POLAND AND RUSSIA
41
obtained anything. Two years later, an even better opportunity offered itself to the Fathers to get a hold on Russia: Grischka Ostrepjew, an unfrocked monk, revealed to a Jesuit that he actually was Dimitri, son of Czar Ivan, who had been assassinated; he declared himself ready to subdue Moscow for Rome if he was master of the Czars' throne. Without thinking it over first, the Jesuits took it into their hands to introduce Ostrepjew to the Palatine of Sandomir who gave him his daughter in marriage; they spoke on his behalf to King Sigismond III and the pope regarding his expectations, and succeeded in making the Polish army rise against the Czar Boris Godounov. As a reward for these services, the false Dimitri renounced the religion of his fathers at Crascovie, one of the Jesuits' houses, and promised the Order an establishment in Moscow, near the Kremlin, after his victory over Boris. "But it was these favours from the catholics which unleashed the hatred of the Russian Orthodox Church against Dimitri. On the 27th of May 1606, he was massacred with several hundred Polish followers. Until then, one could hardly speak of a Russian national sentiment; but now, this feelin g was very strong and took immediately the form of a fanatical hatred for the Roman Church and Poland. "The alliance with Austria and the offensive politics of Sigismond III against the Turks, all of which were strongly encouraged by the Order, were just as disastrous for Poland. To put it briefly, no other State suffered as much as Poland did under the Jesuits' domination. And in no other country, apart from Portugal, was the Society so powerful. Not only did Poland have a 'king of the Jesuits', but also a Jesuit King, Jean-Casimir, a sovereign who had belonged to the Order before his accession to the throne in 1649... "While Poland was heading fast towards ruin, the number of Jesuit establishments and schools was growing so fast that the General made Poland into a special congregation in 1751 ".(27)
(27) H. Boehmer, op.cit., p.135 ss.