The reformation in Poland

Besides the great wealth of the church as such, there existed a whole series of potent causes, all essentially economic in their nature, leading to a revolt from the established church and furthering the spread of religious reform.

The social classes in Poland affected by the Reformation were the townspeople and the szlachta or nobility. Of the two the most influential class as well as the most instrumental in the promotion of the religious reform movement was the nobility. The townspeople were unfortunately largely of German nationality, foreigners in a foreign land, and consequently without either social or political influence. The nobility, however, was both Polish and politically powerful. In the sixteenth century it constituted not only the Polish nation but also the Polish state. Hence, as in Germany the Reformation owed its firm foothold to the protection of the German princes, so in Poland it owed its spread to the protection of the Polish nobility, particularly the magnates.

The political foundation underlying the szlachta’s favorable attitude toward the Reformation, its open revolt from the established church, its bitter and determined conflict with the Roman hierarchy, and its enthusiastic support of the new religious movement consisted of a number of special fundamental rights and privileges guaranteed it by various royal charters. The first important charter was the Pact of Koszyce of 1374. By this pact, in exchange for its consent to extend the right of succession to the Polish throne to the daughters of Louis of Hungary, including even the youngest, Jadwiga, the Polish nobility as a class was guaranteed exemption from all public burdens except a nominal tax of two “grosze” per “łan kmiecy,” which in reality was paid by the peasantry rather than by the nobility, freedom from royal levies of special or extraordinary taxes, compensation for military services outside the country and damages for injuries or losses sustained in the course of such foreign campaigns.[355] Moreover, royal appointments to high public offices of state in any part of the country were restricted by this pact to the native nobility therein resident to the exclusion of possible foreign favorites of the crown.[356] Thus, by this pact the szlachta obtained a very important economic advantage, and secured itself as a class against arbitrary fiscal oppression or political discrimination by the king.

In 1422, forced by fiscal and judicial abuses and economic oppression, particularly by the forcible measures employed by the clergy in their collection of tithes from heretical and recalcitrant Hussite members of the nobility,[357] the szlachta took advantage of a war exigency, and in the camp at Czerwińsk, Mazovia, on the eve of a military expedition against the Teutonic Knights, exacted another charter from the king, Wladislaus Jagiello, known as the Privilege of Czerwińsk. By this charter, among other things, the Polish nobility was guaranteed inviolability of its hereditary property rights against any arbitrary action either of the king or any of his official representatives. The king promised the nobility not to seize or to confiscate, nor to allow any of his officials to seize or to confiscate the hereditary property of any one of his subjects, whatever his rank or condition, without due process of law.[358] This royal guaranty henceforth precluded any unfair oppressive exactions from the szlachta under threat of confiscation of property or any arbitrary interference with the property rights of any szlachcic on the part of either the king or his officials. That the exaction of this guaranty was a foresighted master stroke on the part of the Polish nobility is proved by the Edict of Wieluń, issued only two years later, which decreed the confiscation of property of heretics.[359] Had it not been for the Privilege of Czerwieńsk, the Polish nobility would have been left wholly at the mercy of the clergy.

A few years later Wladislaus Jagiello, desirous to secure the Polish throne for his sons, born of his fourth marriage, sought to obtain their recognition as his successors by the Polish estates. The Polish nobility acceded to the wish of the king, but in consideration of this concession sought and obtained at Jedlnia in 1430 the famous charter generally known as the “Neminem captivabimus, nisi jure victum” privilege. This charter constituted the Polish “habeas corpus” act. According to its terms no nobleman could be arrested except upon the verdict of a court or when actually caught in the act of committing arson, murder, rape, or village plunder.[360] By its provisions the personal liberties of the Polish nobility were both enlarged and more securely guarded. The two privileges, that of Czerwieńsk and that of Jedlnia, were of great importance and value to the Polish nobility; the former guaranteed the inviolability of its property, the latter of its persons.

The other two very important charters obtained by the Polish nobility were the Statutes of Nieszawa of 1454 and the “Nihil Novi” Constitution framed by the Diet of Radom in 1505. The distinguishing features of these two documents were matters of jurisdiction and legislation. By the first the szlachta freed itself from the jurisdiction of royal administrative officials. From now on it was subject to the jurisdiction of the starostas, the royal administrative and judicial officials, only in four kinds of cases, arson, murder, rape, and theft. In other cases it was subject to the jurisdiction of provincial courts, for which, according to the Statutes of Nieszawa, it secured the privilege to nominate in the event of vacancies four candidates for judge, assistant judge, and court clerk. From these nominees of the provincial szlachta the king selected one for the respective vacancy.[361] In this way by its control of the provincial judiciary the szlachta assured for itself a fairer administration of justice. By the second it freed itself from arbitrary legislation. According to the Constitution of Radom the king was not permitted to make any new laws without the common consent of the senate and the representatives of the szlachta.[362] By this constitutional provision the rank and file of the nobility represented in the Chamber of Deputies came now into full control of legislation, and became masters of their own destinies.

