Besides these instances, there were others. Leszek the Black (1279-1288) was at odds with the bishop of Cracow, Paul of Przemankow. The bishop, an implacable enemy of the king, conspired against the king, incited the aristocracy against him, and caused even an invasion of Little Poland by the Lithuanians and the Jadźwings. The king dispersed the invaders, confiscated the bishop’s property, and imprisoned him in the Castle of Sieradz, putting him in stocks. It was only when the Pope threatened Leszek with excommunication that the king liberated the imprisoned bishop.[5] In the fourteenth century Casimir the Great (1333-1370) imposed a tax on episcopal property. The Polish high clergy resented that, and excommunicated the king. Casimir ordered the priest, who brought the bull of excommunication to him, to be seized and drowned in the Vistula River. And since Casimir was a powerful and popular ruler, the clergy took due warning, and desisted from further provocative steps.[6] Moreover, it is worthy of note that while in Germany the right of investiture was surrendered as early at 1122 by the Concordat of Worms, in Poland the princes defended and retained the right as late as 1206.[7] And in the second half of the fifteenth century, taking advantage of the existing schism in the church at that time, they again regained it, and made it a permanent and indisputable prerogative of the Polish crown.[8] Even such a loyal son of the church as Sigismund the Old (1506-1548) did not allow the Pope to interfere with his right in this particular. When at the beginning of Sigismund’s reign the Pope deliberately nominated a candidate for the bishopric of Płock, the king refused to accept the papal nominee, stating that he would never consent to such violation of the country’s laws by allowing anyone else to nominate the kingdom’s senators. Again, when later in Sigismund’s reign Pope Hadrian VI was delaying his approval of the king’s nomination of Leszczyński to the bishopric of Posen, Sigismund notified the Vatican that the Pope’s refusal to comply with his just wishes might result in unpleasant consequences to the Holy See; whereupon the Vatican at once approved Leszczyński’s nomination to the bishopric of Posen.[9]
An equal measure of independence characterized the Polish high clergy in respect to its relation to the Vatican. Prince Wladislaus II (1138-1146), striving to establish a strong unified and centralized government in defiance of the provisions of his father’s will, which divided the kingdom among four of his sons, aroused the opposition of the aristocracy and of the clergy, to whom a strong centralized government was very unpalatable. James of Żnin, archbishop of Gnesen, as leader of the opposition, excommunicated the stubborn ambitious prince, and forced him to abdicate. Wladislaus appealed his case to Conrad III, emperor of Germany, and to the Pope. Both of them responded, the emperor with a military expedition and the Pope with a legate. When on arrival in Poland the Pope’s legate, Cardinal Guido, was unable to secure a return of the throne to Wladislaus, he excommunicated the opponents, and placed the country under an interdict. The Polish bishops, however, paid no attention to the legate’s excommunication and interdict; and Wladislaus, though supported by the Pope, had to remain in exile until his death in 1159.[10] Wladislaus, surnamed Langshanks (1202-1206), in his opposition to the Gregorian reforms, upon which Pope Innocent III insisted, had the support of many high church dignitaries among the Polish clergy. Philip, bishop of Posen, for instance, refused to promulgate in his diocese the papal interdict, under which Archbishop Kietlicz was instructed to place the country.[11] To what extent the Polish clergy disregarded papal decrees may be seen from the fact that though Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) decreed a general enforcement of celibacy among the Roman clergy, marriage among the clergy of Poland, according to the historian Długosz, was still generally common as late as the close of the twelfth and the first quarter of the thirteenth century.[12] It is quite instructive to note that even such high church dignitaries as John Łaski and James Uchański, both archbishops and primates of Poland, the first from 1510 to 1531 and the second from 1562 to 1578, were very unfavorably disposed toward the Vatican. As bishop and secretary of state, Łaski declined to support the Pope’s project of forming a league against the Turks. As archbishop of Gnesen and primate of Poland, he worked for the emancipation of his archbishopric from Rome to such an extent as to alarm not only his enemies, but even his friends and the king himself.[13] Uchański’s orthodoxy and loyalty to Rome had been long under suspicion at the Vatican; so much so that when Sigismund Augustus (1548-1572) appointed him to the bishopric of Chełm, the Pope did not ratify the appointment for several years, and when the king promoted Uchański to the bishopric of Kuyavia, the Pope refused to sanction the promotion altogether. This served only to estrange Uchański from the Vatican still more, and led him, especially on his elevation to the archbishopric of Gnesen, to entertain plans and to advocate the advisability of calling a National Synod and of withdrawing the Church of Poland from the jurisdiction of Rome.[14] When the papal legate, Commendoni, dreading such a consequence, urged the Vatican to forbid, contrary to the decisions of the Council of Trent, the holding of Provincial Synods in Poland for fear that one of them might at any time be turned into a National Synod, the Polish bishops rose in protest against it in the senate of the Diet, going even so far as to declare that the king, and not the Pope, was their overlord and judge.[15]
The people, too, manifested the same spirit of independence in their attitude toward the church, whenever occasion demanded. In the eleventh century they arose in rebellion against the oppression of both state and church, particularly the church, owing to the foreign character of its clergy and their burdensome exactions. They demolished churches and monasteries, drove out the priests and the monks, and reverted to paganism.[16] In the struggles of the state with the papacy for supremacy the people generally supported the state. This explains the boldness and self-confidence of the Polish rulers, with which they successfully opposed the pretensions of the papacy much longer than the German emperors.[17] The papal anathema, hurled against recalcitrant princes and shaking the very foundations of Western thrones, fell in Poland without causing much disturbance or harm.
