King Ladislas II Jogaila of Poland, Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania and the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Church Union

Abstract

The story of Christian disunity is a story which was never supposed to happen but which came to pass anyway. This chapter focuses on King Ladislas II Jogaila and Grand Duke Vytautas the Great. It aims to demonstrate that the rulers of the grand duchy of Lithuanian did not pursue a consistent religious policy. The life experience and day-to-day routine of rulership played an important role when the Polish and Lithuanian rulers, Jogaila and Vytautas, sought to play a role in solving the perennial problem of church union. Jogaila and Vytautas were not alone in being more open to the Orthodox Church and its believers than many other Roman Catholic rulers. A case in point is the Hungarian king Sigismund of Luxemburg. Following in the footsteps of his father Charles IV, he advocated for equal value of both Latin and Greek rites and proved instrumental in paving the way for the idea of unity of faith without uniformity of rite.