to the Church of Rome. On 23 December 1595,
in St. Peter's, Clement VIII celebrated the granting of their request with a solemn
mass. Meanwhile, at home, resistance mounted. When the joint Synod of the
two Orthodox provinces assembled at Brest on 8 October 1596, the bishops
were no longer unanimous. Rahoza read the Papal Bull ending the Schism, and
led a procession to the Roman church of the Blessed Virgin. He then received a
delegation of Roman clergy to the Orthodox church of St. Nicholas, and lis-
tened to a joyful sermon from Peter Skarga, the king's Jesuit confessor. The dis-
sentient bishops gathered in a private house elsewhere in the town. Prince
Ostrogski arrived with an army of priests, monks, and soldiers, in time to hear
the archimandrites of Lavra Piecharskaya, of Pinsk and of Suprasl join the
envoys from Constantinople in cursing all those who had 'betrayed Our
Mother, the Greek Church'. The day ended with mutual excommunications.
From the Roman point of view, the Synod of Brest confirmed the Act of Union.
From the point of view of the Orthodox Church in Constantinople and
Moscow, it was an act of disunion.^13
Religious grievances mingled with social and political ones. The Cossacks of
the Dnieper did not recognize the Union of Brest. Nalewajko's Rebellion in 1596
was the first of many to justify itself in terms of defending the Orthodox faith
against Catholic subversion. Nalewajko, executed in Warsaw as a political trai-
tor, was remembered in the Ukraine as a religious martyr.
Thus, the Orthodox remained divided. That part of the clergy who elected for
the Union kept their Slavonic rite, their separate hierarchy, and their right to
marry: but they admitted the Roman doctrine of the Eucharist, the supremacy
of the Pope, and the discipline of the Vatican's Curia. Members of this 'Greek-
Catholic Confession of the Slavonic Rite' were known in the Republic as unici
or 'uniates'. In the eyes of Constantinople they were schismatics, and of
Moscow, traitors. Those who dissociated themselves from the Union were
known in Poland as dysunici or 'disuniates'. They belonged to the 'Greek
Orthodox Confession of the Slavonic Rite' and were counted together with the
Protestants among the dissidentes in religione. For almost forty years they were
denied any form of official recognition.
Turmoil amongst the Orthodox, first provoked by the Union of Brest, con-
tinued unabated. Bitter emotions fostered in this period by religious strife
undoubtedly sharpened political conflict in succeeding years. Uniates battled
disuniates, as both struggled to preserve their independence from the Roman
Catholic establishment. Their condition was vividly portrayed in Meletius
Smotrycki's contemporary Lament for the Oriental Church of 1610. At first, in
the south-eastern provinces, a series of regular battles took place, the so-called
'Wars of the Deacons' in which the uniate and disuniate clergy disputed control
of the offices and property of the Orthodox Church. In the north-eastern
provinces, a similar conflict reached its height when the Uniate Archbishop of