By these charters the Polish nobility was guaranteed the most important fundamental rights and liberties of free citizens, freedom from taxation without its consent, security of person and of property, fair administration of justice, and immunity from arbitrary royal decrees jeopardizing its fundamental rights. Protected by these guaranties the Polish nobility was free to assume and to maintain any attitude it pleased toward the Reformation movement. It could with a reasonable degree of safety defy the king and Pope alike. This is what helps us to understand the spread of the Reformation in Poland in the face of numerous royal edicts against heresy and heretics, with their extremely severe penalties of exile, confiscation of property, infamy, and even death.

The economic basis of the ecclesiastical revolt of the Polish nobility, and a most powerful motive therefor, was created by the commercial and industrial transformation of Poland in the sixteenth century. The chief causes leading thereto were three significant historical events, all happening during the second half of the fifteenth century; namely, the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492, and Poland’s final complete triumph over the Order of the Teutonic Knights, sealed by the Peace of Thorn in 1466. The first closed the old paths of commerce with the Levant and the Orient; the second opened up new trade routes and new markets to the West; the third added West Prussia with the city of Danzig to Poland, and gave that country control of the lower course of the Vistula River and free access to the sea.

Owing to the first two historical events, the commercial centre of Europe shifted from the coasts of the Mediterranean to the coasts of the Atlantic and the Baltic, and the countries lying along these coasts profited by this change.[363] The cities of Antwerp, Bruges, Amsterdam, and Danzig became great emporia of Northwestern Europe. Toward the close of the fifteenth and during the sixteenth centuries the commerce of the Baltic turned out to be the hub of European commerce with the port of Danzig as its centre. From 1466 on the commerce of that city grew steadily. In 1428 the number of ships that arrived in Danzig was 110. In the years 1422, 1429, 1430, and 1432 flotillas of 70, 61, 40, and 59 ships laden with corn sailed from its port. In 1474, 1475, and 1476 the ships arriving in Danzig numbered 403, 525, and 634 respectively. Again, in 1490, 1491, and 1492 the number of ships sailing from Danzig was 720, 607, and 562 for the respective years.[364]

The main articles of its import were cloth from the Netherlands, England, and Scotland; linen from Scotland; salt from France, Germany, England, and the Netherlands; horses from southern Sweden, Finland, and the islands of Oeland, Gottland, and Bornholm; iron from Sweden; and wines, beer, and hops, fish, and southern fruits and vegetables from the South of Europe.[365] The principal articles of its export were agricultural and forest products, wheat, rye, barley, leguminous vegetables, lumber, ashes, pitch, and tar. The chief producer of its exports as well as the chief consumer of its imports was Poland.[366] Toward the close of the fifteenth and throughout the sixteenth century that country was the granary of Southern and Western Europe. Its grain was in great demand in cities of Italy, Portugal, and Spain as well as in the markets of Holland, Scandinavia, France, and Scotland. In 1527 the Senate of Venice voted a premium on grain imported from Poland, and later in the second half of the sixteenth century a number of Italian rulers and the Pope himself addressed urgent requests to the city of Danzig for grain shipments.[367] Its lumber and forest products were used by Holland, England, and Scotland for ship-building purposes.[368]

The annexation of West Prussia with the city of Danzig by the Treaty of Thorn, was, therefore, a very significant and happy event as regards the commercial and economic development of Poland. The place she had lost in the commerce of the East as a result of the fall of Constantinople into the hands of the Turks she now regained on the Baltic. This event enabled her to participate in the new world commerce by opening up to her a new unobstructed way to new and greater world markets. The change wrought was not only in the direction, but also in the nature and the volume of her commerce. The old eastern commerce was mainly transit commerce; its principal beneficiaries were the townspeople of the Polish cities. The new commerce assumed the form of export and import commerce; and its chief beneficiaries turned out to be the Polish nobles as the producers of export commodities.[369]

This change in commercial routes and in the nature and volume of the new commerce exerted a profound influence on Poland’s economic and social conditions. The great demand for grain in Western Europe and Poland’s new and easy access to world markets led to a revival of Polish agriculture, resulting in a more intensive cultivation of the soil, increasing exports of agricultural products, growing prosperity, and in new deepening interest on the part of the Polish nobility in agriculture rather than in war. Thus, while Western Europe was rapidly passing from an agricultural to an industrial stage of economic development, Poland after the middle of the fifteenth century became transformed into an intensely agricultural country, growing and exporting grain by way of the Vistula and the Baltic to meet the demand of western markets.[370]

To facilitate the new commerce all hitherto existing trade restrictions and barriers were removed, tolls on products transported either by water or by land were abolished, and commerce was given free movement. By a statute of Casimir Jagiello of the year 1447 the principal navigable rivers of Poland were opened to unobstructed water transportation, the public good and abundance of necessary commodities being now regarded as more important than fishing rights. At the same time all internal tolls were annulled and abolished and their collection prohibited.[371] The new regulations with their penalties for their transgressors were renewed and reaffirmed in the reign of John Albert in 1496.[372] And since there were some who disregarded these statutory provisions, as for instance the burghers of Thorn, John Albert promised to exercise special vigilance in their enforcement in order that water transportation to Danzig might be free and safe.[373] Nevertheless, in spite of these laws, there still were complaints in the Diet of 1538 against the collection of transport tolls by private individuals. In consequence of these all privileges granted private individuals and towns to levy and collect road and bridge tolls, with the exception of such as were necessary for the convenience of the travelling public, were abrogated altogether.[374] Due to the removal of all commercial barriers and obstructions and a good and convenient channel of export, such as the Vistula was, Poland’s commerce grew by leaps and bounds, bringing unprecedented prosperity to the country.

