The reformation in Poland

by Paul Fox

The jurisdiction of the clergy now became an intolerable burden to the Polish nobility. Its scope had gradually expanded until, in the fifteenth century, in spite of protests and attempts to fix limits, it came to cover not only questions of religion, but also all sorts of civil matters. In fact, it so happened that there was scarcely a question that the ecclesiastical courts regarded as foreign to their jurisdiction. Their authority, moreover, was greatly strengthened when the government, by the Edict of Wieluń (1424) and by a statute of 1458 confirming it, committed the execution of their verdicts to the starostas, thus lending the clergy the executive arm of civil authority.[438]

The administration of justice by ecclesiastical courts in Poland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was very harsh, arbitrary, and light-minded. The most severe penalty, namely, that of excommunication, which carried the confiscation of property, deprivation of honor, exile and death, was frequently inflicted upon offenders for most trivial offenses. A noble was in danger of excommunication for getting into a fight and beating a precentor, an organist, or a grave-digger, not to speak of more serious offenses, such as seizing or withholding the tithes.[439] Sometimes a landlord was excommunicated for offenses committed by his peasants on the ground that he should have used his authority to bring the peasants to terms and into submission to the church. So terrible in its consequences was the church’s excommunication in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that everyone dreaded it.

Naturally, then, attempts were made very early to define and limit the scope and authority of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. At the Convocation of 1420, in answer to the synodical statutes of Nicholas Tromba, archbishop of Gniezno, the nobility forbade its members to appeal to ecclesiastical courts.[440] According to a document of 1433, issued to Bishop Bodzanta of Cracow, laymen were not to be cited before ecclesiastical courts.[441] In 1447 the nobility sought to confine episcopal jurisdiction to matters strictly ecclesiastical, such as questions of faith, heresy, marriage, and religious indifference in cases of those that had not confessed once a year at least.[442] Disputes over tithes, seized or withheld, according to this foregoing agreement between the nobility and the clergy, were to be settled in episcopal courts, but they were to be adjudicated according to law. If the accused failed to answer the first summons, a second one was to be issued to him at his expense; and he could not be excommunicated until he was duly tried.[443] In matters belonging to civil courts the clergy were forbidden by the Statute of 1496 to summon persons before their courts.[444] By the Constitution of 1505 civil matters were withdrawn from episcopal courts altogether, and henceforth ecclesiastical judges were forbidden to adjudicate them.[445] Furthermore, to avoid complications in the administration of justice and to minimize difficulties in the execution of verdicts, the Diet of 1532 called upon the clergy in synod assembled to determine what cases they regarded as belonging to their jurisdiction, and instructed the commission appointed to revise existing laws to define the exact scope of the jurisdiction of the spiritual and secular courts.[446] Unfortunately, the commission allowed the episcopal courts too wide a scope, and consequently its report was rejected. The Statute of 1543 again undertook to define the jurisdiction of the two classes of courts, but it was in force for one year only.[447] And once more, a statute of 1550, confirming existing laws, provided that no person should be summoned before any court unless his case fell within the jurisdiction of that court,[448] and a clergyman was forbidden to hold the office of clerk in a secular provincial court.[449]

By 1550 the question of ecclesiastical jurisdiction became one of the burning questions of the day. It was precipitated by Orzechowski’s defiance of ecclesiastical authority. Stanislaus Orzechowski was a nobleman priest in the diocese of Przemyśl. He publicly announced that he would enter the state of matrimony. Bishop Dziaduski of Przemyśl in turn announced publicly that if Orzechowski should carry out his intention he would excommunicate him at once, depriving him of honor, confiscating his hereditary property, and exiling him from the country. The bishop’s threat was a sweeping violation of the most fundamental rights of the nobility by the clergy. It endangered the nobility as a class. The Polish nobles were not slow to see that Orzechowski’s case was not merely a question of church discipline, and that if the Bishop of Przemyśl was allowed to carry out his threat, their property and their lives would not be safe. They took up Orzechowski’s case as their own, and rose to his defense. They viewed the episcopal threat as an attack upon them and their liberties, and therefore resolved to stand by Orzechowski. The matter came before the Diet of 1550. Orzechowski found supporters in some of the most influential magnates of Poland, like James Górka, Martin Zborowski, Raphael Leszczyński, Nicholas Radziwill, and Nicholas Oleśnicki, all of them adherents and champions of the Reformation. Through the intervention of John Tarnowski, grand hetman of Poland, and Peter Kmita, starosta of Przemyśl, a compromise was effected, the terms of which were that Orzechowski was to apply to the Pope for sanction of his intention and was not to be married until he received the Pope’s permission.[450]

