From now on the religious reform movement became the most important topic of general discussion everywhere and among all intelligent classes of Polish society. The abuses, faults, and shortcomings of the church were being keenly felt and freely talked about. Questions of faith, doctrine, and church dogmas were engaging everybody’s attention, and were discussed on every occasion and at every opportunity. They constituted the main topic of conversation, and sometimes of heated discussion, at dinners, feasts, and social gatherings, particularly if members of the clerical profession were present.[99]
This general interest of the intelligent classes of the Polish people in the Reformation and the free discussion of the very fundamentals on which the existing ecclesiastical system rested were creating a great deal of uneasiness among the higher clergy, and caused them to put forth still more determined efforts in defense of the old faith and the old form of worship, not altogether from religious motives but also from economic and social considerations. The new movement was undermining their material resources as well as their social position and influence.[100] Every effort must, therefore, be made and every means employed to check this movement, if such a thing were possible. Thus at the Synod of Piotrków in 1542 the clergy resolved to demand of the king a strict enforcement of the royal edicts against heresy. It resolved, also, to forbid parents to send their children to heretical schools; to prohibit the reading of heretical books, which many were doing under the pretense of trying to qualify themselves to refute the heresy; to search homes for heretical writings; to enjoin the local authorities to keep a close watch over the booksellers and printers; to seize suspected works; and to punish all transgressors immediately and without delay. The synod of 1544 reaffirmed the stand of the church on these points, taken at the synod of 1542. All these decrees remained largely ineffective, for they needed for their enforcement the cooperation of civil authorities, which, however, could not now readily be obtained, since all the royal edicts and the synodical decrees against heresy violated constitutional rights granted the nobility in the fifteenth century.[101] The synod of 1547 was, therefore, forced to acknowledge the powerlessness of the church to cope with the new movement, and to admit that in many dioceses of Poland even the clergy were seriously affected by the spreading heresy, and that the church was in imminent danger of being swamped by it.[102]
The futility of the decrees of the synod of 1542 becomes still more apparent in the light of the stand of the Polish nobility at the Diet of Cracow the following year. Open aggressiveness and sympathy with the Reformation is here in evidence. The nobility demanded of the king at this Diet and secured (1) the retention within the country for purposes of defense against foreign aggression of the annates paid to the Pope, and (2) the revocation of the unconstitutional edict of 1534, reaffirmed in 1540, forbidding Polish citizens to study, or to educate their children abroad in universities infected with heresy. In compliance with the urgent request of the senators and the deputies the king agreed to send an embassy to the Pope with a petition, which was more a notification than a request, that the annates be allowed to be retained in the country; and should the Pope refuse to agree to that, he was to be at once notified that the annates would not be allowed to be given or exported from the country any more.[103] As to the second point, the edicts forbidding Polish citizens to visit certain places abroad were abrogated, and they were again given full liberty to visit foreign countries for any purpose whatever, provided they were not accompanied by a military retinue, or went to engage in war. But, returning, they were not permitted to import heretical books, or to disseminate among the common people doctrines not accepted by the Roman Catholic Church. Whoever should be found guilty of this offense, was to be prosecuted according to the laws of the kingdom against heretics.[104] This measure reveals a recognition on the part of the king of the impossibility of restraining anyone from personally accepting the new teaching, particularly any of the nobility. The only thing it seeks to guard against is the public dissemination of the new teaching among the common people.
These significant gains stimulated the adherents to the Reformation and its sympathizers to greater and more open activity. The new movement, as has already been noted, had penetrated even into the royal court, and had found followers among those nearest to the king. The environment of the Crown Prince had been strongly saturated with the new ideas, and every effort was made to win the young prince over to the new cause. Two of his preachers began openly to denounce the abuses of the church. They were John Koźmiński, known also as Cosminius, and Lawrence Prasznicki, called also Prasnicius and Discordia. The latter became very well known among the Protestants later on.[105] Their first public attacks on the church and demands for reform were naturally of a general character, and that enabled them to continue their activity at court for some time.
At this time the Protestants began to appeal to the masses of the nation through religious literature, published in the vernacular. The works of Andrew Samuel appeared in the Polish language, and other heretical books, likewise in the language of the people, were freely imported and circulated. Moreover, there were now within the country men who wrote in the spirit of the Reformation in Polish, and had their writings printed. Nicholas Rey, the father of Polish literature, published his first satirical work in 1543. It consisted of a conversation, in which a gentleman, a bailiff, and a priest participated, and in which the author severely rebuked the cupidity of the clergy and the folly of the people for regarding their payment of tithes as the essence of morality and religion and for relying on that for their salvation, while at the same time he pointed out the essential character of faith. The same year there appeared anonymously from the press in Cracow the first Polish catechism published in Poland, in which the new reform doctrines were taught, and which contained also some of Rey’s verses. Other of Rey’s writings followed in 1545, 1546, and 1549. In all of these the writer championed the new doctrines, at first cautiously, but later quite frankly. In 1544 John Seklucyan published his Confession of Faith, and somewhat later his Polish translation of the four Gospels appeared[106] in Königsberg.
