HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

178 FRANK E. SYSYNRus' with the lands that shared common laws, privileges, and administrativepractices.In his votum Kysil selected a designation of Rus' that emphasizedlegal-territorial rather than historical-cultural factors. Hence, he outlinedthe grievances of the nobility of the annexed lands as an infringementof the incorporation charters and pointed again to their guaranteethat the nobles of these lands had accepted incorporation as "free[men] to free [men]." 28 His characterization of the incorporation as anagreement between the Sarmatian Ruthenians of the incorporationlands and the Sarmatian Poles of the Kingdom of Poland manifestedhis legal-territorial definition of Rus'. Among "Sarmatian Poles" in1569 were many Ruthenian and Orthodox nobles of the westernUkrainian lands. Kysil chose to ignore these Ruthenians, though, aswe shall see later, he took them into account during his explication ofgrievances. At the same time, he chose to label the entire nobility ofthe incorporation lands as Sarmatian Ruthenians, regardless of theirdescent and religion. Kysil's territorial definitions of the Ruthenianssupports the observations of Viacheslav Lypyns'kyi that the territorialfactor was so strong in seventeenth-century Ukraine that RomanCatholic inhabitants were in some contexts referred to as "Rus' of theRoman rite." 29 While this use of Rus' has been generally recognized byscholars for the Ruthenian palatinate, it has largely been ignored forthe incorporation lands.The first grievance that Kysil took up in his votum indicated thatdespite his emphasis on the legal-territorial aspect of Rus' as the fourannexed palatinates, he also saw Rus' as a cultural-religious communityliving in other areas of the Commonwealth. Such disparatedefinitions of Rus' were inevitable in any discussion of the persecutionof the Orthodox church, a problem not confined to the incorporationlands. The Orthodox issue had been debated at almost all Diets afterthe Union of Brest. The steadily weakening position of Orthodoxnobles in the western Ukrainian lands and Belorussia placed theburden of defense on the nobles of the incorporation lands. Althoughthe Orthodox church throughout the Commonwealth had beengranted privileges both before and after the Union of Brest, Kysilfocused on the incorporation charters of 1569 as the guarantor of2829Volumina legum, 2: 753, 760.Lipiński, Z dziejów Ukrainy, p. 99.