Sophia Senyk is a respected scholar of Ukrainian monasticism. She has previously published A history of the Church in Ukraine, I: To the end of the thirteenth century (1993). The present volume brings that survey up to 1596 (the Union of Brest). The history of the Church in Ukraine was inextricably connected with and influenced by three other Churches – the Greek Orthodox Church in Constantinople, the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church. This period of church history in Rus' was eventful. It saw the splitting up of the Rus' Church as Maksim, the metropolitan of Kiev, moved his residency at the beginning of this period from Vladimir-on-the-Kliazma in the north-east. He did so most likely as the result of the unsafe conditions created in Kiev during the civil war raging in the steppe between the forces of Khan Toqta and Khan Nogai (1299–1300). While the Rus' Church in the north headed by a metropolitan resident in Moscow flourished under Mongol-Tatar rule, the Rus' Church in the south came increasingly under the political control of Lithuania and Poland and the Catholic Church (‘Latins’ in our sources). At times in the fourteenth century separate metropolitans for Lithuania and Galicia appear, but the patriarchate of Constantinople seems to have preferred having one metropolitan for all Rus'. The unionist metropolitan Isidor was rejected by the Muscovite grand prince and bishops, but did ordain some bishops in Peremyshl' after he fled from Moscow in 1442. The already tenuous connection of the Ruthenian Orthodox Church with the patriarch in Constantinople was made even more difficult with the fall of that city in 1453 and the establishment of Ottoman rule. Opinion within the Ruthenian Church (covering most of present-day Ukraine and Belarus) was divided between those seeking accommodation with the Latin Church and those continuing to try to maintain contact with the Greek Church. The activities of the pro-Latin faction resulted in the Union of Brest and the creation of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which recognised the primacy of the pope but maintained certain Orthodox practices, such as married priests. Just when it seemed bleakest for the pro-Greek faction, a ‘shot in the arm’ came relatively unexpectedly from Jeremiah, the patriarch of Constantinople who had arrived in Ruthenian lands after having made an alms-seeking trip to Moscow where he established the patriarchate of Moscow. Once the document was signed, Jeremiah and his entourage were allowed to proceed to Kiev where he appointed an exarch for the Orthodox Church there. That appointment set the stage not only for the continuation of Orthodoxy in Ruthenia but also its subsequent revival in the seventeenth century. Before Sophia Senyk's publications, there were only a couple of surveys of Ukrainian church history in English and those were written mainly from the Orthodox viewpoint. Her history is more comprehensive than they and treats some rather contentious issues in a fair-handed way. She also includes a significant amount of recent research. As a result of that and as a result of her going into greater depth on a number of topics, her two volumes now supersede any survey of Ukrainian Church history through the sixteenth century previously published in English.