近世ポーランド・リトアニア共和国におけるルテニア 教会合同問題にみる諸階層
Ruthenia as a Component of the Early Modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: An Analysis of Varied Attitudes among Social Strata toward the Church

Summary/Abstract: The early modern composite-monarchy Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth possessed Ruthenian lands on its Eastern borderlands. Ruthenia had its historical roots in Kievan Rus, and kept the Orthodox faith within the Catholic-dominant Commonwealth. Orthodoxy (Kievan Metropolitanate) represented Ruthenia’s peculiar regionalism, while Ruthenia had never been given any administrative entity in the Commonwealth. Orthodoxy, which had been tightly connected with Ruthenian regional and ethnic identity, began to be challenged when the Orthodox higher clergy in Ruthenia declared church union with the Catholic Church (Union of Brest, 1596). The majority of the hierarchy accepted Catholic dogma and the Pope’s supremacy on condition that Eastern rites and customs be sustained, while the majority of secular nobles resisted this union. After church union, the Ruthenian Church divided into two: the Uniates and the Disuniates (Orthodox). This church union in Ruthenia and its significance have been studied mainly from three perspectives: church history (both Catholic and Orthodox), Ukrainian national history (Eastern-oriented and Western-oriented), and social structure. In this article, I examine a variety of questions arising from the Union of Brest in Ruthenia, by comparing the ways in which those belonging to different social strata attempted to answer them to satisfy their own interests. The Ruthenian nobility, the sole local group with political rights as a political nation of the Commonwealth, considered that all such confessional issues had to be solved by legal processes, that is, parliamentary activities. Since the majority of the secular Ruthenian nobility was against church union, which might threaten their privilege of freedom of faith, they supported the Orthodoxy’s rights in parliament. These activities produced results even during the reign of King Sigismund III, who was one of main promoters of the church union. When his successor Vladislaus IV was enthroned in 1632, he was so tolerant of non- Catholic faiths as to allow the Orthodox Church in Ruthenia to restore the legal status of its hierarchy. Nevertheless, this event did not resolve the religious split in Ruthenia. It only meant that both the Uniates and the Orthodoxy became legal entities in the Commonwealth. Both of the Ruthenian Eastern Churches remained as secondary religions, lower than the Roman Catholic Church.

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