LEGAL POLICY OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE RELATING TO THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE UKRAINIAN PROVINCES AT THE END OF XVIII – THE FIRST HALF OF ХIХ CENTURY

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the tsarist legal policy aimed at limiting the influence of the Catholic Church on the population of Ukrainian lands and strengthening the position of the Russian Orthodox Church, which supported the autocracy.

Attention is drawn to the fact that the starting point in the legislative restriction of the rights of Catholics was in 1794, when Catherine II issued an order declaring Orthodoxy de facto proclaimed state religion. In the summer of 1796 the local authorities obliged the clergy of the Catholic Church to swear allegiance to the Russian Empire. A number of measures were taken to limit the land holdings of Catholic monasteries.

It was noted that in a number of royal decrees, the organizational foundations of the management of church establishments, the authority of the archbishop and bishops, monastic overlords, and ordinary monks were regulated in detail. Freedom of movement was restricted for Catholic monks. They were strictly forbidden not only to move from one diocese to another, but also to leave one temporarily without extreme monastic necessity and only with the personal permission of the bishop. The priests were strictly forbidden from touching the sermon on political issues, especially those concerning the Russian government.

It is emphasized that during the late 18th - first half of the 20th century. the imperial government has shown a constant desire to limit to a maximum the influence of the Catholic Church on the population of Ukrainian lands, especially those where its supporters made up a large percentage. At the same time, the authorities were not too concerned with the freedom of religion of those subjects whose religious views were different from the official Orthodox ideology of the state. For Tsar, the expediency of Russification consisted in its conformity with the task of ensuring national-state security in its imperial sense. For autocracy, the Catholic denominators saw such a force that could pose a potential threat by distracting from the Orthodox Church those who had once departed from Catholicism, which could give rise in the future to unrest, primarily among the population of the Right Bank. This is, to a large extent, the explanation of the tsarist policy aimed at strengthening the position of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was the pillar of the autocracy, and in the future - to create a mono-religious space in the whole territory of Ukraine.