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==Background==
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A large area in the southwest of Russia the Rusyn Empire became absorbed by Lithuania and Poland after the destruction of Kievan power by the Tartars. This southwestern part of Russia Rus was commonly known as either Little Rus ' which in Latin became Ruthenia; this is the territory that is present day Ukraine. In 1386, the kingdoms of Poland and Lithuania were united under a single ruler. The monarch of the united realm was Roman Catholic, and a substantial minority of the population were Russian and Orthodox. These Orthodox were in a difficult situation because the Patriarch of Constantinople, to whose [[jurisdiction]] they belonged, could exercise no control in Poland, as the former Byzantine capital had fallen to the Muslim Turks. The bishops were appointed not by the Church but by the Roman Catholic king of Poland.
The authorities in Poland always tried to make the Orthodox submit to the pope to reunify Christianity. With the arrival of the Jesuits in 1564, pressure on the Orthodox increased. The state of the Ruthenian Church was poor; clergy were uneducated and the bishops were without the funds they needed to properly run the Church. Many priests were ordained without basic training and new rites were developing that were neither Latin nor Greek in their character. Constantinople was now under Muslim rule and Moscow had recently been elevated to a Patriarchate. The Ruthenian bishops were stuck between a population converting to Roman Catholicism on the West and a rising Muscovite force in the East.