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The years following the Union of Brest in 1595 saw many instances of violence in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between Uniate adherents of the Union and Orthodox who rejected it, the main victims of which were clergy and their immediate servants but which did not degenerate into true religious warfare. The Ruthenian population gradually succumbed to religious division, exacerbated in the 1610's by economic difficulties and by the adherence of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Orthodox cause. But there were no serious doctrinal or ritual issues at stake, so the clergy were the main targets because they were seen as responsible for the divisions or as false priests no longer capable of ensuring the link between the community and the divine. Gradually, an imagery was created in which priests of the opposing persuasion were seen as enemies and traitors to the faith, shown in the spontaneous actions of the perpetrators of the violence, which became more comparable in its symbolic language with the kind of violence seen in France during the wars of religion.