Religion
By the 14th century the majority of the Belarusian nobility, both Baltic and Ruthenian, were Eastern Orthodox. After the Christianization of pagan Baltic tribes of what is now Republic of Lithuania in 1387 more and more noble people started converting to Roman Catholicism which became the dominant religion among aristocracy.
In the 16th century a large part of Belarusian nobility, both Catholic and Orthodox, converted to Calvinism and other Protestant churches following the example of the Radziwills. However, under the influence of counter-reformation in late 16th century and early 17th century most of them converted to Roman Catholicism. By the annexation of modern Belarusian lands by the Russian Empire in the end of the 18th century the Belarusian gentry was predominantly Roman Catholic while the rest of the population was mainly Eastern Catholic with a small Eastern Orthodox minority living in the east of modern Belarus. Still, there was also Eastern Orthodox szlachta in the surroundings of Pinsk, Davyd-Haradok, Slutsk and Mahiliou as well as calvinist szlachta.
Read more about this topic: Belarusian Nobility
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“The great word Evolution had not yet, in 1860, made a new religion of history, but the old religion had preached the same doctrine for a thousand years without finding in the entire history of Rome anything but flat contradiction.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is made—no matter how indirectly—to numbers, proclamation is then and there made, that religion is not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping presence, who shall dare to come in?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“My religion is no garment to be put on and off with the weather. You had better know that, all of you. I shall worship as I please and hope for all men to worship as they please in Scotland.”
—Dudley Nichols (1895–1960)