Ut unum sint: Constantinople and Rome in Ruthenian Historical Narrations of the Seventeenth Century

As it is broadly known, the history of the Church began to be one of the most potent elements in Early-modern controversial literature. Ruthenian polemical writings were not an exception; both Uniate and Orthodox authors broadly used facts of Church history considering themselves as the continuators of the Kyivan Christianity. Understanding historical narrative as a logically consistent sequence of events with implicit causal relations, this article presents the analysis of the appearance and transformation of two important historical narrations: on a Great Schism and on the Unity of Florence. Both historical narratives were written with polemical purposes and are closely connected with each other. Playing with names, dates, and sources, Ruthenian early-modern intellectuals in more or less skillful ways tried to give a historical overview of the relations between Rus, Constantinople, and Rome.The medieval Byzantine and Slavic polemical traditions were not reliable anymore. A different attitude to historiographical authorities provoked the shift of the hierarchy of the quoted sources. Ruthenian tradition, represented by the hagiographical texts and Russian Chronograph, is mostly quoted by the Uniate authors, not by orthodox ones. For them it is the most important historical proof that their own historical choice — the Union with Rome — does not contradict but continues the faith of their fathers: Kyiv metropolitans of the pre-Mongolian era.