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 Pokuttya in the 11th–18st centuries. The above paper refutes the thesis common in Soviet and, at times, in Ukrainian history concerning the alleged forcible “catholicization” of the local population during the period of gradual incorporation of these lands by kings of Poland. The Authors provide the timelines of the Western Church influence on Galicia, and at the same time on Pokuttya. The systematic inclusion of the above lands under the Polish rule didn’t happened 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 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 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