The Cambridge Modern History/Volume II/Note on the Reformation in Poland
NOTE ON THE REFORMATION IN POLAND.
The Reformation in Poland, although its influence on general European history in the period treated in this volume is comparatively slight, has some features of special interest. It pursued its course for nearly half-a-century without material hindrance either from the national government or the authorities of the Church. During this era its difficulties arose principally from the dissensions of the Reformers, from the independence of the nobility, the ignorance and apathy of the oppressed peasantry, and the want of sympathy between the country and the towns, where the German element was strong, and between the burghers and the nobles. Thus the evolution of a national Reformed Church was impossible; the Reform movement never obtained any vital hold on the mass of the people; and no united opposition could be offered to the forces of the Counter-Reformation, when at length they began to act. On the other hand the lack of organisation, of combination, and of national and ecclesiastical control, left the way free for the most hazardous and audacious speculations. Every man's intellect was a law to himself, and heresy assumed its most exorbitant forms.
The conditions of the Church in Poland called for reform not less than elsewhere. The Bishops were enormously wealthy; and the character of the episcopate was not likely to be improved by the measures of 1505, and 1523, which were intended to exclude all but nobles from the bishoprics. The right of the King to nominate to bishoprics was practically recognised. In 1459 a memorable attack was made upon the administration of the Polish Church by John Ostrorog, a man not only of the highest rank, but of great learning. His indictment, made before the Diet, foreshadows the general demand for a reform of the Church, though nothing is said about doctrine. The excessive authority of the Pope, the immunity of the clergy from public burdens and public control, the exactions of the Papacy, the expenses of litigation before the Curia, indulgences, simony, and the requirement of fees for spiritual offices, the unworthiness and ignorance of monks and clergy, the encouragement of idleness, are all put forward with no sparing hand. Owing to the privileges of the Polish nobility the power of the ecclesiastical Courts was less in Poland than elsewhere, and excommunication was openly set at defiance. On the side of doctrine Hussite influence, continually spreading in Poland during the fifteenth century, prepared the ground; and the fact that nearly a half of the subjects of the Polish Crown, the Slavonic population of the South and East, professed the faith of the Greek Church, familiarised the Jagellon Kings with divergences in faith, and the people with the existence of other beliefs.
It was not long before the movement initiated by Luther spread to Poland, and it appeared first in Polish Prussia, the western part of the territory of the Teutonic Order, ceded by it in 1466 to King Casimir III. Danzig was the first centre of an active propaganda, and the urban population favoured the new opinions. The ecclesiastical authorities endeavoured to act with firmness, but found their authority insufficient. In 1525 the Reformers captured the town government, and the Reformation was set on foot. But in the following year Sigismund I, then King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, took forcible measures to suppress the Reform. In this, almost the only energetic step taken by that King against the spread of Reform, he was actuated by political motives. In 1523 Albert of Brandenburg, the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, had adopted the Reform, and in 1525 he converted the dominions entrusted to his charge into a hereditary dukedom; and Sigismund feared that the Reforming tendencies of West Prussia might lead the inhabitants into closer political relations with the emancipated master of East Prussia. In spite, however, of Sigismund's temporary success at Danzig, Lutheran opinions continued to spread, and finally triumphed in Polish Prussia.
In Poland itself frequent acts against the new opinions were passed by ecclesiastical synods, in 1527, 1530, 1532, 1542, and 1544. But the Church was powerless in face of the famous Polish privilege, "nemi-nem captivare nisi jure victum? and the other immunities of the nobles. The ecclesiastical Courts were regarded with general contempt. The hostility of the Diets was undisguised. In 1538 they forbade the Polish clergy to receive any preferment from the Pope, in 1543 they abolished annates, and in 1544 they subjected the clergy to ordinary taxation. Sigismund I issued an order in 1534 forbidding Polish students to study at foreign universities, but this order was cancelled in 1543; and the inaction of Sigismund proclaims either his impotence or his lack of zeal. His son, Sigismund II Augustus, who succeeded in 1548, was probably rather friendly than indifferent. In any case the power of the King was little; and individual nobles took what line they pleased without reference to King or Church.
In these circumstances not only did Lutheran views spread freely, but other heresies appeared. A society was formed at Cracow, under the influence of Francisco Lismanini, which not only ventilated the opinions of the more orthodox Reformers, but also cast doubt upon the doctrine of the Trinity. In 1548 the Reformation in Poland received a great impulse by the expulsion from Bohemia of the Bohemian Brethren, a sect which received a definite organisation about 1456, and had survived through many vicissitudes, preserving many of the more advanced Hussite opinions. Luther, at first hostile to their views, afterwards became reconciled, and established a spiritual communion with them. Ferdinand, after other repressive measures had failed, expelled them from his territories; and on their way towards Prussia they found temporary hospitality in Posen, where they were entertained by Andreas Gorka, the Castellan of Posen. The Bishop of Posen, however, before long procured their expulsion; they passed into Prussia, leaving behind, however, many converts; and their congregations afterwards evangelised many districts of Posen and of Great Poland.