Another factor, which in a large measure prepared the soil for the spread of the Reformation in Poland, was humanism.[18] The new turn in literature and philosophy reached Poland early in the fifteenth century, and found many friends both among the laity and among the clergy.[19] One of the most distinguished Polish humanists was John Ostrorog (1402-1501), a doctor of both laws from the University of Erfurt and a strong advocate of the supremacy of the state over the church. In his dissertation, “Monumentum pro reipublicae ordinatione congestum,” Ostrorog wrote in 1473:
The Polish king recognises nobody’s supremacy save that of God; instead of assuring the new Pope of his obedience he will sufficiently fulfill his duty if he congratulate him, and at the same time remind him that he should rule the church justly. It is below the dignity of the king to write to the Pope with humility and humbleness.… The clergy should help bear the burdens of the state as well as other citizens; there is no need of being indignant when the king orders the melting of church utensils for public needs. The church has gold not for the purpose of keeping it, but for the purpose of helping the needy. All payments for the benefit of the Pope should be abolished. Poland needs all the funds she can spare for war with invaders and for the preservation of domestic order and peace. The proclamation of jubilee papal bulls as well as fees for funerals, marriages, etc., should be prohibited. The king should nominate the bishops. In order to decrease the number of idlers, the establishment of monasteries in cities should be restricted, the admission for foreigners to them prohibited, and sermons in the German language diminished in number.[20]
“Such were the predominant sentiments of the time,” says Dr. Lewinski-Corwin, “in true keeping with the teachings of humanism, which spread in Poland through constant contact with Germany and Italy, in the principles of which several generations preceding the Reformation had been reared, and in accordance with which they shaped their views and opinions.”[21]
The condition of the Polish church and the character of the Polish clergy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, too, were favorable to the spread of Reformation ideas in Poland. Lorkiewicz characterizes the Polish church and the Polish clergy of this period thus:
The church, which by its calling and its nature, should be the guardian of the oppressed, the defender of the weak against the strong, the moral guide of men, and the regulator of social conditions, had allied itself with those social factors which sap the very life-blood of society, offering it in exchange only a form without content, a body without a soul. It had become a ballast, not such as steadies the easy movement of a light vessel, but such as threatens the storm-tossed ship with certain destruction. The clergy, if it is fit to use such unpalatable comparison, was at this time like an old church beggar, who, having said the prayers that had been paid for, had nothing more pressing to do than to hurry and in a particular and characteristic manner waste the alms he had received.[22]
The Polish clergy led as dissolute a life as did the clergy elsewhere in Europe. The Polish bishops were far more interested in their incomes, their social standing, and in their political influence than in religion and morals. The indignation of the nobles, therefore, at the freedom the clergy enjoyed from taxation and other burdens was intense. They were strongly opposed to church tithes and to ecclesiastic jurisdiction, and resented papal interference in matters of state.[23]
Pre-Reformation Reform Movements.—Into this receptive Polish soil the seed of religious reform had been sown from time to time for nearly four hundred years; and as it grew and developed, though greatly hindered from time to time, it helped to create an atmosphere favorable to the main religious reform movement of the sixteenth century. The followers of Peter Waldo, persecuted in Italy, sought safety in other countries. As early as 1176 some of them found refuge in Bohemia, and others settled in Poland, near Cracow.[24] Here they spread their master’s teachings, and found many adherents both among the Czechs and among the Poles. Polish chronicles record the names of a number of Waldensian Poles.[25] In time these Waldensians must have become sufficiently numerous and active; for Pope John XXII found it imperative to appoint in 1326 a special Inquisitor for Poland in the person of Peter of Kolomea, a Dominican,[26] and in 1330 the Inquisition discovered that there were many Poles and Czechs visiting the Waldensian churches in Italy and making liberal contributions to them.[27]