Abstract

The history of the church, inter-confessional relations and religious policies of the state is one of the developing areas of today's historical studies. An increasing number of special historical researches, papers, articles devoted to these issues, covering different periods in the history of our country, were a proof to that. Such interest is well justified as Ukraine is a country with complex ethnical and confessional set-up. This calls for deep insight into the history of relations between different confessions in the past. The article analyses specific features of the church policies of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the four year parliament (Sejm) of 1788-1791, acts of law adopted in that period that set legal grounds for the status of the Orthodox Church in the state, and studies the interpretation of those events and documents by church historian V. Bednov. Special attention was paid to the analysis of the actions of the Polish authorities to be avoided in today's church policies or, alternatively, to be encouraged today to maintain public peace and inter-confessional dialogue in the country. In his work, V. Bednov described in details all clauses of the Resolution of the General Congregation held in Pinsk, which were later legitimised by the Polish parliament (1791) and confirmed in the special Sejm constitution. This document was intended to dramatically change the status of the Orthodox Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Yet, time was lost, and prejudices that prevented the document from being adopted without limitations became one of the factors further resulting in the disappearance of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as an independent state after the second (1793) and third (1795) partitions. These prejudices did not help to resolve controversies between Catholic, Uniate and Orthodox Christians either. The work of V. Bednov analysing the above issues was highly praised by his contemporaries. Yet, the scholar never returned to this topic in his studies, which makes this area very promising for modern researchers