POLAND.
If from Germany we pass to Poland, there also we meet the ominous influence of the disciples of Loyola. “The Protestant cause,” says Count Krasinski, in the fourth of his admirable Lectures on Slavonia, “was endangered by the lamentable partiality which Stephen Batory had shewn to the Jesuits; and the Romanist reaction, beginning under his reign, had been chiefly promoted by the schools, which that order was everywhere establishing.” Stephen, however, either too prudent to attack openly the religion then professed, in Lithuania at least, by a great majority of his subjects, or anxious to maintain, to a certain extent, religious liberty, had recourse to no extraordinary measures for the furtherance of this reaction, and contented himself with ordering that in future none but strict Roman Catholics should be appointed to bishoprics. But under the bigoted Sigismond—under that king, who, as the same learned Count says, “gloried in the appellation of the king of the Jesuits, which was given him by their antagonists, and who indeed became a mere tool in the hands of the disciples of Loyola”—the reaction made fearful and continued progress. Although Sigismond could attempt nothing by main force against the liberties of his Protestant subjects, he had it in his power to give, and he at last effectually gave, a mortal blow to the Reformed religion. The chief prerogative of the Polish kings—we should perhaps say, the only real power possessed by these nominal sovereigns—was the right of conferring all dignities and official appointments. Twenty thousand offices were at their disposal; and Sigismond declared that none but strict Roman Catholics should be named to them. The favour of the Jesuits was an essential condition of obtaining a situation under the Government; and “the Starost Ludwig von Montager became Waivode of Pomerellia, because he presented his house in Thorn to the Society of Jesus.”[197] Many of the nobles who had professed the doctrines of the Reformation, were induced to recant, depending exclusively as they did on the king’s favour for the maintenance of their rank, and having no hope for preferment while out of the pale of the Romish Church. The influence of these examples, seconded by the rigorous measures subsequently taken against the Lutherans, and, above all, by the diabolical cunning and artifice of the Jesuits, in a short time brought back the great majority of the Polish nation under the yoke of the Church of Rome.