The reformation in Poland

by Paul Fox

Another significant cause furthering the spread of the Reformation in Poland was Polish religious tolerance. In the sixteenth century Poland was a country not only of political liberty, but also of intellectual freedom and of religious liberty. To be sure, owing to the pressure exerted by the clergy upon the kings, royal edicts, forbidding the dissemination of the new doctrines in the land and imposing severe penalties upon transgressors, were issued freely. However, these edicts violated constitutionally guaranteed liberties of the nobility, and, consequently, were never approved by any diet; hence, they had not the force of law, and remained largely a dead letter.

As to the attitude of the kings themselves, they were rather tolerant of differences in religious belief and practice. Sigismund the Old, while a very good and loyal Catholic and a ruler who seemed to be easily induced to issue decrees proscribing the new religious movement, was very tolerant personally. When Johann Eck, the German Catholic theologian and zealous opponent of Luther, called on him to adopt a stern policy and to use severe measures in suppressing Lutheranism in Poland, the king replied that his desire was to rule over the goats as well as over the sheep.[253] When, again, in July, 1546, Pope Paul III urged him to take an active part on the side of the cause of the church in the religious war which had broken out in Germany at this time, Sigismund I not only refused to do so, but also by royal order forbade Polish citizens to engage even privately in any way on either side of the German controversy and conflict.[254] Then, too, it was Sigismund I who in 1525 consented to the secularization of the Teutonic Order and of the Duchy of East Prussia, then a part of the Polish kingdom. And it is a well known fact that his court was unusually liberal and a safe shelter for humanists and humanistic sympathizers with the Reformation movement.

If Sigismund I was tolerant, his son, Sigismund Augustus, who succeeded his father to the throne in 1548, was still more so. Reared in the liberal atmosphere of the court and educated by humanists in sympathy with the ideas and doctrines of the Reformation, Sigismund Augustus was a religious liberal. Out of state policy he remained in the Catholic Church and stood by it, though to all appearances his personal convictions and sympathies leaned in the direction of the Reformation movement, certainly so in his earlier if not in his later years. He surrounded himself with humanists and with supporters of the Reformation. He read books of the reformers, participated in religious discussions with his friends, and corresponded with Calvin. He formed an intimate friendship with Nicholas Radziwill, the powerful magnate and grand hetman of Lithuania, and an avowed and staunch Calvinist, and married his beautiful sister, Barbara, who, too, had embraced the Calvinistic faith. With Franciscus Lismanini, the former Franciscan confessor of his queen mother, he maintained a friendly connection for years, even after Lismanini had become openly known as an ardent admirer and sympathizer with Calvinism. He favored certain church reforms, and had gone so far as to send an embassy to Rome to secure the pope’s sanction of them, which sanction, however, was not granted. And when at one time the Pope urged him to exterminate the heretics from his land, Sigismund Augustus gave the Holy Father this characteristic reply: “I fear that by trying to pull up the tares, I might uproot the wheat also.”[255]

The same religious broad-mindedness, liberality, and tolerance characterized the person and the reign of the third notable Polish king of the sixteenth century, Stephen Batory (1576-1586). King Stephen was a faithful Catholic, a generous supporter of Jesuitism, and a ruler who saw the strength of the royal power in a close alliance with the Church of Rome. Yet, in spite of his strong Catholic loyalty, he would not tolerate any religious persecution. He steadily discountenanced all religious disturbances, and firmly kept his coronation oath to maintain peace among the adherents of different religious faiths, asserting that he did not wish to violate anybody’s conscience.[256] He, too, like Sigismund I, wished to rule peaceably over the goats as well as over the sheep.

