БРЕСТСЬКА УНІЯ ТА ПИТАННЯ ЗБЕРЕЖЕННЯ УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ РЕЛІГІЙНОЇ ІДЕНТИЧНОСТІ
THE UNION OF BREST AND THE ISSUE OF PRESERVING UKRAINIAN RELIGIOUS IDENTITY

Summary/Abstract: The topic of the Brest Church Union of 1596 has always been the subject of disputes, accusations and manipulations. In those disputes, as a rule, established stamps and stereotypes were used, which often depended on the ethnic and religious affi liation of the opponents or the state ideology. A signifi cant part of ancient polemical literature devoted to religious disputes was written precisely for the reason of fi ghting or defending the Union of Berestia, or rather that form of church life that arose as a result of this act and by its very existence posed a real or imagined threat to the aspirations, hopes and plans of certain circles of infl uence. The Union of Brest led to the emergence of the Uniate Church on the territory of the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1700, the Lviv diocese joined the Greek Catholic Church, and in 1702 – the Lutsk diocese, which completed the process of the transition of the Orthodox dioceses of the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth to Greek Catholicism. As a result of the union, there was a split in the Kyiv Metropolitanate into Uniates (Greek Catholics) and opponents of the union with the Roman Catholic Church. The ruling circles and the Catholic nobility of the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth, led by King Sigismund III, supported the Uniates, relegating Orthodoxy to the position of a denomination persecuted by the authorities. From the point of view of the authorities of the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Union of Brest contributed to the weakening of the claims of the Moscow Patriarchate on the lands of the South- Westernof Russia and the spiritual ties of the Orthodox in the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth with the Moscow State. The signing of the Union of Brest led to a long and bloody struggle between the followers of the two faiths in the West Russian lands. For a quarter of a century, the Orthodox Commonwealth of Nations, which did not accept the Union of Brest, remained without a metropolitan. The Orthodox Kyiv Metropolitanate was restored only in 1620, when Orthodox Kyiv Metropolitans again began to bear the title of Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Russia. In 1633Metropolitan Peter Mohyla managed to achieve recognition of the Orthodox Church by the state, but later discrimination against Orthodoxy in the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth again (a dissident issue). Of course, against this background there was the question of preserving the Ukrainian Orthodox identity.

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