Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/127

112 different factions, and each claiming ecclesiastical sovereignty, maintained their independence of Moscow.

The Russian patriarchs appointed guardians of the see of Kiev, but their authority was ignored.

To heal these divisions, and to settle the question of supremacy by an authoritative decision, reference was made to the Byzantine patriarch. The ecclesiastical dispute was decided simultaneously with the pacification of the Ukraine under the Hetman Samuelovitch, and its cession, with Kiev, to Russia by John Sobiesky, in 1685, as the price of her neutrality in his wars with the Turks. A formal decree from Constantinople united the Orthodox Churches of Russia and Poland under the see of Moscow, and terminated their separation of two centuries and a half.

This auspicious event was, however, followed by unfortunate and unforeseen consequences to the Polish establishment. Shorn of the comparative independence it had so long enjoyed, and insufficiently protected by Russia, it gradually lost energy and vitality, and yielded to the surrounding pressure. The government, jealous of any control by a foreign pontiff over its dioceses, endeavored to supplant Orthodox prelates by others of the Catholic or Uniate creeds. Its efforts were crowned with success, and eventually but a single Orthodox bishop remained in the realm. From the people, deprived of their spiritual advisers and exposed to unremitting and persistent persecution, nearly every trace of Orthodoxy disappeared, save among the peasantry of the more remote districts.

In Russia, meanwhile, the absence of a firm and settled government, and the disorder consequent upon the strife of rival factions greatly facilitated the growth and development of religious dissensions among the people.