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doi:10.1G)7/5000964071100151X The Western Front of the Eastern Church; Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. By Barbara Skinner. DeKaIb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009. 270 pp. $42.00 cloth.
Skinner's monograph examines confessional politics and tensions between the Uniates (Eastern-rite or Greek Catholics) and the Orthodox in the territories that today constitute Ukraine and Belarus. Skinner places this confessional divide in the broader context of European confessionaíization in the postReformation era. The study is based on a vast array of primary sources (including archival) in Latin, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian. She argues, with remarkable balance given the polemical nature of the subject and its sources, that the eighteenth century witnessed a period of politicization of confessional identity. This resulted in conversion efforts by the Polish authorities to bring the Orthodox into the Unia and reverse efforts by Russian authorities.
The Ruthenians, or Eastern Slavs of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (ancestors of today's Ukrainians and Belarusians), were predominantly Eastern Orthodox in the Middle Ages. The Commonwealth was one of the most religiously tolerant states of medieval Europe. ID the sixteenth century, however, Poland became a battleground of the Reformation and the site of vigorous confessionaíization by the post-Tridentine Catholic church. Skinner maintains that the Uniate church was created on the initiative of Ruthenians themselves in this context, some of whom felt the Orthodox church was at a disadvantage in the confessional disputes because of a lack of education and effective leadership (from Constantinople).
The Uniate church, created hi 1 596, consisted of the Orthodox who accepted subordination to Rome but kept the Eastern rite liturgy and other practices. The bishops went with the Union, but many clergy and leading...