That’s probably why Josaphat met a former Calvinist.Īnother important historical event that remains relevant even today occurred in 1595-96: the Union of Brest. Protestantism - particularly Calvinism - won a slight toehold among the nobility in Poland in the 16th century, but the Jesuits led an effective Counter-Reformation that led most of the noble class back to Catholicism. The Commonwealth itself was religiously and ethnically diverse: Poland and Lithuania itself were primarily Latin-Rite Catholic, but the further east one went in Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian areas, Orthodoxy predominated. In contrast, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was, as historian Janusz Tazbir described it, “a state without stakes.” Religious toleration existed in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and many sought refuge there from religious strife elsewhere in Europe. By 1600, the German principalities would be in the Thirty Years’ War, England would have gone through three versions of “Reformation” and one Counter-Reformation, and was preparing for the upheaval of Scottish Presbyterianism in the form of Puritanism that would lead to the English Civil War. The 1500s and 1600s were a time of religious dislocation in Europe. That encounter would set Josaphat on his path. In Vilnius, he met a former Calvinist, Josyf Rutsky, who had converted to the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church. His parents sent him to Vilnius, today the capital of Lithuania, as an apprentice to a merchant. He got most of his religious education from the breviary he could now read, since local Orthodox clergy rarely preached. The young man showed talent, learning to read Church Slavonic. Josaphat was born in Volodymyr, now a city in western Ukraine not far from the present-day eastern border of Poland, to an Orthodox family. As the map shows, much of the region that is today five separate countries - Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and parts of Russia - were united under the Polish-Lithuanian Crown. Josaphat was killed in the northeastern quadrant of what on today’s map is Belarus. Given Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine, it’s time to fix that.īefore we talk about him, take a look at this map, which shows something of Poland’s borders in Josaphat’s day superimposed on a map of today’s Europe. 1580-1623) is perhaps not well-known to many American Catholics. Though he is honored in the Roman Calendar by an obligatory memorial, St.
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