GREEK CATHOLICS IN AMERICA 191 



litsa, said to have been invented, or, rather, adapted by St. 

 Cyril from the Greek alphabet, together with some additional 

 letter of his own invention. It consists of forty-three letters 

 of archaic form as used in the church books, but has been al- 

 tered and reduced in modern Russian and Ruthenian to thirty- 

 five letters. In the year 879 Pope John VIII formally autho- 

 rized the use of the Slavonic language forever in the Mass and 

 in the whole liturgy and offices of the Church, according to the 

 Greek Rite, and its use has been continued ever since by the 

 Catholic and the Orthodox (schismatic) Greeks of the Slavic 

 races. This is the language used in the Slushebnik (Missal), 

 Trebnik (Ritual), Chasoslov (Book of Hours), and other 

 church books of the Ruthenian Greek Catholics in America. 



After the schism of Constantinople ( 1054) most of the Rus- 

 sians became estranged from the unity of the Church. In 1595 

 the Russian bishops of Lithuania and Little Russia determined 

 to return to unity with the Holy See, and held a council at 

 Brest-Litovsk, at which a decree of union was adopted, and 

 where they chose two of their number, Ignatius Potzey and 

 Cyril Terletzki, to go to Rome and take the oath of submission 

 to the Pope. They declared that they desired to return to 

 the full unity of the Church as it existed before the schism of 

 Photius and Caerularius, so as to have in Russia one united 

 Catholic Church again. No change in their rites or their cal- 

 endar was required by Rome, but the whole of the ancient 

 Greek Liturgy, service and discipline (excepting a few schis- 

 matic saints' days and practices) was to go on as before. In 

 December, 1595, Clement VIII solemnly ratified the union of 

 the two Churches in the Bull "Magnus Dominus." On October 

 6, 1596, the union between the Eastern and Western Churches 

 was proclaimed and ratified in the Russian part of the King- 

 dom of Poland. A large number of the Russian bishops im- 

 mediately went over to the union. In Chelm the Russian 

 Bishop Zbiruiski led the way with his whole diocese, and his 

 successor, Methodius Terletzki, was a valiant champion of the 

 Uniat Church. This Greek Uniat Church even produced a 

 martyr for the Faith, St. Josaphat, Archbishop of Polotzk, 

 who was slain by the Orthodox partisans in 1633. In Galicia, 

 however, the union was slower. While priests and congrega- 

 tions became Uniat, the Bishops of Przemysl and Lemberg stood 

 out for nearly a century. But on June 23, 1691, Innocent Vin- 



