Before conversion he leaved the church to Greek Catholics, formerly the property of the Uniats" (23).
From the same imagological perspective, the Greek Catholics are to the Orthodox "aggressive", "pursuing scandal at any cost", and their actions are part of "a series of assaults of Uniat believers against the majority of the country, especially in recent years, particularly in counties north-west of Transylvania, near the Hungarian-Romanian border, actions that have an obvious proselytizing character, trying to disrupt the existing confessional balance and irresponsibly threatening social peace" (21).
The controversy between the Orthodox majority and the Greek Uniats was nevertheless important because it represented, somehow, an indirect confrontation between the Greek Orthodox community and the Catholic Church.(9) The Lorraine government in its long negotiations with representatives of the Orthodox Greeks was represented by the Archbishop of Pisa.
On the Greek uniats in Livorno, who celebrated the services in latin and under the protection and the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church, see G.
(9.) In 1766, according to Pardi, the Greek population in Livorno counted 63 Orthodox and only 9 Uniats, in G.
Schio was part of the Ottoman empire but it had belonged to Genoa until 1573; and though most of the islanders were Greeks who followed the Orthodox rites and liturgy, their church was Uniat, accepting the authority of the pope.
Ligarides' teachers included Pietro Arkudio who had worked in Poland trying to win more `schismatic' Orthodox to the Uniat Church, and in 1600 had even visited Moscow under cover of a Polish embassy to congratulate Boris Godunov on his accession.
