Codrul Cosminului (Dec 2017)
The Catholicization of Pokutia: Ethno-Confessional and Historical Myth of the Ukrainian Historiography
Abstract
This article is devoted to the issue of the so-called “Catholicism” (ritus latini) on the territory of ethnographic and historical region of Pokutia in the 11th–18st centuries. It refutes the thesis common in Soviet and, at times, in Ukrainian historiography concerning the forcible “catholicization” of the local population during the period of gradual incorporation of these lands by the Kingdom of Poland. The authors provide the timelines of the Western Church influence on Galicia, and at the same time on Pokutia. The systematic inclusion of the above lands under the Polish rule didn’t happen until 1531, after the victory over Moldavian troops in the Battle of Obertyn. The process of the so-called “catholicization” lasted until the first partition of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1772, when the new Austrian administration, led by Emperor Joseph II, liquidated monastic centers of all ranks due to the widespread 18th century ideas of Enlightenment.
