RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Poland, Christianity in
Fricius Modrevius. From this source the movement spread everywhere among the minor as well as the greater nobility; but the prime cause of the Reformation is to be sought in the deep religious sense of the Slavic people, who eagerly accepted the preaching of the Gospel in place of the means of the deteriorated Church. In the mean time the movement proceeded likewise among the nobles of Great Poland; here the type was Lutheran, instead of Reformed, as in Little Poland. Before the Reformation the Hussite refugees had found asylum here; now the Bohemian and Moravian brethren, soon to be known as the Unity of the Brethren (q.v.), were expelled from their home countries and, on their way to Prussia (1547), about 400 settled in Posen under the protection of the Gorka, Leszynski, and Ostrorog families. During 1553- 1579, this band increased to seventy- nine congregations, due to their industrious and sane activity, during the quarter-century leadership of George Israel. In Little Poland, owing to political conditions, there was for a long time a lack of organic home leadership. The churches could not continue successfully under the control of Geneva and the Rhine. Efforts were made to import proper men from abroad, which resulted most wisely in the choice of Johannes a Lasco (q.v.). He was a Pole, acquainted with the Reformers of his native land, a fugitive first in East Friesland and then in England, and one who had specially proved his fitness for organization and leadership. His return was delayed and the Synod of Kozminek (1555), under the pressure of threatened disorganization, adopted a plan of union, the result of which would have meant absorption into the Unity of the Brethren. A year later, upon his arrival, Lasco insisted upon the integrity and independence of the home church. In the fifth decade of this century the movement entered into its final tests in the struggles of the bishops and the nobles of the Reformation in the diets. In the diet of 1552, Leszynski refused to bow the knee and remove the hat at the opening of the mass. This diet secured freedom of conscience by granting the Roman Catholic Church the right of judgment on heresies but not of penalty. The Diet of Warsaw (1556) provided that every noble was free to establish in his house and on his estate that worship which seemed to him fitting, if it were grounded on the Scriptures. It also voted an address to Pope Paul IV. demanding of the Council of Trent worship in the vernacular, communion in both forms, consecration of priests, abolition of the papal contributions, and the calling of a national council for the correction of abuses and the unification of church bodies. However, the king was weak. He sent the bishop of Przenysl as delegate; the diet was unrepresented and never accepted the resolutions of the council. King Sigismund August died in 1572 without heir, and unfortunately at this stage the country was thrown into the strife of electing a sovereign. The choice fell upon Prince Henry of Valois, duke of Anjou, who had been recommended by Coligny before Sigismund's death. In spite of the division, united action was taken at the Diet of Warsaw (1573) under the Reformed leadership of Crownmarshal
Firley of Little Poland, guaranteeing equal rights and freedom to all creeds. The Reformed representatives of Poland also exacted a pledge from the king of France before they cast their votes for his brother, guaranteeing freedom of faith and worship and a safe return of the fugitives to his kingdom. Until the time of coronation the Jesuits plotted to make this oath void, and when Henry showed signs of weakening before reaffirming the oath at the coronation, Firley fearlessly stepped forward, seized the crown in his hand, and cried out in a loud voice, " If thou wilt not swear thou shalt not reign." The frightened king forthwith took the oath.
This episode was an outward mark of a Counter- Reformation which had been developing for some time. Two movements within the bosom of Protestantism exposed it the more to the reaction. First, antitrinitarianism, imported from Italy, toward which even Lismanin inclined, had its supporters and centered itself at Pinczow. 3. Counter- Against this, Lasco (q.v.) placed him- Reforma- self in energetic and successful oppotion. sition. In the second place was the irreconcilable division of the three Protestant bodies over against the united front of the Jesuit Roman Catholics. The Church of Little Poland and Lithuania was Calvinistic; that of Greater Poland and Prussia, and, with occasions, that of Courland and Livonia, wTas Lutheran, the churches of which were early intermingled with many congregations of the Unity of the Brethren. Lasco strove for such a union with his last energy, but failed. Ten years after his death a general synod at Sendomir (1570) adopted a consensus identifying themselves in a union against the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation. It was shaken by conflict as soon as it had been adopted. The general synod at Thorn (1595) reendorsed the consensus of Sendomir, making it binding upon all the clergy and subscriptions necessary under the penalty of dismission. Yet the measures fell into oblivion. In 1728 the general synod of Danzig recalled it from obscurity and resolved to adhere to it; but though never revoked, it was in time forgotten. Meanwhile the Counter-Reformation proceeded, conducted sagaciously by Rome, not only by availing of these internal divisions of Protestantism, but also by following its own independent designs, regardless of the survival of the Polish nation. The foreigner Stanislaus Hosius (q.v.), bishop of Ermland, was the leader and an irreconcilable antagonist of the dissidents. The Jesuits who worked by his side did perhaps nowhere else so effective and pernicious a work. While these laid their insidious plans in the houses of the nobles, Hosius knew how to make the most of the dissident polemical writings for the cause of Rome. A further aid was the papal nuncio at Cracow, Commendone, but most of all the king, Sigismund III. (1586-1632), called by contemporaries " king of the Jesuits." The Evangelicals lost their rights and liberty of conscience. The Jesuits also directed their efforts against the Eastern Church so that in 1599, at Wilna, a compact of Evangelicals and Greek adherents was made to which either side
Poland, Christianity in Polemics