Educational activities of Orthodox brotherhoods on the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (end 16th – first half of the 17th century)

Abstract

The article offers a brief outline of the educational activity of brotherhoods in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the period from the end of the 16th century to mid 17th century based on the analysis of available studies. The aim of this paper is pointing at the main directions of brotherhoods’ activities. Their members lived in a very peculiar context, in which various trends clashed and intermingled. Unlike in Muscovy, Christians of the Byzantine-Slavic rite in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had to exist in a context of competing confessions and churches, and lacked a single unifying centre. In this situation secular people took action: magnates and brotherhoods proved particularly active in this field. Brotherhoods opened new schools with programmes combining new educational and scholarly trends with traditional religious values and the specific cultural heritage of Slavia Orthodoxa. Brotherhoods founded printing-houses and carried on publishing projects. They published textbooks for schools, liturgical books, homilies, caring for the education both of the youth and of the clergy.

Keywords

• church history
• orthodox church in the polish-lithuanian commonwealth
• uniate church
• church brotherhoods
• brotherhoods’ schools
• brotherhoods’ printing-houses
• book printing in the polish-lithuanian commonwealth
• confessional situation in the polish-lithuanian commonwealth
• cultural activity