This concession on the part of the Polish episcopate, did not, however, conciliate the Polish nobility. The nobles felt that their rights and liberties had been outraged and were in danger of being completely violated. The turn of events in 1552 made them only all the more determined to fight. In great numbers they came out now for the Reformation. Inside of one year nearly all the Polish nobility, according to Dr. Kubala, left the Roman Catholic Church and embraced the faith of the Reformation. The speed with which the Polish nobles tried to change their form of worship had no parallel. They invited reformers from abroad; they converted their manor houses into places of worship; they built hospitals, schools, and homes of refuge for persecuted dissidents; and the new doctrines were preached through the whole length and breadth of the country.[461] Great Poland, where the influence of Hussitism still survived, accepted, under the leadership of James Ostrorog, the tenets of faith and form of worship of the Bohemian Brethren. By 1557 there were thirty Bohemian Brethren churches in Great Poland, and all the leading aristocratic families, the Ostrorogs, the Leszczyńskis, the Tomickis, the Krotowskis, and the Opalińskis, turned Protestant.[462] Little Poland, under the leadership of the Zborowskis, Nicholas Oleśnicki, and Stanislaus Stadnicki, became Calvinistic. In “terra Sandeceniensis,” the home province of Orzechowski, all the nobility became Protestant by 1554; and by 1560, according to a letter of Bishop Przyrębski to Bishop Kamerini, one hundred and sixty churches in Little Poland broke away from the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome.[463] In Lithuania, under the leadership of Nicholas Radziwill, the foremost aristocratic families accepted Calvinism. They were the Radziwills, the Kiszkas, the Chlebowiczes, the Sapiehas, the Słuźkis, the Zawiszes, the Wiśniowieckis, the Wojnas, the Paces, the Abramowiczes, the Wołowiczes, the Ogińskis, the Zienowiczes, the Pruńskis, the Naruszewiczes, the Talwoczes, the Drohostajskis, the Puzynas, the Szemiotas, the Gruźewskis, the Góreckis, and others. By 1559 the Catholics in Lithuania constituted only one-thousandth part of the population.[464] So strong was the sentiment now against the Church of Rome that men well known for their antagonism to Rome, like James Uchański and Andrew Frycz Modrzewski, were selected and sent as Poland’s delegates to the Council of Trent.[465] In 1535 at the Diet at Piotrków the calling of a National Synod to adjust the existing differences and difficulties was agreed upon, and a delegation was dispatched to Rome by the king with a request for the Pope’s sanction of that plan as well as of a number of practical reforms. Needless to say, the desired papal sanction was not granted. On the contrary, the Pope immediately sent a legate to Poland in the person of Alois Lippomano, bishop of Verona, to stave off any such possibilities. In his first interview with the king Lippomano advised the Polish monarch, for the sake of an example and a warning, to execute twenty leading dissidents. Owing to his harshness and lack of tact, this papal nuncio became so unpopular in Poland, that when in 1556 he entered the Diet Chamber, the deputies shouted: “Salve, progenies viperarum!”[466] At the Diet of 1557 security and freedom were guaranteed all foreign Reformed ministers.[467]
As to episcopal jurisdiction, this became a lost cause after 1552. The bishops, having once agreed to its suspension, though only temporary, were unable to recover it again, in spite of desperate attempts.[468] By a statute of the Diet of 1562-1563, all excommunicated persons were admitted to provincial and fortress courts (do sądow ziemskich i grodzkich) with their grievances and complaints, and the starostas were instructed to respect the constitutionally guaranteed privileges of the szlachta.[469] The result was that no one wanted now either to appeal to or to appear in any episcopal court. This took the teeth out of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Moreover, by the Constitution of 1565 the clergy were forbidden to summon before their courts starostas who in compliance with the statutory law of 1562-1563 refused to execute the verdicts of episcopal courts.[470] Deprived of the executive arm of civil authority, ecclesiastical courts became powerless and their verdicts of no effect. This was a great victory for the Polish nobility. At last their lives and their property were safe from further attacks of the clergy through arbitrary exercise of their ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
