Eparchy of Lutsk and Ostroh (1594-1636, 1702-1795 and 1789–1839) During the Great Northern War, Volhynia was occupied by Russian troops and the eparchy was converted to Orthodoxy until the withdrawal of troops.
Pope Clement VIII's 1596 bull Decet Romanum Pontificem gave metropolitans the same rights that Kievan metropolitans had enjoyed under Constantinople. In elections for the office, candidates were chosen by direct vote of the assembled bishops and by the Superior-General (Proto-Archimandrite) of the Basilian order. He would then be nominated by the Polish king and confirmed by the pope.
While most Orthodox bishops in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth supported the Union of Brest, as with the previous Florentine Union, not all of them accepted the union. Some eparchies (dioceses) continued to give their loyalty to Constantinople. These dissenters had no ecclesiastical leaders but with Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny — the Hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossacks — they had a secular leader who was opposed to the union with Rome. The Cossacks' strong historic allegiance to the Eastern Orthodox Church put them at odds with the Catholic-dominated Commonwealth. Tensions increased when Commonwealth policies turned from relative tolerance to the suppression of the Orthodox church, making the Cossacks strongly anti-Catholic. By that time, the loyalty of the Zaporozhian hetmanate to the Commonwealth was only nominal. In August 1620, the Hetman prevailed upon Theophanes III — the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem — to re-establish an Orthodox metropolis in the realm. Theophanes consecrated Job Boretsky as the new "Metropolitan of Kiev, Galicia and all Ruthenia" and as the "Exarch of Ukraine". There were now two metropolitans with the same title but different ecclesiastical loyalties within the Commonwealth.
By 1686, Russia had complete sovereignty over the lands of the Zaporozhian Sich and left-bank Ukraine, as well as the city of Kiev. The Eternal Peace Treaty of 1686 which was concluded by Russia and the Commonwealth affirmed this reality.[4] As a result, the Greek Catholic population in those areas suffered oppression and many deaths. It also spelled an end to the independence and unity of the Hetman state. The Starodub, Chernihiv, and other territories in left-bank Ukraine went to Russia; the rest remained in the Commonwealth.
In the territory annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia, the Eparchy of Supraśl operated from 1798 to 1809. Following the Treaties of Tilsit, the territory was annexed by the Russian Empire. As a result, the Church was effectively dissolved and the eparchy was forcibly converted to the Russian Orthodox Church.
