The Ruthenian Uniate Church (Belarusian: Руская уніяцкая царква|Ruskaja unijackaja carkva; Ukrainian: Руська унійна церква|Rus'ka uniyna tserkva; Latin: Ecclesia Ruthena unita; Polish: Ruski Kościół Unicki) was a particular church of the Catholic Church in the territory of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was created in 1595/1596 by those clergy of the Eastern Orthodox Church who subscribed to the Union of Brest. In the process, they switched their allegiances and jurisdiction from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople to the Holy See.
The church had a single metropolitan territory — the Metropolis of Kiev, Galicia and all Ruthenia. The formation of the church led to a high degree of confrontation among Ruthenians, such as the murder of Archeparch Josaphat Kuntsevych in 1623. Opponents of the union called church members "Uniates," though Catholic documents today no longer use the term due to its perceived negative overtones.[1]
Kievan Rus' is an ecclesiastical and cultural description of the eastern Rus' lands during the high Middle Ages. The Greek and Latin equivalents of Rus' were Ῥῶς ('Rhos'), Ruscia and Ruthenia. It had been an empire rather than a nation state since it had many principalities and some non-Slavic people. By the time of the Union of Brest, these names covered all the Eastern Slav peoples and lands, regardless of whether they belonged politically to the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Crown of Poland or the Crown of Hungary. The Rus' accepted Christianity in its Byzantine form at the same time as the Poles accepted it in its Latin form; Lithuanians largely remained pagan to the late Middle Ages before their nobility embraced the Latin form upon the political union with the Poles. The eastward expansion of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had been facilitated by amicable treaties and inter-marriages of the nobility when faced with the external threat of the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus'. Ethnically, the Catholics of the Commonwealth were Poles, Germans and Lithuanians.
During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, both the Catholic Church in the Commonwealth and the Ruthenian Church underwent a period of decay. The Ruthenian Church was the church of a people without statehood. The Poles considered the Ruthenians as a conquered people. Over time, the Lithuanian military and political ascendancy did away with the Ruthenian autonomies. The disadvantageous political status of the Ruthenian people also affected the status of their church and undermined her capacity for reform and renewal. Furthermore, they could not expect support from the Mother Church in Constantinople or from their co-religionists in Moscow. Thus the Ruthenian church was in a weaker position than the Catholic Church in the Commonwealth.
Both the Catholic and the Ruthenian churches suffered from the policy of nominations to higher benefices by the King, the indifference of the nobility, and a low state of clerical education and discipline.[2] The monarchs used nominations to bishoprics as rewards to faithful civil servants.[3] After Metropolitan Joseph II Soltan (1509–1522), the names of the great families are missing among the nominees to the bishoprics. While the great families could have obtained the nominations had they cared, since they did not, the nominees came from the poorer gentry and from the burghers.[4] Prelates continued to live the style of life they were used to as laymen: they took part in raids and carried on trade and money lending. The Ruthenian Church had no cathedral chapters to make up for the deficiencies of the bishops.[5]
The level of education of the Ruthenian peasantry had been falling during the sixteenth century.[6] This was one of the main reasons for ecclesiastical decay and one of the impediments to renewal. For the common people, their religion was ritualism; attendance was often limited to baptism and church burial.
See main article: Hniliczki affair. Poles regarded Ruthenians as a conquered people. As such, Ruthenians became a second class people in society, their culture backward compared to the other ethnic groups in the Commonwealth. This delayed the church in recovering from the predations of the Reformation. While the Ruthenian nobility had equal rights with the Polish nobility, by the fifteenth century their ranks had been thinned by war and waves of emigration to the east. The Poles who took their place came to control the sejm. If the Ruthenian aristocracy wanted to profit from its equality, it had to become Catholic and Polish. Intermarriage played a great role in the assimilation of the Ruthenian aristocracy; usually the Catholic faith prevailed. As a result, few Orthodox aristocratic families were left in Galicia or Podilia.[7] By the second half of the sixteenth century, Ruthenian nobility had little reason to feel discriminated against. They had kept their wealth, had access to the highest offices, and were socially accepted as equals with the Catholic nobility. By absorbing the Polish form of Western culture, they were also the first to be lost for the Ruthenian people. With the loss of the elite, the Ruthenian Church and people increasingly lost leadership, representation in the government, and benefactors for church-sponsored programmes.
While the Catholic Church in the Commonwealth had successfully resisted the appeal of the Reformation, the Ruthenian church continued to decay. The Ruthenian elite looked externally for aid. The Patriarch in Constantinople could send neither aid nor teachers. Protestant aid was unacceptable to many of them. They therefore turned to the Pope in the hope that he would curb the excesses of the Polish Catholics against Catholic Ruthenians. In this way, they also hoped that acceptance of the Ruthenian hierarchy into Catholic communion would also lead to acceptance of the Ruthenian elite into the political structure of the Commonwealth.
At the time of the negotiations for union there were eight Ruthenian bishoprics in the Commonwealth:[8]
Later, the Archeparchy of Smolensk was erected.Carpathian Rus' did not belong to the Commonwealth.
Following the partitions, its successor states treated the Uniate Church differently. This is a list of eparchies that followed upon the partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1772–1795):
A similar situation continued in the Second Polish Republic of 1918 to 1939. Suppressed in the Soviet Union from 1946, the Ruthenian Uniate Church survived to become the core of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church from 1989. Today, the metropolis is styled the Major Archeparchy of Kyiv–Galicia.
Metropolitans of Kyiv, Galicia and all Ruthenia:[9]
There are three successor entities:
Today, the Ruthenian Uniate Church has two ecclesiastical jurisdictions: the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church. The Ukrainian jurisdiction operates in the following countries under a metropolitan bishop:
It operates in the following countries as eparchies under the care of the Major Archbishop :
It operates in the following countries as an exarchate, directly responsible to the Holy See: