Christianity in Ukraine dates to the earliest centuries of the apostolic church when, according to the legends, it was preached by St. Andrew in parts of the modern territory of Ukraine. The acceptance of Byzantine Christianity as a dominant religion in the area, as well as a state religion, was marked by 988 mass Baptism of Kiev by a ruler of Kievan Rus, Grand Prince (Velikiy Kniaz') Vladimir I of Kiev, often referred to as St. Vladimir or St. Volodymyr (in Ukrainian). After the great East-West Schism that soon followed, the territory of Kievan Rus remained with the Byzantine Patriarch's Eastern Orthodoxy. While most of the Christians in Ukraine were and still are Orthodox, since 1598 an Eastern Rite Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), which claimed varying with time but always a significant membership in western Ukraine, is in full communion with the Catholic see. Still, Eastern Orthodoxy was a traditional religion in Ukraine and at some points in history was inseparable from most Ukrainians' national self-identity. The political jurisdiction of Orthodox churches in Ukraine changed several times in its history. Currently, three Orthodox church bodies coexist, and often compete, in Ukraine. Only one of them, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, autonomous under the Patriarch of Moscow, has a
canonical standing (legal recognition) in Eastern Orthodoxy world-wide, and operates in communion with the other Eastern Orthodox Churches. However, since the differences within Ukrainian Orthodoxy are purely political rather than doctrinal, this situation is expected to be resolved at some future point with a single Ukrainian Orthodox Church to unite the Orthodox Christians in the nation.
St. Andrew is thought to have preached on the southern borders of Ukraine, along the Black Sea. Legend has is that he travelled up the Dnieper river and reached the future location of Kiev, where he erected a cross on the site where the Church of St. Andrew currently stands, and prophesied the foundation of a great Christian city. A representative from Crimea was present at the First Council of Nicaea (325). Around this time, these churches and the inland farther north came under the control of the Goths, some of whom were Christians.
Baptism of Princess Olga by S. Kirillov.Some of the Slavic population of Kiev and Western Ukraine under the rule of Great Moravia were Christians in the 9th century. Christianity was gradually spreading among the Rus' nobility with Princess Olga (St. Olga) being the first known ruler to have been baptized as Helen. Her baptism in 955 or 957 in Kiev or Constantinople (accounts differ) was a turning point in religeous life of Rus' but it was left to her grandson, Vladimir the Great, to make Kievan Rus' a Christian state.
Christianity became dominant in the territory with the mass Baptism of Kiev in the Dnieper river in 988 by St. Vladimir. Following the Great Schism in 1054, the Kievan Rus' that incorporated most of modern Ukraine ended up on the Eastern Orthodox side of the divided Christian world.
Early on, the Orthodox Christian metropolitans had their seat in Pereyaslav, and later in Kiev. The people of Kiev lost their Metropolitan to Vladimir-Suzdal in 1299, but regained a Ukrainian Metropolitan in Halych in 1303. The religious affairs were also ruled in part by a Metropolitan in Navahradak, (present-day Belarus).
In the 1400s, the primacy over the Ukrainian church was restored to Kiev, under the title "Metropolitan of Kiev and Halicia". One clause of the Union of Krevo stipulated that Jagiello would disseminate Roman Catholicism among Orthodox subjects of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, of which Ukraine was a part. The opposition from the Ostrogskis and other Orthodox magnates led to this policy being suspended in the early 16th century.
Following the Union of Lublin, the polonization of the Ukrainian church was accelerated. Unlike the Roman Catholic church, the Orthodox church in Ukraine was liable to various taxes and legal obligations. The building of new Orthodox churches was strongly discouraged. The Roman Catholics were strictly forbidden to convert to Orthodoxy, and the marriages between Catholics and Orthodox were frowned upon. Orthodox subjects had been increasingly barred from high offices of state.
In order to oppose such restrictions and to reverse cultural polonization of Orthodox bishops, the Ecumenical Patriarch encouraged the activity of the Orthodox urban communities, or bratstva. In 1589 Hedeon Balaban, the bishop of Lvov, asked the Pope to take him under his protection, because he was exasperated by the struggle with urban communities and the Ecumenical Patriarch. He was followed by the bishops of Lutsk, Chelm, and Turov in 1590. In the following years, the bishops of Volodymyr-Volynskyy and Przemysl and the Metropolitan of Kiev announced their secession from the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In 1595 some of the renegades arrived to Rome and asked the Pope to take them under his jurisdiction.
In the Union of Brest of 1596, a part of the Ukrainian Church was accepted under the jurisdiction of the Roman Pope, becoming a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC). While the new church gained many faithful among the Ukrainians in Galicia and Volhynia, the majority of Ukrainians in the rest fo the land remained within Eastern Orthodoxy with the church affairs ruled by then from Kiev under the metropolitan Petro Mohyla. The eastward spread of the Union of Brest led to violent clashes, e.g., assassination of the Uniate archbishop Kuncewicz by the Orthodox mob in Polotsk in 1623.
In 1686, 40 years after Mohyla's death, the Orthodox Church of Kiev and all Rus' was transferred from the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople to the Patriarchate of Moscow, established a century prior to that. This led to the Ukrainian domination of the Russian Orthodox Church, which continued well into the 18th century, Feofan Prokopovich and Demetrius of Rostov being among the most notable representatives of this trend.