All the grievances of the Polish nobility in the sixteenth century were summed up and the remedies for these grievances were contained in the demand for “the execution of laws.” It was a demand of the Polish nobility for a return to the fundamental constitutional laws of the land, for conformity in private and public life to these laws, and for elimination of abuses. Many of the social and political ills and problems of the times were due either to disregard or to open violation of existing constitutional and statutory laws. For instance, after 1454 and particularly so after 1504, it became illegal for the king either to pledge or to grant any part of his royal lands to any private individual or to any institution without the sanction of the diet.[471] The extravagant liberality of the Polish rulers had made it necessary to make these restrictions; they were intended to safeguard the royal domain from undue diminution, the royal treasury from embarassing impoverishment, and the country from inadequate defense. Also, it became illegal after 1454, and especially after 1505, for the king to make any new laws or to issue edicts having the force of new laws without the common consent of the two chambers of the diet.[472] It was illegal, also, for the clergy to enlarge their landed estates either by purchase or by gift, while they evaded the responsibility of participation in the country’s defense.[473] Likewise, it was illegal for the king to confer upon them special privileges, exempting them from various public burdens.[474] Moreover, it was a flagrant violation of the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the szlachta for the clergy to sit as their judges in matters of life, liberty, and property.[475] Yet all these violations and abuses had become so common that they almost had the force of perfectly lawful acts and practices. For a time they were tolerated. But when they began seriously to interfere with the liberties and economic interests of the Polish nobility, the nobles rose against them resolutely, and with determination demanded a general reformation of conditions.
Their demand for “the execution of laws” was directed particularly against the special privileges and immunities, real or pretended, of the clergy.[476] Beginning with the Diet of 1511,[477] both the secular and the regular clergy were repeatedly called upon by the diets of the sixteenth century to justify their specially privileged status and their evasion of public responsibilities and burdens by presenting their charters for examination, until at last they were forced to comply with this demand in part at least.[478] The continued insistence on the part of the nobility on the clergy’s participation in public burdens resulted finally in the imposition by the Diet of 1563 of a regular tax on episcopal property and tithes.[479] In the struggle regarding ecclesiastical jurisdiction the nobility appealed to its privileges of 1422, 1433, 1454, and the Constitution of 1505, demanding the annulment of all royal edicts against heresy as unconstitutional, together with ecclesiastical jurisdiction in matters involving the nobility’s constitutional rights to life and property. As a result of this appeal and demand the king issued instructions to the starostas in 1563 to respect the constitutional rights of the nobility. By this act the royal edicts against heresy and episcopal jurisdiction, whether in cases of heresy or of refusal to pay tithes, became invalidated and rendered of no effect.[480]
Thus, we see that the conflict between the Polish nobility and the ecclesiastical authorities in the sixteenth century, resulting in the former’s extensive revolt from the established church, was due mainly to the wealth of the Polish clergy, their immunities from public burdens, and their abuse of episcopal jurisdiction; for these not only increased the burdens of the Polish nobility, but also seriously menaced its social and economic status. Whatever particular form this conflict assumed, its underlying motives were essentially economic and social rather than religious or even purely political.
[355] Guaranteeing to compensate the szlachta for their participation in foreign expeditions and for injuries sustained in them, Louis of Hungary simply confirmed and further enlarged a right which had been previously granted by Casimir the Great by the Statute of Wiślice of 1347, where we read: “Sed extra Regni metas nobis servire non sunt obligati, nisi ipsis satis competens satisfactio per nos impendatur, vel per nos specialiter fuerint petiti et rogati ad hoc” (Vol. leg., vol. i, fol. 44).
[356] Ibid., fol. 57.
[357] Sokołowski, vol. i, p. 295.
[358] “… item, ut gratia uberiori consolentur a nobis, etiam nos fide et servitiis amplioribus prosequantur, promittimus, quod exnunc et de caetero nunquam alicujus subditi Regni nostri, cujuscunque dignitatis, eminentiae, status aut gradus fuerit, bona haereditaria recipiemus, confiscabimus, recipi vel confiscari faciemus, nec se de eis per nos vel officiales nostros vel alios quoscunque homines intromittemus vel intromitti faciemus pro quibuscunque excessibus aut culpis, nisi prius super hoc preccedat judicium nostrorum, quos ad hoc deputaverimus, cum nostris praelatis, baronibus, matura cogitio et sententia sequatur” (Vol. leg., vol. i, fol. 83).