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SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY VIEWS ON THE KHMEL'NYTS'KYI UPRISING 459ideological reason may have been the author's desire to promote"real" Catholicism rather than Uniatism. While adhering to the Uniateinterpretation of the conversion of Rus', he depicted the Greeks andtheir church — also "Catholic" in the tenth century, by his interpretation— in a negative manner. His criticism of the education and socialorigin of the Ruthenian clergymen could have been applicable to theUniates as well as to the Orthodox. The author never gives his viewson the Union of Brest, but his proposals to destroy the Ruthenianclergy and churches in the area of the revolt and to repopulate theUkraine with nobles from Masovia and Podlachia hardly seems to be aplan for propagating the Union. Rather, the proposals appear toassure the ultimate triumph of the "Lachs' " faith — Roman Catholicismof the Latin rite. The author may well have preferred to avoid theentire issue of the existence of a group of Uniate Catholic Ruthenians.It was much simpler to depict Ruthenians and their Orthodoxy as theenemy.The Discourser says a good deal that defines "Poles," "Lachs," and"Poland." At the beginning of the text the Lachs or Poles are thepeople living in a country, called Poland, which bordered on Rus'. Theauthor describes the present revolt as one of the long series of attacksby the Ruthenians on his people, the Lachs or Poles. In contrast to theRuthenians, whose polity had disappeared and whose elite was disappearing,by the seventeenth century the medieval Poles or Lachs hadbeen transformed by the expansion of their state and by the assimilationof the elites of other peoples. The concept of Poland and Poleschanges, then, in the description of the contemporary period. Incontrast to the account of the early period, when the Ruthenians aredescribed as having invaded Polska (Poland), the discussion of theseventeenth-century political entities most frequently uses theanational terms patria, ojczyzna and Respublica, Rzeczpospolita. Inthe discussion of the rebels' and Ruthenians' political treason thePolish Crown {Korona Polska) is mentioned, here meaning the abstractconcept of sovereignty rather than the territorial Crown (Kingdom)of Poland. 53 Nonetheless, the concept was associated with thenej w Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim (1596-1795)," in Pamiętnik VI Zjazdu HistorykówPolskich w Wilnie 17-20 września 1935, vol. 1 (Lviv, 1935), pp. 325-26.53Similar to but later than the Hungarian concept of the Crown of St. Stephen,the Corona Poloniae or Korona Polska came to represent the abstraction of thePolish state. After 1569 the "Korona" or Crown was used to designate theKingdom of Poland in contrast to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Before 1569there had been frequent disputes on the nature of the Polish-Lithuanian union,