Stanislaw Siestrze´ncewicz-Bohusz (1731-1826). Recherches historiques sur l’origine des Sarmates, des Esclavons, et des Slaves St. Pétersbourg: de L’Imp. de Pluchart, 1812. B5119

Stanislaw Siestrze´ncewicz-Bohusz (1731-1826). Recherches historiques sur l’origine des Sarmates, des Esclavons, et des Slaves St. Pétersbourg: de L’Imp. de Pluchart, 1812. B5119

The Grand Inquisitor... Peter the Great had no love for Catholicism, but in the early days of his reign he showed deference to the church. Unfortunately his reforms did little to improve conditions for Catholics, and under Catherine II their situation was made worse, even though she promulgated religious tolerance and proposed a national church independent of Rome. The three partitions of Poland brought thousands of Polish Catholics to Russia, including this ambitious Polish bishop, Siestrze´ncewicz-Bohusz, descended from a family of Lithuanian Calvinists. Historians are in agreement about the evil character of the man Catherine appointed to the administration of a new diocese (Mohileff) as Catholic Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and later Primate of Lithuania. He was without scruples or honorable motives, wanting only complete despotic power over the Catholic Church in Russia. It was said that during his long episcopate (1774-1826) he was the scourge of both rites. As for the subject of his book, some historians believe the original Slav stomping-grounds were the Pripet marshes (southern Belarus, northwestern Ukraine), whence the Slav tribes (the Sarmates, Esclavons, and Slaves of the title) migrated north across the Great Plain, northwest into Poland, and south into the Balkans. Sarmatia is the name the Romans gave to the steppes beyond the Carpathians and the Black Sea. Finding themselves caught between horse traders and Byzantine culture, without natural frontiers and constantly threatened by invasion, the people remained semi-barbarous, having no leisure for building cities or becoming politically savvy or choreographing ballets. Other historians contend that these southern drifters were a later group, that the original home of the Slavs was to be found not in the steppes, but farther north, in the forests, and that they were closely related to the Swedes, Angles and other northern peoples.

B5119