Religious Freedom in Mixed Denomination Marriages in the Polish-Ruthenian (Ukrainian/Belarusian) Cultural Borderland at the Turn of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

This article analyzes the phenomenon of mixed marriages in the areas belonging to Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth whose society was religiously and ethnically diversified. Special attention is paid to the cultural Polish-Ruthenian borderland in two regional contexts: Polish-Ukrainian and Polish-Belarusian, whose population was Roman Catholic (a minority) and the majority Greek Catholic. Based on the census like material, we found that the households of mixed marriages accounted for between 5 and 20 percent of all those recorded in the sources, and there was a good chance in family relationships that both spouses and their children would keep their denomination.