THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
PETRIKAU, pe"tri-kau', SYNODS OF: Four Polish synods held at Petrikau (75 m. s.w. of Warsaw), Russian Poland, in 1551, 1555, 1562, and 1565. The Reformation early found welcome in Poland, especially in Posen and Cracow; and the first Protestant teachers were exclusively Lutheran. Calvinism was introduced during the reign of Sigismund August II. (1548-72), who stood in close relations to Calvin, and at the same time the Bohemian Brethren expelled from their own country took refuge in large numbers in Great Poland, especially in Posen. At the Synod of Kozminek in 1555 they united with the Calvinists, though the Roman Catholics, under the leadership of Stanislaus Hosius, bishop of Culm and Ermeland, did all in their power to obstruct the extension of the Protestant movement.
At the first Synod of Petrikau in 1551, a Roman Catholic confession of faith was drawn up, expressly intended to answer the principles of the Augsburg Confession, and severe measures were taken against converts to the new teachings. The king and the nobility, however, strongly favored the Protestant party, and the former added his voice to the demand made by the second Synod of Petrikau (1555) that a national council be convened to settle the religious controversies. Sigismund also sent representatives to the pope, requiring the administration of the chalice, the celebration of mass in the vernacular, the abolition of clerical celibacy, and the abandonment of annates. The pope, however, refused to accede to these demands, and sent a nuncio, Bishop Lipomani of Verona, to Poland to repress the Protestant movement. He entirely failed, but the success of the Polish reformers was rendered impossible by their own divisions, as became clear at the third synod, held at Petrikau in 1562. There were constant difficulties between the Lutheran and Reformed parties, and the situation was made still more complicated by the appearance of a Polish antitrinitarian movement. All attempts to secure harmony failed, • and the antitrinitarians were formally excluded from fellowship with Protestants at the fourth synod of Petrikau, held in 1565, though neither this nor a royal command banishing all Italian antitrinitarians (1654) was carried out.
In the same year, at a diet convened at Petrikau, the antitrinitarian leaders secured the holding of a disputation with their opponents, though the Lutherans held aloof, and only the Reformed and the Bohemian Brethren accepted. At this disputation Gregor Pauli, a Cracow preacher and the leader of the antitrinitarians, alleged the impossibility of reconciling the Catholic creeds concerning the Persons of the Trinity with the teaching of the Scriptures; while the trinitarians insisted on the historic agreement between the Scriptures and the teaching of the whole Church. After fourteen days of debate the two parties were farther apart than ever. The antitrinitarian representatives, moreover, disagreed among themselves, some denying the preexistence of Christ and the personality of the Holy Spirit, others accepting the preexistence of Christ and the reality of the Holy Spirit, and yet others assuming three Persons in the Trinity,
but ascribing different values to them. The final outcome of the matter was the exclusion of the antitrinitarians from the Reformed Church, so that henceforth they constituted a separate communion.
(David ERDMANNf.) Bibliography: Besides the literature under Poland, Christianity in, and the works of Dalton and Kruske named under Lasco, Johannes a, consult: A. Regenvolscius (A. Wengierski), Syatema historico-chronologicum ecclesiarum Slavonicarum, pp. 180 sqq., Utrecht, 1652; S. Lubenski, Historia reformationis Polonicce, pp. 144 sqq., 201 sqq., Freistadt, 1685; E. Borgius, Aus Posens und Polens kirchlicher Vergangenheit, pp. 14 sqq., Berlin, 1898; and G. Krause, Die Reformation und Gegenreformation in Polen, Posen, 1901.
PETROBRUSSIANS. See Peter of Bruys. PETRUS MONGUS. See Monophysites, §§5 sqq.
PEUCER, pei'tser, CASPAR: Leader of the crypto-Calvinists (see Philifpists) in the electorate of Saxony; b. at Bautzen (31 m. e.n.e. of Dresden) Jan. 6, 1525; d. at Dessau (67 m. s.w. of Berlin) Sept. 2, 1602. He was educated at the University of Wittenberg, which he entered in 1540, and where he became professor of mathematics in 1554 and of medicine in 1560. Throughout the life of Melanchthon, whose son-in-law he was, he was his friend, counselor, physician, and companion, while after the Reformer's death he edited his collected works (Wittenberg, 1562-64), two books of his Epistolce (1570), the third and fourth volumes of his Selectee declamationes (Strasburg, 1557-58), etc. He likewise completed Melanchthon's revision of the Chronicon Carionis, which had extended only to Charlemagne, by two books bringing it down to the Leipsic disputation (2 parts, Wittenberg, 1562-65); while among his independent writings mention may be made of his De dimensione terra (Wittenberg, 1550) and De prcecipuis divinationum generibus (1553).
Peucer was a favorite at the Dresden court, where he was appointed physician in 1570, though still retaining his Wittenberg professorship. At his instance Melanchthon's Carpus doctrince was officially introduced in 1564, thus marking the rise of Philippism; and vacancies in the university were filled with strict followers of Melanchthon. In 1571 he collaborated in a school abridgment of the Corpus doctrince which sharply denied Luther's teaching of Ubiquity (q.v.), and with the death of Paul Eber (q.v.) in 1569 approximation to Calvinism became still easier. At the same time, the strict Lutheran party continued to have much influence at court because their side was taken by the elector's wife, a Danish princess. Considerations of foreign policy, however, finally induced the elector to dismiss his favorite physician, especially as he was accused, though wrongly, of having a part in a Calvinistic exposition of the faith, Exegesis perspicua, published by Joachim Cureus in 1574. Peucer's correspondence was searched, and evidence was found which was construed as expressing his intention to try to introduce the Calvinistic theory of the Lord's Supper into the Saxon Church. He acknowledged his fault when tried before the Saxon diet at Torgau, and was directed to restrict his interest to medicine. But the Elector August was