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The article attempts to define the Ruthenian parish in the period following the Union of Brest and the transfer of the Kievan Metropolitanate to Roman obedience, both in a legal sense and through all the ties linking one or more worship buildings and their priests to a local group of believers. On this point, the Ruthenian area presents a unique case with the development in several metropolitan towns of Orthodox brotherhoods which sometimes tended to be merged with parish associations (as in L´viv or Vilnius). The question of the place of the laity is also related to the right of patronage, which in most cases was held by the Catholic sovereign or, still more often, by the nobles who founded sanctuaries and by their heirs. Compared to Latin ecclesiastical structures, parishes of the “Greek rite” are characterized by both their fuzzy territorial boundaries and the greater weight of the laity in their organization and administration. However, it is undeniable that the Latin models had direct echoes in the practices of both Uniate and Orthodox Kievan Churches, as evidenced, among others, by the inclusion of pastoral visits in the administrative practices of the two competing institutions. With this unique source for the Eastern Christian Churches of the time, supplemented with the legal records of the local noble courts, our analysis highlights the factors and the outcome of the—first legal and then “confessional”—separation processes between the Uniate and Orthodox clergies of the Polish-Lithuanian Union and of the Hetmanate created after the Cossack uprising of 1648.