This new kind of appeal of the reformers to the people caused the king to issue from Brześć in Lithuania, July 10, 1544, a threatening mandate to the starostas, stirring them up to vigilance and to a strict enforcement of the law. Whoever dared to import, sell, buy, possess, or read such books was to be punished by death.[107]
This mandate was the last of the repressive measures issued by the old king against the Reformation. Owing to his age and without doubt also to a growing conviction of the futility of an attempt to stem the tide of ideas and convictions, especially in the realm of religion, he ceased to combat the movement with edicts and mandates. In this period of relative quiet the reform forces gathered new strength and courage for their great activity in the following reign.[108] This inactivity on the part of the king gave rise to rumors among the opponents of the Reformation that the king was favoring the spreading heresy. These rumors were given color by the king’s Order to the Starostas, issued in Cracow, August 9, 1546, to forbid Polish citizens in the king’s name to take part on either side in the religious war which had broken out in Germany at this time.[109] This order was issued by the king in spite of the fact that Paul III, in a letter, dated July 3, 1546, had urged Sigismund I to take an active part in that war on the side of the forces defending the cause of the church.[110]
At this time too, the reform movement began to make an open breach in the ranks of the Roman clergy. The first notable case was that of John Łaski, known also as John a Lasco, a nephew of the famous Primate of Poland of the same name. John Łaski had spent a number of years in studies abroad, had come into personal touch with the reformers of Wittenberg and Geneva, had accepted the Reformed faith, and in 1542 resigned his prebendary of Gnesen.[111] In 1541 Andrew Samuel, a Dominican monk, brought to Posen by Bishop Branicki, a preacher at Mary Magdalene’s Church and a very learned man and an eloquent speaker, became a Protestant. In 1543 another Dominican monk, John Seklucyan, through whose influence Samuel had been led to accept the new teaching and to preach its doctrines openly, broke with the Church of Rome, and became very active in developing a Polish Protestant literature under the protection and with the aid of Duke Albert of East Prussia.[112] In 1544, again, Stanislaus Lutomirski, a parish priest of Konin, became a Calvinist.[113] Lutomirski’s example led Felix Krzyżak, known also as Cruciger, prebendary of Niedźwiedź, to embrace Calvinism in 1546, and through his influence the magnate Stanislaus Stadnicki was induced to do the same thing. In 1547 James Sylvius, prebendary of Chrzęcice, in the possessions of the Filipowskis, also went over to Calvinism.[114]
Moreover, the close contact of the court clergy, in great degree liberal in matters of religion, with the patriciate of the city of Cracow, for years favorably disposed toward the new religious movement, helped to promote the spread of the new doctrines. Beginning in 1545, frequent secret meetings for purposes of religious and theological discussions were held in the home of the nobleman John Trzycieski, in which members of the upper social classes, the town patriciate, the neighboring szlachta, the court clergy, the canons of the cathedral chapter, and the king’s secretaries participated. Of the townspeople we know the name of one, Wojewódka; of the szlachta, we know names of Trzycieski, Karmiński, James Przyłuski, Filipowski; of the clergy, Francis Lismanini, James Uchański, Zebrzydowski, Adam Drzewicki, and Leonard Słonczewski. The last three became bishops later on, and one of them, Uchański, archbishop and primate of Poland, a strong advocate of a Polish National Church. The promoter and leader of these secret meetings was Francis Lismanini, a Franciscan monk and private confessor of the queen. It was chiefly he who procured and distributed heretical books among the members of this select group, and spread the new religious ideas among his monastic brethren. In these meetings outside visitors, stopping temporarily in the city, also participated. Imbued with the new spirit, the clerical visitors carried the new doctrines wherever they went, and preached them to their hearers.[115] Similar meetings were being held in Posen, of which Samuel and Seklucyan were the product.[116]
The growing interest on the part of the people in the Reformation, the aggressive character of the movement, and the increasing defections among the clergy created consternation among the Polish bishops. These high church dignitaries began now to feel that it was not safe any more to rely on the lower clergy. The synod of 1547, therefore, charged the bishops not to allow any priest to preach without a special permit from the bishop of the given diocese. Bishops that were careless in observing and enforcing this synodical ruling were to be fined 100 “grzywień.”[117]