Orthodox brotherhoods

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Orthodox brotherhoods are communities for lay Orthodox people. They advocate the spread of the Orthodox faith.

Kievan Rus

In Kievan Rus there were brotherhoods (братчины) in individual churches, for example in Novgorod (1134), Pskov , Staraya Russa and Polotsk (1159).

Poland-Lithuania

Privileges of the Brotherhood of Lwów by Patriarch Joachim V of Antioch from 1586 as a model for the legal statutes of other brotherhoods
Printing press of the Brotherhood of Lwów, first half of the 17th century

In the Kingdom of Poland there were lay communities in individual places from the 15th century. A community of citizens in Lwów who had rights to a church was first mentioned in 1469 .

The oldest Orthodox brotherhood in Poland was the brotherhood in Lwów , mentioned in 1542. In the years that followed, communities emerged in other cities. Their aim was above all to strengthen the Orthodox denomination against the influences of the Catholic Church and the very active Jesuits, as well as against reformatory tendencies. There is little historical information from this time about support for the sick, the needy and the elderly.

The brotherhoods had representatives in the Sejm in Warsaw and in the Synods of the Ruthenian Orthodox Church in Poland-Lithuania. They became bitter opponents of the Brest Union of 1596 and acted very actively against the new United Church . The brotherhoods established schools in which students were taught Church Slavonic , Greek and Orthodox theology. Some brotherhoods ran printing houses that distributed polemical writings and liturgical books.

In the course of the 17th century the importance of the brotherhoods declined under constant pressure from the United Church and the Polish King. Some converted to the United Church.

Austria-Hungary

With the Josephine reforms of 1788, the Orthodox brotherhoods in Galicia were dissolved.

Russian Empire

Since 1701, the activity of brotherhoods in Russia has been made considerably more difficult by the church policy of Tsar Peter the Great .

Since the 19th century, new brotherhoods have sprung up in many villages and towns. Since 1864 it has been possible to form supra-regional Orthodox communities.

Brotherhoods

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