The Greek Catholic Population of the Village of Tokary (Turobin Commune) in the 18th and 19th Centuries

Abstract

The article presents the history of the Greek Catholic (Uniate) community living in the village of Tokary (located in the Turobin key of the Zamoyski family entail) in the years 1779–1875. The Uniates came from neighboring Otrocz and settled in Tokary together with the Roman Catholic population (coming from, i.a., Chrzanów). Both groups lived in harmony, which was expressed by numerous mixed marriages, concluded in Greek Catholic parishes in Otrocz and Tarnawa and Roman Catholic parishes in Turobin and Goraj. For a long time, the Uniates from Tokary maintained the Greek rite – only in the 1850s and 1860s some of them changed the rite to Latin. The liquidation of the Greek Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Poland (1875) meant the end of the Uniate community in Tokary. Local Greek Catholics were required to adopt Orthodoxy. However, many of them opposed this forced conversion and later converted to Roman Catholicism.