Poland-Lithuania's Flickering Sovereignty and the Question of Orthodox Christians' Oaths, 1780s-1790s

• In Event: Between Rome, Vienna, Warsaw, and Moscow: Confessional Loyalties and Modern Sovereignty in Central Europe, 1765-1914

Abstract

This paper summarizes the introduction of the oaths of allegiance required in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the Orthodox clergymen: Bishop Viktor Sadkovskyi’s 1787 Tulchyn act and the 1789 oath performed by all priests of Orthodox confession. It presents this procedural innovation as a hybrid of ancien-régime confessional policies and of more modern concerns about the sovereignty of the feeble Polish-Lithuanian polity, characteristic for the Age of Reform and Revolution.

Author

• Tomasz Hen-Konarski, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland) / HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities (Hungary)