The reign of Sigismund Augustus (1548-72) saw the Polish Reformation at its height. The Synod of Piotrkow in 1552, at which Stanislaus Hosius, the Bishop of Ermland, first took a prominent part as a defender of the Church, initiated a vigorous campaign against the Reform; but although the clergy procured the martyrdom of a poor priest, they found themselves helpless against the nobles. The Diet of 1552 left to the clergy the power of judging heresy, but deprived them of the authority to inflict any civil or political penalty. In the same year a Polish Reformer, Modrzewski, laid before the King a remarkable and moderate scheme of national ecclesiastical reform; but there was no authority capable of carrying it out. In 1556 licence assumed the form of law, and the principle of cujus reglo was carried to its extreme consequence, when the Diet enacted that every nobleman could introduce into his own house any form of worship at his pleasure, provided that it was in conformity with the Scriptures. The King at this time also demanded from Pope Paul IV in the name of the Diet the concession of mass in the vernacular, communion in both kinds, the marriage of priests, the abolition of annates, and a National Council for Reform and the union of sects. He received in the following year a stinging reprimand from the fiery Pontiff for an offence in which he was little more than a passive agent.
The Reformation seemed to be triumphant. But excessive liberty was a source of weakness. The Bohemian brethren, indeed, formed a durable union with the Genevan Churches in Poland in 1555. The former were most powerful in Posen and Great Poland, the latter in Little Poland and Lithuania. But the Lutherans were a persistent obstacle to union. It was hoped that the return of John Laski (à Lasco) to his native land in 1556 might put an end to divisions. This member of a noble Polish house had listened to the voice of Zwingli and Erasmus in his youth, and afterwards had renounced his prospects of high preferment in his own Church in order to preach reform. His self-denying labours in East Friesland had been crowned with success, and as head of the community of foreign Reformers in London he had won a reputation beyond the Channel. His gentle nature, and the moderate character of his opinions, which, although they were nearest to those of Calvin and Zwingli, were calculated to give the least possible offence to the Lutherans, raised great hopes of him as a mediator. But he died in 1560, having effected nothing.
Protestant dissensions continued, and the Protestant cause was further discredited by the activity of the anti-Trinitarians. Lismanini had openly denied the Trinity, and Bernardino Ochino in 1564 found many hearers. He was expelled, however, very shortly. The Unitarians had their centre at Pinczow, near Cracow, and among their leaders were first Stancari and Lismanini, and afterwards Georgio Biandrata, and Peter Gonesius, a Pole. Even in the face of this double danger, from their own advanced wing and from the Catholic side, the Protestants failed to achieve unity. At length at the synod of Sandomir, 1570, mutual toleration rather than union was arranged between the Lutherans on the one hand, and the united Church of Genevans and Bohemians on the other. Thus the critical time of the death of Sigismund Augustus in 1572 found the Protestant sects widely spread in the Polish dominions, enjoying virtual toleration, but probably not very deeply rooted in the Polish people, compromised by advanced freethinkers, and barely concealing their mutual antagonism.
Meanwhile dangers were arising. The direct efforts of Stanislaus Hosius, the mission of Lippomani in 1555, and that of Commendoni in 1563, did little to check the Reformed opinions. But from the introduction of the Jesuits into Poland at the suggestion of Cardinal Hosius in 1564, and from the transfer into their hands of the institutions of higher education founded by him in Poland, dates the beginning of a more insidious and effective opposition, which was destined in a period beyond our present scope to attain complete success.
This brief note may serve to show the position of the new religions in Poland down to the death of Sigismund Augustus. But the name of Socinus is so closely linked with the religious history of that country and with that of the dissidentes de religione (the appellation given in Poland in 1573 to the adherents of the Reformation, though afterwards extended in its significance), that a word must be said about the two well-known teachers of that name. Lelio Sozzini was a native of Siena, born in 1525. Attracted early by the writings of Luther, he made himself suspected at home, and travelled widely throughout Europe, coming into contact with all the leading Reformers. He visited Poland twice, and doubtless found kindred spirits there; he probably influenced Lismanini; but although the audacity of his opinions and the free expression of his doubts seem to have caused him to be regarded with suspicion by more orthodox Reformers, he does not appear to have actually denied the doctrine of the Trinity. He died in 1562. His nephew, Fausto Sozzini, passed the line. He also was born at Siena in 1539. He came to Poland in 1579, after the anti-Trinitarian opinions had long been developed there. Under the protection of the Transylvanian Prince, Stephen Bathory, the sect had flourished, and had acquired in the town of Racow its own school, church, and printing-press. Sozzini speedily won great influence, and was able to influence the doctrines of the Unitarians. Eventually the sect received his name, and was known as Socinian.
The distinctive doctrine of the Socinians was the denial of the doctrine of the Trinity, the teaching of One God. They recognised divinity in the Father alone, and denied it 'to the Son and the Holy Ghost. They reverenced Christ as the Messiah, as a teacher and a reformer, but as a human being. They believed nevertheless in His supernatural birth, in His miracles, His resurrection, His ascension. They believed that He received revelations from the Father. They followed also the Bible as their guide and standard; giving it their own interpretation, which differed from that of the Protestants and of the Fathers of Nicaea. They rejected the Augustinian doctrine of original sin, and believed that salvation was to be obtained by conscientious following of Christ's teaching, and virtuous living. They rejected therefore also the doctrine of the Atonement. Baptism was for them only the symbol of admission into the Christian communion, and the Lord's Supper a mere memorial. This remarkable sect had its origin in the active brains of speculative Italians, its favourable ground for growth in the religious liberty or anarchy of Poland, but it received its definite organisation, its tenets, and its name from Fausto Sozzini.