Some Aspects of the Legal Regulation of the Orthodox Church Property Status in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania until the Middle of the 17th Century
The legal regime of the Church property depends firstly on the confession policy of the state and has an effect on the status of the Church on the whole. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was one of the most developed and large states of the feudal Europe, where the Orthodox Church had a special status within the multi-confessional country. Initially it held key positions both in state and in national consciousness. Later during the struggle of the Roman Catholic Church for the status of a dominant religion in the late 16th – early 17th centuries the Orthodox Church was outlawed. In that case, discriminatory measures against the Church property were defining in the plantation of Uniatism.