Union of Churches

a plan for the unification of the Orthodox and Catholic churches on the condition that the former recognize the primacy of the pope while maintaining its own rituals and conducting services in the vernacular.

In the 13th century, a union was sought not only by the papacy, which thereby hoped to subordinate the Orthodox Church to its authority, but also by the Byzantine emperors, who sought to obtain aid from the papacy in combating the numerous enemies of Byzantium, especially the Seljuk Turks. Despite the opposition of the majority of the Orthodox clergy, the Byzantine emperor concluded a union at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274. The union, however, was not accepted in Byzantium either by the clergy or the populace, and it was condemned by the Council of Constantinople in 1285. Another union was concluded in Florence in 1439, but it was rejected by the Council of Jerusalem in 1443 and by subsequent councils of the Orthodox Church.

After the fall of Byzantium, the papacy tried in vain to incline the Russian state toward a union of churches. With the help of the government of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the papacy succeeded in forcing the Union of Brest of 1596 on the Ukrainian and Byelorussian peoples and, with the help of the Hungarian feudal lords, in introducing the Union of Uzhgorod of 1649 into Transcarpathia and what is now Czechoslovakia; in 1699 the union was extended to the Orthodox inhabitants of Transylvania. The Union of Brest was officially dissolved in 1946; in Transylvania it was annulled in 1948, in Transcarpathia (USSR) in 1949, and in Czechoslovakia in 1950.