Poland: A history. Adam Zamoyski

let alone to apostasy. The reaction of the Polish hierarchy was pragmatic, often cynical, sometimes vehement, but never hysterical. Bishop Drohojowski of Kujavia, a region profoundly affected on account of its many German-dominated towns, went out of his way to meet prominent Lutherans and sanctioned their takeover of the Church of St John in Gdańsk since most of the parishioners had gone over to the heresy. Elsewhere in his diocese he allowed the sharing of parish churches by Catholics and Lutherans.

      A considerable proportion of the clergy were genuinely interested in the reform of the Church. The Christians of the Orthodox rite had always enjoyed three of the demands of the Protestant movement: the marriage of priests, the use of the vernacular in the liturgy, and communion in both kinds. The Protestant demands were therefore less shocking and novel in Poland than in other Catholic countries. It was not uncommon for Catholic priests to emulate their colleagues of the Orthodox rite by having common-law wives, and these were keen to regularise their position and legalise their broods. Stanisław Orzechowski (1513-66) married while Canon of Przemyśl, and defended his action in a long debate with his bishop and with Rome, published in pamphlet form.

      Apart from the practical demands concerning marriage and the vernacular, Luther’s revolt aroused strong feelings among the clergy against the medieval practices of the Church. Marcin Krowicki (1501-73) left the priesthood and published his Defence of True Learning, a fiercely anti-clerical work in which the Papacy is referred to as the whore of Babylon. Bishop Uchański, on the other hand, did not forsake a career which was eventually to make him Primate of Poland, but nevertheless wrote vituperative diatribes against the practices of the Church. In 1555 he declared himself in favour of the marriage of priests, communion under both kinds and the use of the vernacular. He also mooted the idea of a joint synod of all confessions in Poland, to bring about reconciliation on common ground. When the King promoted him to the bishopric of Kujavia the Pope refused to ratify the appointment, but neither the King nor the Polish hierarchy took any notice.

      King Zygmunt the Old (1506-48) felt that the religious debate was none of his business. He came under considerable pressure from Rome and from those of his own bishops who were in favour of stamping out the heresy. He was even reproached by Henry VIII of England for not taking a more energetic line against the Protestants. Whenever this pressure became overwhelming, he would take some action to satisfy the zealots, but his edicts were invalid without the approval of the Sejm. His attitude is summed up in the words of his successor, who shared it fully. ‘Permit me to rule over the goats as well as the sheep,’ he told one Papal envoy who was demanding arrests and executions.

      In many countries the Reformation had social and political overtones. In Poland it was above all a constitutional issue. As the Papal Nuncio’s secretary noted after witnessing the debates of a Mazovian sejmik, the assembly seemed staunchly Catholic when the discussion turned on the faith, the sacraments and the sacred rites, but when the talk was of the privileges of the clergy, a number of ‘Protestant’ voices could be heard, and when it came to the subject of the Church’s immunity from taxation, the entire assembly appeared to have become fanatically Calvinist. In 1554, Bishop Czarnkowski of Poznań sentenced three burghers to death by fire for heresy, but they were rescued by a posse of mostly Catholic szlachta. The same bishop later sentenced a cobbler to the same fate, and this time over a hundred armed szlachta of all denominations, led by the foremost magnates, laid siege to the episcopal palace and freed the condemned man. On one or two occasions, the ecclesiastical courts managed to execute the sentence before anyone could take preventive action. In 1556 Dorota Łazewska, accused of stealing a host from a church and selling it to some Jews for alleged occult rites, was burnt at the stake in Sochaczew. The execution caused uproar, and this came in time to save the lives of the three Jews who were to be burnt on the next day. They too were saved by the intervention of Catholic as well as Protestant szlachta. As Jan Tarnowski pointed out, ‘It is not a question of religion, it is a question of liberty.’

