Background
Adam Potii was born on 12 August 1541 in Różanka, Lublin Voivodeship from a noble family. His mother, Anna Loza, after the death of her husband, on about 1550, married the governor of areas of Smolensk.
Adam Potii was born on 12 August 1541 in Różanka, Lublin Voivodeship from a noble family. His mother, Anna Loza, after the death of her husband, on about 1550, married the governor of areas of Smolensk.
He played an active role in the 1595 Union of Brest of which he was a firm supporter. He was also a writer, polemist and theologian. Prince Mikolaj "the Black" Radziwill took care of his education and sent him to a Calvinist school and later in the Jagiellonian University in KrakóWest
In 1566 Potii started to work as a judge in Brest, in 1572 he was secretary of king Sigismund II Augustus and later he was appointed tax collector and in 1588 Castellan of Brest.
He was also a senator of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He actually traveled to Rome, along with the of Lutzk Cyril Terlecki, to carry to Pope Clement VII the petition undersigned by the bishops in Brest on 12 June 1595 asking for the union: they arrived in Rome on 25 November 1595, obtained the approval of the Pope on the conditions that Byzantine rite, liturgical practices and the not-use of the filioque would be preserved and were back in Lutzk in March 1596.
Ipatii Potii was appointed new of Kiev in August 1599 by the will of king Sigismund III Vasa and he was confirmed by Pope Clement VIII on 15 November 1600. In 1601 he founded a seminary and on 3 March 1605 he was formally recognized as the only Byzantine Rite in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
On 11 July 1609 some Orthodox, who opposed the Union of Brest, attempted to his life, but without success.
In 1611 he succeeded to appoint also a bishop favorable to the Union of Brest in the Eparchy of Przemyśl. He also worked on the restructuring of the Order of Saint Basil the Great. Potii died on 8 July 1613 in Volodymyr-Volynskyi and was buried in the cathedral of that town.