When we turn from the kings to the nation, we meet with the same broad-minded liberality and tolerance. The Polish nation of the sixteenth century loved liberty no less than at any other period of its history. Liberty constituted the foundation and was an essential characteristic of all its institutions, political and social. The Polish nobility worked and fought strenuously for its political rights and privileges, and having secured them, guarded them jealously. Naturally, therefore, when the question of religious liberty once arose, the Polish nobility immediately applied to the sphere of religion the same principle it had established in the realm of politics. It insisted on freedom of thought, on liberty of conscience, on toleration of divergent views, beliefs, and practices. In 1539 freedom of the press was established, and in 1556 full liberty of conscience.[257] To secure the realm still further against any possible religious intolerance, dissensions, persecutions, or strifes and conflicts, the ruling classes entered, on the death of Sigismund Augustus, into a compact, sealed by the Confederation of Warsaw on the twenty-eighth day of January, 1573, mutually pledging themselves to maintain religious peace and toleration in the land.[258] This compact was confirmed by the Diet, became a part of the Polish constitution, and had to be sworn to by succeeding kings on their accession to the Polish throne.[259]

Owing to this remarkable degree of religious toleration, Poland became a land of refuge for persecuted religious dissenters and reformers of other European countries. Here found refuge such men as Franciscus Stankar, Blandrata, Negri, Lelio and Faustus Sozzino, Bernard Ochino, Alciati, Gentilis, Franciscus Lismanini, and Peter Statorius,[260] all of whom were Italians of extreme religious views and unwelcome even in Switzerland; and later at the beginning of the seventeenth century the German anti-trinitarians, Crell, Smalz, Ruarus, and Stegmann[261] also found refuge in Poland. Bernard Ochino, driven out from Zurich, came to Poland in December, 1563, and in appreciation of the freedom of thought and of conscience there existing, dedicated his twenty-eighth dialogue to King Sigismund Augustus. Ochino had opposed the execution of Servetus, and admired Poland’s religious toleration.[262] Ruarus was led to emigrate to Poland by the reports of its “golden liberty of conscience established by the constitution of the Estates and sworn to by Polish kings.”[263] Besides these extremists, others sought and found refuge in Poland from religious persecution in their homelands. The most notable case is that of the Bohemian Brethren. While as a group they were ordered to move on to East Prussia, where Duke Albert offered them asylum, many of them remained in Poland, and exerted a powerful influence on the Reformation movement in that country. Moreover, at Cracow, Vilna, Posen, Tarnov, and Lublin there actually existed Protestant congregations composed not only of Germans, but also of Italian, French, English, and Scotch religious refugees.[264] The Scotch congregations were naturally Calvinistic, and some of them were still in existence by the middle of the eighteenth century. Such names as Gordon, Hyson, Sinclair, Pipe, Leigh, French and Ross still appeared on the Calvinistic rolls at that time.[265]

In this connection it is worth noting that while in liberal England hundreds of persons were executed for their religious convictions in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in Poland there was only one such execution, that of an eighty year old lady in the city of Cracow in 1539.[266]

The remarkably rapid spread of the Reformation in Poland was, therefore, due in no small measure to Polish religious toleration.

Finally, in our study of the social causes of the growth of the Reformation in Poland, we must by no means overlook the fact that the Polish religious reformation was a class movement. It was accepted, adhered to, and championed by the upper classes of Polish society; in the cities by the commercial population, largely German, and throughout the country by the nobility, the large magnates and the well-to-do gentry, particularly the large magnates. This was due to the circumstance that both of these classes were in close contact with the outside world and with new movements abroad; the first chiefly through commercial intercourse, the second through educational, social, and diplomatic relations.

This class aspect of the movement was both its strength and its weakness. The fact that the Reformation won to itself, and was accepted by, the most alert, socially most influential, and politically most powerful classes constituted its strength. It lent the movement a certain dignity and prestige, made it unavoidably popular, and assured to it rapid spread and certain victory. In its strength, however, lay also its weakness. The Polish Reformation remained an upper class religion. It did not filter through down to the masses of the population; it did not grip, transform, and revitalize the people. This circumstance harbored the movement’s inevitable doom from the very beginning, however glorious that beginning might have been and however phenomenal the development.