becoming deputies of the Parliament. The strategy the Catholic Church took towards reconverting the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth differed from its strategy elsewhere. The unique government (Poland was a republic where the citizen nobility owned the state) meant the king could not enforce a religious settlement even he if so desired. Instead the Catholic Church undertook a long and steady campaign of persuasion. In the Ruthenian lands (predominately modern day Belarus & Ukraine) the Orthodox Church also undertook a similar strategy. Additionally, the Orthodox also sought to join the Catholic Church (accomplished in the Union of Brześć [Brest]); however, this union failed to achieve a lasting, permanent, and complete union of the Catholics and Orthodox in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. An important component of the Catholic Reformation in Poland was education. Numerous colleges and universities were set up throughout the country: the Jesuits and Piarists were important in this regard but there were contributions of other religious orders such as the Dominicans. While in the middle of the 16th century the nobility mostly sent their sons abroad for education (the new German Protestant universities were important in this regard), by the mid-1600s the nobility mostly stayed home for education. The quality of the new Catholic schools was so great that Protestants willingly sent their children to these schools. Through their education, many nobles became appreciative of Catholicism or out-right converted. Even though the majority of the nobility were Catholic circa 1700, Protestants remained in these lands and pockets of Protestantism could be found outside the German-speaking lands of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth into the 20th century. Among the most important Protestants of the Commonwealth were Mikołaj Rej, Marcin Czechowic, Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski and Symon Budny. For more information see the following: Kot, Stanislas. Socinianism in Poland: The Social and Political Ideas of the Polish Antitrinitarians in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Translated by Earl Morse Wilbur. Bacon Hill Boston: Starr King Press, 1957. Tazbir, Janusz. A State without Stakes: Polish Religious Toleration in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Translated by A. T. Jordan. Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1973. Kłoczowski, Jerzy. A History of Polish Christianity. [Dzieje Chrześcijaństwa Polskiego].English. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Gudziak, Borys A. Crisis and Reform: The Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Genesis of the Union of Brest. Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies, 2001. Teter, Magda. Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church