Faith in God can bring not only moral but material satisfaction. This wise axiom was created by clergymen, who since time immemorial have partaken of their flock’s donations to the church, absorbing a generous portion for their secular needs. Being essentially sinful, the flock led by these moral shepherds was not able to withstand Mephistophelean temptations and did its best to benefit egotistically from religion as much as possible.
The Ukrainian aristocracy of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century was no exception from the rule. In this period religious affiliation had exceptional importance. Ethno-territorial communities had not yet reached the level of calling themselves full-fledged nations. Economic relations were also on a relatively low level. This milieu gave rise to the need to find another criterion of self- identification. The choice fell on religion, which de facto compensated for the lack of a category indicating “nation” while being the means of its assertion.
In the Ukrainian territories during the 16th and the first half of the 17th century, the Orthodox and Catholic religions were associated respectively with the Ukrainians and Poles; in other words, these notions were contextually synonymous. Since the Rzeczpospolita had incorporated Ukrainian territories, the local elite had to act in a chameleon-like fashion in the Polish manner, so as not to lose their status. At the same time they wanted to be on equal terms with the Polish nobility and enjoy the same privileges. The first act of renegacy, often formal, was to convert from one Christian creed to another.
Ukrainian historiography traditionally perceives the Ukrainian aristocracy’s apostasy in the 16th and 17th century as a general phenomenon. This thesis is confirmed by Meletii Smotrytsky in his Trenos, Or Lament of the Holy Eastern Church: “Where is that priceless carbuncle... the princely house of the Ostrozkys, which once shone over all others with the saintly gleam of its ancient faith? Where are all the other priceless stones in the crown, all those glorious houses of the Ruthenian princes, all those inestimable sapphires, precious diamonds, the princes Slutsky, Zalavsky, Zbarazky, Vyshnevetsky, Sangushko, Chortorysky, Pronsky, Ruzhynsky, Solomyretsky, Holovnynsky, Kropynsky, Masalsky, Horsky, Sokolynsky, Lukomsky, Puzyn...Khodkevych?”
The authenticity of these ideas was practically never called into question, not until recently, although refutations of these ossified views on the scope of apostasy have existed since Khmelnytsky’s time. According to Henryk Lytvyn (not to be confused with our former Parliamentary Speaker), prior to the war of liberation, 90 percent of the Ukrainian elite upheld the Orthodox (including Uniate) rite. This fact contradicts the totality of the race for social advancement and titles. Unlike the magnates, who aimed for senatorial heights, the local career of the average nobleman depended not on religious affiliation but on the “importance” of his family on the local scale of prestige. A list of names of the most renowned noblemen who occupied important posts in the provincial governments of Volyn, Kyiv, and Bratslav from the last quarter of the 16th century to the mid-17th confirms the fact that such key posts were held mostly by Orthodox, less often by Catholics, and in individual cases, by Protestants, who were mostly “our people.”
Here I must add that the princely and magnate families converted to Catholicism in order to “penetrate” the state apparatus and acquire equality and authority in their relations with Polish relatives and magnates who occupied senatorial posts. Meanwhile, almost the entire middle nobility remained Orthodox. In individual cases, the adoption of Roman Catholicism by its representatives was of little significance because magnates remained the predominant political force. In addition, the middle nobility was closer to the Orthodox people than all those “small kings,” and thus these aristocrats remained Orthodox “in their souls” even after formally converting. There were, at first glance, illogical cases when Catholics (not only the middle nobility but magnates) supported Orthodox culture. Thus, Prince Stefan Zbarazki, who started out as a Calvinist and then converted to Catholicism before his death, funded the construction of three Orthodox churches in Pidliashia. In a sharply worded speech in defense of the Orthodox Church, delivered in the Polish Sejm in 1632, Prince Krzysztof Zbarazki described the Union of Brest as a quarrel that is “inflicting wounds on the heart of our homeland.”
In 1635 Prince Adam Sanguszko, a Catholic, sent a letter to Pope Urban XVIII, offering a draft of a reconciliation agreement between the Orthodox and Uniate churches by establishing a Kyiv patriarchate that would be indirectly subordinated to Rome. These steps may be explained by the Catholics’ desire to gain support from the Ukrainian and Belarusian population and to reduce and mitigate the sharp conflict between the two confessions in order to establish peace and quiet in the state.
