Староверы глазами представителей других христианских конфессий Речи Посполитой: иезуит Ян Алоизий Кулеша
Old Believers through the Eyes of Other Christian Denominations within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: Jesuit Jan Aloysius Kulesha

Summary/Abstract: The initial formation of the main Old Believer centres within the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a whole) has been studied fairly extensively. However, any available information on the relationship between the Old Believers and other Christian denominations of the Polish-Lithuanian state is still rather fragmentary. Scientific literature usually mentions the royal secretary Piotr Michał Polttiew and “bishop Antsuta”, who both visited the Old Believers in the region of Vetka, as recorded by M. Lileev. But the fact that representatives from both the Catholic Church and the Greek Catholic Church of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth visited Vetka’s Old Believers for missionary purposes seems to be largely overlooked. One of these “visitors” was Jesuit Jan Aloisy Kulesha (Jan Alojzy Kulesza), who tried to promote the Uniate religion among the Old Believers of Rečica district and described one of his visits in the treatise Wiara Prawosławna (Vilno, 1704). Therefore, the purpose of this work is to introduce into scientific circulation the previously unknown materials confirming the Jesuit interest in the Old Believers who had settled in Rečica district of the Grand Duchy’s Minsk Voivodate and to compare Kulesha’s account with information provided by other “inspectors”.

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