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Nasza Przeszłość

Vol. 91 (1999): Our Past

Articles

The admission of a Uniate metropolitan to the Senate in 1790. A study of the religious policy of the Four-Year Sejm

  • Kamil Paździor
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52204/np.1999.91.241-267  [Google Scholar]
Published: 2023-11-26

Abstract

The history of initiatives aimed at letting the Uniate and Orthodox bishops have their seats in the Senate goes back to the Union of Brześć in 1596. In the Polish Commonwealth the hierarchical organization of each of the two churches was comparable in terms of structure and importance to that of the Roman Catholic Church. However, it was only at the Great Sejm (1788-1792) that the Uniates, led by the Metropolitan Bishop of Smogorzewski and the Metropolitan Bishop of Rostock, could expect the actual fulfillment of their old promises. The wave of unrest in Poland's eastern voivodeships and the general reform of the Polish Church's finances brought the problems of the Uniate community to the fore. Moreover, as the Great Sejm's determination to resist Russian pressure grew, the prospects for the acceptance of Uniates into the Polish political system had never looked better. The reformers, it must be emphasized, were inspired by the ideas of the Polish Enlightenment, which fully recognized the role of religion and religion in institutions in the task of reforming society and the state. The problem of the political representation of the Uniates was finally solved in a bill drafted in 1790 under the influence of Roman Catholic bishops. However, its provisions did not go beyond granting one seat in the Senate to a Uniate metropolitan bishop. The Metropolitan Bishop of Rostock was right when, in his maiden speech delivered on September 9, 1790, he stated that his accession to the Senate opened a new chapter in the history of the Uniate Church.

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