The Union of Brest marked an important phenomenon in the acculturation processes of the Ukrainian aristocracy; it created a symbiosis of Orthodoxy and Catholicism in the form of the Greek Catholic Church. Its main precondition was not the will of Warsaw or the Vatican but the inability of the Eastern patriarchs to exert any degree of healthy influence upon the Ukrainian church. The threats of its Latinization simply cried out for reforms to ward off the catastrophe. The bishops of the Kyiv See and secular figures alike were aware of this, and they saw the solution to the critical situation in an alliance with Rome, although they understood its format differently.
The Union turned out to be most convenient to Ukrainians, primarily church hierarchs, who wanted to bring order to their “domains” by removing secular individuals and representatives of brotherhoods from their arena of competition, in which the victor would obtain the largest degree of influence over the flock. Also, neither the Polish nor Lithuanian Catholic churches had any interest in it (according to their versions) because both believed that the newly formed Greek Catholic Church was primarily designed for the lower social strata.
Another factor that helped “implement” the policy of Polonization was the propagandistic activity of Jesuits in educational establishments through marriages. Under the influence of their Catholic wives, Ukrainian noblemen set up paradises for Catholics on their estates, creating favorable conditions not only for their own acculturation but also that of their subordinate population. Marriages were also a reliable and unconditional realization of nobiliary groups’ aspirations to expand and consolidate contacts with the “great people” in other countries. Superregional marriages (“the policy of handing out daughters and sons”) as correctly noted by Wojciech Sokolowski, increased the likelihood of political influence beyond one’s own region, ensured the exchange of information, and boosted the potential of economic partners.
Precisely because of this important factor, very often no attention was paid to a young couple’s religion, even if they belonged to different rites. Thus, Yarema Vyshnevetsky married the Polish woman Grizelda Zamojska in order to expand his circle of contacts and influences. His wife reinforced what she thought of as her husband’s “aspiration” to become a “genuine Pole.” She also “led” a whole army of Jesuits and Polish priests to the Lubni region, who became active in the local Ukrainian milieu.
Wealthy widows undertook similar missions. Living in a society with a high degree of conflict and bias toward women, they often embarked on a second marriage. Their intended husbands were representatives of various nobiliary ranks, most often young men for whom Ukrainian lands and rich widows were El Dorados, allowing them entry into a circle of distinguished and wealthy people and an opportunity to consolidate their place in this life. Thus, young noblemen found themselves under the complete control of their wives, who were quite often much older than their husbands, and if the wives were Catholic, they would influence their new husbands to convert to Roman Catholicism. Thus, widows can also be considered a factor of propaganda and dissemination of Polish culture and the Catholic religion.
Considering all of the above-mentioned factors of the exploitation of religion for personal interests for the purposes of enrichment, consolidating social status, and obtaining privileges, it may be supposed that such an extraordinarily important, at first glance, question as religion, had no importance in the 16 th and 17th centuries among the different strata of Ukrainian society, even among the defenders of Orthodoxy and Ukrainians - the Cossacks.
If one factors in the following, there are ample grounds to assert this fact. First, the lifestyle of the Zaporozhian Cossacks was well known: in turbulent times they warred with the Poles, Tatars, or Turks; in peacetime, they indulged in loose living, which included the nearly constant use of alcohol (of course, it would be absurd to accuse all those knights of the steppe of such abuses, but there’s no denying this fact).
Second, the Cossacks, who were the first and primary defenders of their people’s faith, did not uphold many canonical rites and dogmas of the Orthodox Church, including fasting periods. In view of their lifestyle and arbitrary attitude to religion, how can one consider the Cossacks “ideal” Christians? Why, then, should one criticize the nobility for its attitude to the faith of its own people if the very representatives of this ethnos, who came from its very heart, did that? In light of this, one may ask: what is religion? Is it the world view of a large group of people or a well-camouflaged slogan with which concrete individuals hide their own interests and aspirations? This is a question that will be pondered forever.
