Polish Culture in the Renaissance

Studies in the arts, humanism and political thought

Lepri, Valentina (a cura di), Facca, Danilo (a cura di)

• Publisher: Firenze University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9788866555124
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'Europa rinascimentale

During the most recent conference of the Renaissance Society of America, two sessions were devoted entirely to the Renaissance in Poland. In fifty-nine editions of what is considered the most prestigious international appointment for experts of Renaissance culture, this is the first time that characteristic features of sixteenth-century Poland were the subject of analysis and debate. The interest generated at the conference and the academic value of the contributions convinced the organisers of the panels to ask the speakers to develop and revise their contributions to conform with the conventions of the academic article. The result is a selection of essays that pursue specific pathways in exploring the cultural factors that affected the Renaissance in Poland: influences and originality in Polish literary and artistic production, orthodoxy and dissidence, the circulation of thought and reflection on the Res Publica in the spheres of both politics and philosophy. Adopting a distinctly interdisciplinary approach, the aim of this publication is to focus certain aspects of the Polish Renaissance and the cultural identity of sixteenth-century Poland in relation to the European context.
Danilo Facca is a professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and a specialist in Renaissance thought. He is inter alia the author of a monograph on Bartholomaeus Keckermann and of several articles on Aristotle's Metaphysics in the 16th century.
Valentina Lepri is currently an adjunct professor in the Artes Liberales faculty of Warsaw University. She has a PhD from the National Institute for Renaissance Studies in Florence, and has been a research fellow in Germany, in Poland and at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.

Polish Religious Toleration and Its Opponents: The Catholic Church and the Warsaw Confederation of 1573

Charles Keenan

Early modern Poland became a bastion of the Counter-Reformation church, yet until about 1600 it had been one of the most tolerant countries in Europe. The Warsaw Confederation of 1573 stood at the heart of this shift. The pact affirmed Poland’s commitment to religious peace and tolerance, and by requiring all Polish kings to uphold its terms, it theoretically protected religious freedom in Polish lands. As such, it defied the Catholic Church’s desires to limit the spread of Protestantism. This chapter investigates, first, how the Roman church opposed the confederation, and to what extent the curia was successful in implementing its policies in far-off Poland. Second, I ask why Rome opposed the Warsaw Confederation. That the Counter-Reformation church did not want to tolerate religious minorities is unsurprising, but what, specifically, did the Catholic Church find so objectionable in the confederation? Although there were straightforward theological reasons why Catholics insisted on doctrinal unity, when they protested the Warsaw Confederation, more often than not Catholic prelates either declared that the confederation violated Polish custom, or that its policies would prove harmful for the Polish commonwealth. Unlike politique thinkers who believed religious differences had to be tolerated for political stability, the Catholic Church argued the opposite: only by protecting one religion in their kingdom could Polish kings be assured of peace and stability. In the end, although Catholic clerics were unsuccessful in repudiating the confederation, their protests shed light into why the church feared the advent of religious toleration.

First, we need to understand what the Warsaw Confederation was67. In Polish parlance, a “confederation” (konfederacja) was simply an agreement drawn up among nobles for specific ends, such as to arrange a regency or to confirm a military alliance68. During interregna, especially, the nobility would attempt to limit the powers of the monarchy through confederations69. Following the death of King Sigismund II Augustus in July 1572, the Polish nobility gathered in Cracow at the end of January 1573 to decide upon the date and time of the next royal election. At that assembly, however, the senators and clerics also agreed to a new confederation on January 28, 1573. The text of agreement itself is brief70. With the violence directed against Protestants in France during the St. Bartholomew Day’s Massacre fresh in their minds, the Polish nobles swore that:

As there is wide disagreement in our State on matters related to the Christian religion, and in order to prevent any fatal outburst such as has been witnessed in other kingdoms, we, who are dissidentes de Religione, bind ourselves for our own sake and that of posterity in perpetuity, on our oath, faith, honor and conscience, to keep the peace among ourselves on the subject of difference of religion and the changes brought about in our churches; we bind ourselves not to shed blood, not to punish one another by confiscation of goods, loss of honor, imprisonment or exile; not to give any assistance on this point in any way to any authority or official, but on the contrary to unite ourselves against anyone who would shed blood for this reason, even if he pretended to act in virtue of a decree or decision at law71.

Several points bear mentioning. First, the confederation was only binding on the signatories of the treaty, meaning the nobles themselves. No mention was made of the peasants living on their lands or the residents of cities, nor did it speak to the legal status of Protestant ministers. Second, even though contemporaries understood that the confederation protected freedom of conscience, there is no mention of this explicitly in the text72. The only stated goal was to maintain peace among religious dissidents. Finally, historians have shown that even to contemporaries the meaning of the confederation was ambiguous73. Despite these limitations the confederation was a remarkable document for its time, and scholars have argued that it was broader in its implications than the Peace of Augsburg of 155574. The majority of the assembled Polish nobility signed the confederation, including many Catholic senators, but with one exception – Francis Krasiński, the bishop of Cracow – none of the Catholic bishops signed the confederation75.

The Catholic leaders in Poland – the legate, Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Commendone; the nuncio, Vincenzo dal Portico; and Commendone’s secretary, Antonio Graziani – reacted swiftly to the confederation. Immediately after the confederation was signed on January 28, Graziani sent word to Commendone of what had transpired, and Commendone in turn sent a letter to Rome on January 31 with a copy of the confederation76. Commendone’s initial understanding of the document was framed negatively: he understood the confederation to be repealing longstanding laws against heresy rather than granting new religious freedoms. He also pointed out possible procedural mistakes that would invalidate the confederation. Not only had the assembly only met to determine the time and place of the election, not make new laws, Commendone noted that by Polish custom no law could be approved without the consent of both the secular and ecclesiastical estates. Therefore, since the Catholic bishops had not given their consent, the confederation could not be legal77. Still, he feared the confederation would “stabilize” the religious divisions of that realm, rendering it permanently divided, and he was especially concerned by the number of Catholics who had

[…] not only agreed to and signed [the confederation], but urged others to do the same, interpreting it to be in favor of the Catholics because with this [confederation] the heretics [would] agree to elect a Catholic king, which they otherwise would never have done78.

Meanwhile, the ecclesiastical estate, led by Jacob Uchański, the archbishop of Gniezno, immediately protested the confederation during the assembly of January 2879. Their protest, like Commendone’s letter, gives a useful window into how Catholic prelates initially understood the confederation. Like Commendone the bishops began by noting that the nobility had only met to establish the time and place of the election80. But the bigger danger was that the confederation would permit all kinds of heresies to come easily to Poland, “not only those which are currently here, but also others that are most horrid and foul, such as Adamites, Turks, and others, which can easily drive us to atheism”81. The clerics believed that it would be impossible to grant legal toleration only to a specific group. The bishops admitted that they had no desire for Christian blood to be spilled, and especially not Polish blood, but because of the dangers inherent in the confederation they could not agree to it.

The next months saw Commendone arrive in Cracow and direct the Polish bishops in protesting the confederation82. Though the Polish bishops had made the protest of January 28 on their own, afterward the Catholic opposition was organized by the papal representatives in Poland: Commendone, dal Portico, and Graziani83. On April 5, for example, Commendone gathered the bishops in his house and spoke with them at length regarding both the election and the confederation, and the bishops promised that they would be united with the pope’s wishes84. In addition, Commendone went before the diet in April to voice another protest of the confederation himself. Besides urging the diet to elect a Catholic king, Commendone criticized the impossible idea of having multiple religions living together in one kingdom, using the Biblical example of Samson, who ...