      All were agreed that there could be no liberty while a body independent of the parliamentary system was able to judge people, and the ecclesiastical tribunals’ jurisdiction was duly annulled by act of the Sejm in 1562. Two years later, when a young Arian, Erazm Otwinowski, snatched the monstrance from the prelate during a religious procession in Lublin, threw it on the ground and stamped on the Blessed Sacrament, shouting obscenities, he was brought before the Sejm tribunal. This body, made up of Catholics and Calvinists, heard the case and agreed broadly with the defence, ably conducted by the poet Mikołaj Rej, who argued that if God was offended, God would punish, and as for Otwinowski, he should be ordered to pay the priest ‘a shilling, so he can buy himself a new glass and a handful of flour’ with which to repair the monstrance and bake a new host.

      At a time when torture and death awaited anyone caught reading the wrong book in most European countries, such dispassionate adherence to the notion of the primacy of individual rights over all other considerations was extraordinary. But neither the Catholic nor the Protestant leaders were happy with this state of affairs. There was a general desire to reach consensus and to decide on a state religion. At the Sejm of 1555 a majority of deputies demanded the establishment of a Church of Poland with rites in the vernacular, the right of priests to marry and communion under both kinds, to be administered by a Polish Synod independently of Rome. The prospect of a break with Rome loomed, but the King of Poland was no Henry VIII.

      Zygmunt Augustus, the only son of Zygmunt the Old, was a melancholy figure. Painstakingly educated—some say debauched—by his mother Bona Sforza, he was dubbed ‘Augustus’ by her and brought up to rule accordingly. She was a forbidding creature. The first cousin of Francis I and a close relative of Charles V, she had been brought up at the court of her father the Duke of Milan, which had an evil reputation for intrigue and poison. In an unprecedented move, she arranged for Zygmunt to be elected and crowned heir to the throne during his father’s lifetime. But she did not contribute to his happiness, and he did not live up to her ambitions.

      In 1543 he married Elizabeth of Habsburg, daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand I, who died only two years later, allegedly poisoned by Queen Bona. He then fell in love and eloped with Barbara Radziwiłł, the sister of a Lithuanian magnate. Only four years after this marriage, which was opposed by virtually everyone in Poland for a variety of reasons, Barbara Radziwiłł died, and again the Queen Mother was suspected of using her Milanese skills. After considering at length the possibility of marrying Mary Tudor, in 1553 Zygmunt married his first wife’s sister, Katherine of Habsburg, widow of the Duke of Mantua. It was a disastrous marriage. The epileptic Queen physically repelled him and, unlike the others, she did not die—perhaps because Queen Bona, feeling more unpopular than ever, had loaded herself up with gold and jewels and fled to Bari in Italy where, appropriately enough, she was herself eventually poisoned.

      Since neither of his first two wives had borne him any children, the fact that Zygmunt Augustus refused to touch his third was a matter of some concern to his subjects. The extinction of a dynasty is always cause for alarm, and in this instance the alarm was all the greater as the Jagiellons were still the only real link between Poland and Lithuania. The Sejm begged the King to attend to his wife, repulsive or not, and the Primate actually went down on his knees in the chamber to beseech him either to possess her or to cast her off, breaking with Rome if need be.

      The King’s behaviour at this point was critical to both the religious and the political future of Poland, yet he remained undecided. His attitude to the Reformation was ambivalent. He never showed much sympathy for the Protestant movement, but took a great interest in it, avidly reading all the dissenting tracts and treatises and accepting the dedication of works by Luther and Calvin. In 1550 he issued an anti-Protestant decree in the hope of winning support from the bishops for his marriage to Barbara Radziwiłł, but this remained a dead letter. A few years later he rebuked the Papal Nuncio for urging a firmer line towards the Protestants, and in effect forced him to leave Poland. When asked by his subjects which way they should lean in the religious debate, he replied: ‘I am not the king of your consciences.’

      Unlike Henry VIII of England, Zygmunt Augustus did not want a divorce. His love for Barbara Radziwiłł had been a great passion, and her death robbed him of the will to live. He continued to carry out his duties without enthusiasm, dressed in black, and showed no desire to mould the future or perpetuate the dynasty. When pressed by the Sejm of 1555, he