JOHN A LASCO.
In Calvin's place appeared, by his advice and probably at the invitation of the king, John a Lasco, or Laski, a Polish nobleman, distinguished among the Reformers of the second rank. Born at Warsaw, 1499, and educated for the priesthood by his uncle, the Archbishop of Gnesen and Primas of Poland, he made a literary journey to Holland and Switzerland, and became personally acquainted with Zwingli at Zurich (1524) and with Erasmus at Basle (1525), who shook his faith in the Roman Church. [1115] On his return to Poland he endeavored to introduce a moderate reformation, but the country was not prepared for it. He declined an offer to a bishopric, and sacrificed bright prospects to his conviction, preferring to be in a foreign land 'a poor servant of Christ crucified for him.' He labored several years as Reformed pastor in Emden, East Friesland, until the Interim troubles drove him and his friends to England. He organized in London three congregations of Dutch, German, French, and Italian emigrants (ecclesiæ peregrinorum) on a Presbyterian and voluntary basis, under the protection of Archbishop Cranmer and Edward VI. The persecution of Queen Mary forced him again to wander in exile. When he landed with a hundred and seventy-five members of his flock in Denmark, 1553, he was refused shelter in cold winter because he could not subscribe to the Lutheran doctrine of the real presence. He fully experienced the force of his motto, 'The pious have no home on earth, for they seek heaven.' After laboring a short time in a congregation of English and other pilgrims in Frankfort-on-the Main, he accepted the invitation to his native country in 1556, and was made General Superintendent of Little Poland. Here he prepared, with the aid of other scholars, an admirable Polish translation of the Scriptures, published after his death, organized Reformed Churches (which increased in his time to the number of one hundred and twenty-two), and confirmed the union of the Calvinists with the Bohemian Brethren, although he himself preferred the Presbyterian polity with lay representation to the Bohemian episcopacy, and differed from their view of the Lord's Supper and other articles of their confession. He died Jan. 7, 1560, in the midst of work and care. [1116]
PETER PAUL VERGERIO. [1117]
During the same period Poland was twice visited (1557 and 1559) by another remarkable man among the secondary reformers-- Peter Paul Vergerio (1498-1565), formerly papal nuncio to Germany and Bishop of Capo d'Istria. [1118] In the attempt to refute the Lutheran writings he had become a Protestant, introduced the Reformation in the Italian parts of the Grisons (Valtellina, Poschiavo, and Bregaglia), and then took up his residence in Tübingen under the protection of Duke Christopher of Würtemberg, writing many books and making important missionary journeys. He was well received in Poland by Prince Radziwill and the king. He associated mainly with Lutherans and the Bohemian Brethren, but labored for the cause of union, like Laski. [1119]
He aided the Reformation by his able pen, and the Roman historian Raynaldus says that 'this wretched heretic led many weak Catholics into the camp of Satan.' But his stay in Poland was too short to leave permanent results.
THE PAPAL REACTION AND TRIUMPH.
In the mean time the Roman Catholic party, under the leadership of Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius, Bishop of Ermeland (d. 1579), was very active. Pope Paul IV. sent a nuncio, Lipomani, to Poland, and urged the king to banish Laski and Vergerio from the country, and to suppress, with every power at his command, the rising heresy, if he would save his honor, his crown, and his soul. The weak king vacillated between the advice of Calvin and the threats of the Pope, and did nothing. He allowed the glorious opportunity to pass, and died in 1572, the last of the House of Jagellon. The nobles were likewise undecided, and many of them were carried away by the Unitarian heresy which began to spread in Poland in 1558.
During the interregnum which followed the death of Sigmund Augustus, the nobles, before electing a new king, concluded in 1573 a patriotic treaty of peace for the protection of religious freedom, under the name of Pax Dissidentium--that is, of the Roman Catholic and the three evangelical Churches. [1120] They required Duke Henry of Anjou, the brother of the King of France and a violent enemy of the Huguenots, to accept the treaty as a condition of the crown, hoping to break it afterwards. On being peremptorily told by the Great Marshal, in the midst of the act of coronation, 'Si non jurabis non regnabis' he took the oath in spite of the remonstrance of the Romish party; but he left Poland in 1574, being called to the throne of France after the death of his brother, Charles IX. His Protestant successor, Stephen Bathori of Transylvania (1575-86), took the same oath, but afterwards joined the Roman Church and opened the door to the Jesuits This was the turning-point.
Under Sigmund III.--a Swedish prince, who had been educated and converted by Jesuits, and was elected king in 1587--there began a series of vexations and oppressions of the Protestants which gradually reduced them to a poor remnant, except in the Prussian part of Poland where the German element prevailed. Even Laski's relations and the four sons of Radziwill returned to the Roman Church; one of these sons became a cardinal; another made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and spent five thousand ducats for the purchase and destruction of Polish Bibles which his father had published (1563) at his expense. [1121] Hence the great scarcity of this work. It was an essential part of the Jesuit counter-reformation to burn the whole Protestant literature, and thus, to suppress all independent thought. In this it succeeded only too well. The Polish nation, after the light of the gospel was extinguished, hastened step by step to its internal and external ruin.