The compromise was absurd. It did not settle anything; it only delayed the settlement of the question raised. Górka and Zborowski, therefore, spurred on Orzechowski to break the compromise agreement and to carry out his plan in defiance of episcopal authority.[451] The magnate Nicholas Oleśnicki of Pińczów decided to make a test case of the whole issue. On the advice of the Italian reformer Franciscus Stankar, he broke openly with Roman Catholicism, accepting the Reformed faith and taking away from the monks at Pińczów their church and monastery. Immediately the Polish bishops brought charges against him. He was tried, not according to the canon law of the church, but according to the law of the country, before the king and the senate. He was acquitted on condition that he dismiss Stankar and restore the seized monastery to the monks, neither of which orders Oleśnicki actually carried out.[452]

Thus spurred on by his friends, Orzechowski took courage, renounced his clerical vows, and entered the state of matrimony. Bishop Dziaduski, struck with consternation, did not at first know what to do, but in the end resolved to carry out his threat, On April 8, 1551, he issued his verdict against Orzechowski, annulling his marriage and excommunicating him. On presentation of the case by the primate to the king, Sigismund Augustus confirmed the episcopal verdict in accordance with his pledge given the Polish bishops in December, 1550,[453] and instructed Peter Kmita, starosta of Przemyśl, to execute it. At the same time the king issued an order to all the starostas to execute the verdicts of episcopal courts in all cases of condemned and excommunicated heretics. Excommunicated by the church, Orzechowski was deprived of honor and property, exiled from the country, and in danger of being put to death, if caught.[454]

The news of Orzechowski’s excommunication by Bishop Dziaduski and of the royal confirmation of the episcopal verdict without a trial came like a lightning stroke from the clear sky. Orzechowski’s case was the first instance in the history of the Polish Commonwealth of a noble deprived of honor and of his hereditary possessions and condemned to exile and death as a result of episcopal excommunication, without due trial, according to law, guaranteed the Polish nobility by the Charter of Jedlnia (1483). Immediately the nobles, not only of Orzechowski’s province, but of the whole of Poland, rose as one man against this high-handed attack on their liberties both by the clergy and by the king. Orzechowski’s neighbors were ready to defend him in case the starosta tried to execute the verdict; but Peter Kmita neither dared, nor wanted to execute it. He preferred to wait and see what the Diet of 1552 was going to do about the whole matter.[455]

The local diets of 1551, at which the szlachta elected the deputies to the General Diet of 1552, fairly seethed with the indignation of the Polish nobility. The clergy, on the other hand, greatly elated over their apparent victory and pleased with the king’s stand regarding the Orzechowski affair, called a synod at Piotrków, at which they decided to bind the king still closer to their cause by offering him the estates of all condemned heretics; and to frighten the nobility into submission they excommunicated at this synod Stadnicki and Lasocki, two very influential and popular heretics in their respective palatinates. The excommunicated magnates went from one local diet to another, informed the szlachta of the ecclesiastical verdicts, reported the resolutions of the synod, and read the king’s pledge given the bishops secretly in 1550 in exchange for their consent to Queen Barbara’s coronation, and which had been secured and made public by Nicholas Lutomirski, castellan of Zawichow. They called upon the szlachta to defend their lives and property.[456]

The indignation and anger of the nobility of Little Poland rose so high that it almost reached the point of massacring the clergy and of bringing in Protestant ministers from abroad to take their places. As deputies to the Diet of 1552 they chose the most decided opponents of the clergy, and instructed them to take up no measures until the king defined episcopal authority and invalidated the above mentioned verdicts of episcopal courts.[457]

The Diet of 1552 convened at Piotrków. The secular nobility, both the senators and the deputies, were in a most hostile frame of mind toward the clergy. Even as faithful a Catholic as Hetman Jan Tarnowski refused to shake hands with Bishop Dziaduski of Przemyśl, turning away from him, when the latter came to the hetman’s house to greet him.[458] Raphael Leszczyński, president of the Chamber of Deputies, stood with his head covered during the celebration of the opening mass. When the diet had been duly opened, the Chamber, under the leadership of Leszczyński, unequivocally demanded the abolition of episcopal jurisdiction, stating that no other measure would be considered until that demand was complied with. The secular portion of the Senate, under the leadership of Jan Tarnowski, did not go quite so far, but it seconded the Chamber’s demand to this extent, that it, too, called for bringing ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the limits of law.[459] The Polish nobility stood firm by their demand for the abolition of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The bishops, on the other hand, were equally determined not to surrender it. The decision rested finally with the king. After a bitter struggle of two months, due partly to the royal vacillation, the king at last handed a decision that in all cases of heresy the bishops have jurisdiction. The verdict created no small consternation among the secular senators as well as among the deputies. But, though apparently fully victorious, the bishops, sensing the feeling against them and taking counsel of wisdom in time, consented to suspension of their jurisdiction for one year until at the next diet or at a national synod the country’s laws and the church’s canons could be harmonized, provided the nobles agreed to continue the payment of tithes.[460]