The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine [Hardcover]

Famous as ferocious warriors, the Ukrainian Cossacks developed their fighting skills in the religious wars against the Tartars, Turks, Poles, and Russians. In this fascinating study, Serhii Plokhy examines the confessionalization of religious life in the early modern period, showing how Cossack involvement in the religious struggle between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism helped shape not only Ukrainian but also Russian and Polish cultural identities.

Introduction
1. The Ukrainian Cossacks
2. The Religious Crisis
3. Warriors for the Faith
4. Order, Religion, and Nation
5. A War of Religion: Orthodoxy in the Khmelnytsky Uprising
6. A Hetman Sent by God
7. Hetmans and Metropolitans
8. In Search of an Orthodox Monarch
Bibliography
Index

A most impressive contribution to our knowledge in the breath of its vision and in the depth of its scholarship and deserves the widest possible readership. --Slavic Reviews

The essays are lively and concise, and provide newcomers to Italian history with an informative survey of recent approaches and updates to some of its 'forgotten centuries.' --Sixteenth Century Journal

Thanks to its magisterial command of sources and scrupulous sense of balance, Plokhy's narrative has an authority, even grandeur, that should make it the standard account for years to come. --Times Literary Supplement