Papież i patriarchowie oraz ich stolice w wybranych utworach polemiki międzywyznaniowej w okresie od końca XVI do pierwszej połowy XVII wieku

The Pope, the Patriarchs and Their Sees as Symbols in some Selected Works of the Interconfessional Polemics at the End of the 16th - First Half of the 17th Centuries. This paper considers how the pope and the Eastern patriarchs and their sees were presented in some polemistic works written by Roman-Catholic and Orthodox authors between the 16th and the 17th centuries. The Jesuit Piotr Skarga in his capital polemic work On the Unity of God’s Church under One Shepherd (1st edition: 1577; 2nd edition: 1590) promotes a monarchical conception of the ecclesiastic structure, with the pope at its top and Rome as centre of the oecumene. The Orthodox polemists Ivan Vyšens’kyj and Zaxarija Kopystens’kyj nurtured a pluralistic conception of the Church, grounded on the equal status of all the patriarchs. Ivan Vyšens’kyj, with his gutsy language, counterpoised the secular power of the Roman Church with the spiritual power of the Eastern patriarchates. Zaxarija Kopystens’kyj, in his lengthy and learned treatise Palinodija, adduced arguments related to jurisdictional matters, stressed the sense of unity among the Orthodox Christians and the incessant action of the grace of God in aid of them.