Bratstvo
![The Kiev Brotherhood compound included the Brotherhood Monastery and its religious school (later the Kiev Mohyla Academy)](/Images/godic/202501/01/Kyiv-brats-monastyr3546.jpg")
![An epistle from the Patriarch of Antioch to the Lviv Orthodox Brotherhood](/Images/godic/202501/01/Bratstvo_epistle3546.jpg")
Brotherhoods (Ukrainian:братства, bratstva; literally, "fraternities") were the secular unions of Orthodox citizens affiliated with individual churches in the cities throughout Ruthenian part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth such as Lviv, Wilno, Lutsk, Vitebsk, Minsk, and Kiev. They adapted the structure of the Western medieval confraternities and trade guilds.