Ukraine, the children of the century

For this approach to a complex, turbulent history, in the midst of empires and fault lines between the Catholic and Orthodox worlds,

Jean-Francois Colosimoessayist and director of CERF publishing, puts history and theology back at the heart of this conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

A history of more than a thousand years, determined above all, explains Jean-François Colosimo, by religious cultures: the three monotheisms and the three denominations of Christianity have never ceased to meet and confront each other in Ukraine, this border land around in turn torn between the clash of empires, the explosion of totalitarianism and the awakening of nations.

Deciphering this long series of controversies, conflicts and crusades mixing the political ambitions of princes, the theological disputes of popes and patriarchs, the spiritual upheavals of the prophets, such is the object of this essay. An impressive fresco and a brilliant analysis that make us understand that, to the greatest misfortune of peoples, the time of religious wars is not over.

” The territory that Ukraine covers today has experienced over the same thousand years in which it sought itself, from the end of the tenth century to the end of the twentieth century, the clash of empires, kingdoms and principalities. Khazars, Tatars and Varangians, Scandinavians, Poles and Balts, Turks, Austrians and Prussians, British, French and Russians, of course, transformed it into a theater of their military, political and cultural clashes. It served as an arena for confrontation between the three religions of the one and only God, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also between the three Christian denominations, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant. It suffered the unleashing of the two totalitarianisms, the red and the brown, which made these peat lands lands of blood. (Jean-Francois Colosimo,

The Crucifixion of Ukraine: a thousand years of religious wars in Europe (Albin Michael)