To meet somewhat adequately the demands of trade and at the same time to take advantage of the unusual opportunities for gain and enrichment, the Polish landowners turned to agriculture in dead earnest. This caused a change in the method of agriculture and created a great demand for more land and for more labor. Intensive agriculture and large scale production of agricultural products became the rule of the day. From the middle of the fifteenth century on through the sixteenth century the demesne estates of the Polish nobles and of the clergy were in process of enlargement by various methods. Waste and fallow lands were brought under cultivation, swamps were drained and made productive, and forests were cleared and the clearings were converted into fertile farms.[375] Expropriation of village mayorships was another method by which the demesne estates were being enlarged. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Polish princes, and following their example, the magnates and the clergy, in order to encourage colonization, offered special inducements to German colonizing entrepreneurs by allowing them for their services a certain amount of land free of charge and of all public burdens, and by granting them special rights and privileges, which placed them practically on an equal footing with the Polish nobility. These mayorships with their rights and privileges were hereditary. By a statute of 1423, however, the Polish landlords were given the right to buy out these village mayorships from their owners.[376] The steps necessary to be taken were to summon such a village mayor before a “judicium terrestre,” and to notify him of the intention of the lord of the manor to expropriate him. To be sure, the statute declared that this procedure was to be applied only against useless or rebellious mayors; but there was nothing easier to prove than the rebelliousness of a village mayor whom the lord of the manor wanted to expropriate. This method of enlarging the demesne estates was profitable to the lords in more ways than one. It transferred to the seigniorial reserve and its lord not only the land of the expropriated village mayor or mayors, but also the labor, the feudal dues, and all the rights and privileges which the village mayor or mayors formerly enjoyed.[377] This practice lasted from the middle of the fifteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century, and was resorted to by the Polish clergy as well as by the Polish nobility.[378]

Still another method of increasing the demesne estates of the lords was by incorporating into the demesne estate temporarily vacant peasant leaseholds. This practice became very common after the middle of the fifteenth century. Owing to the depreciation of money values and the rise of prices, especially for agricultural products, lands leased to peasants at a certain fixed money rental were not very profitable. The lands of the manorial estate cultivated by the lord directly by forced labor were yielding far more alluring returns. Hence, it came about that whenever a peasant left his lot, the lord of the manor, instead of settling it by leasing it out to another peasant family, simply annexed it to his seigniorial reserve and cultivated it by forced labor. This practice proved so profitable that the lords began gradually to resort to all sorts of oppressive methods for the purpose of driving the tenant peasants away from their leaseholds, so that they could then declare the deserted leaseholds as vacant, and annex them to their demesne estates. There were also instances of unceremonious transfers of peasant families to the manors and of straightforward seizures of their leaseholds. This was frequently done in case a peasant’s house burned down. Instead of rebuilding it, the lord preferred to show his hospitality by transfering the peasant’s family to the manor, where they became his servants.[379] The incorporation of deserted peasant lots into the lord’s private domain was especially tempting inasmuch as such “deserted” or “vacant” peasant lots were free from the “poradlne” or “łanowe,” a tax of two “grosze” paid by the nobility into the royal treasury.[380]

Land ownership was looked upon as a special privilege of the Polish nobility. The szlachta, therefore, strove with determination toward its complete monopolization and toward the monopolization of agricultural production.[381] Its next step was to exclude the townspeople from land ownership, to prohibit the clergy further to enlarge their landed estates, and to restrict access to all the higher ecclesiastical offices with their rich benefices to itself and its sons. To that end it employed legislative means. By the Constitution of 1496 the Polish nobility excluded the townspeople together with the peasantry from owning any landed estates and from access to any high offices in the church. According to the provisions of that document people of plebeian rank could neither buy new landed estates, nor continue to hold those they were already in possession of. They were called upon to dispose of their lands as speedily as convenient under penalty of being deprived of them.[382] In like manner they were excluded also from the higher appointments in the church. Lured by the wealth connected with these appointments, the Polish nobility by law restricted eligibility to them to its own class.[383] The restrictions regarding ecclesiastical appointments were reaffirmed by the Constitution of 1505, and violations of them were to be punished by perpetual exile and confiscation of property.[384] These restrictions, however, were frequently disregarded and violated. Foreigners and plebeians in favor at the papal court succeeded in getting cathedral appointments and appointments to other high church offices and lucrative benefices. Against these flagrant violations of the law the szlachta rose in protest at the Diet of 1532, demanding enforcement of the statutes of 1496 and 1505 and punishment not only of those who contrary to law secured higher ecclesiastical appointments, but also of those who helped them to get these appointments.[385] But these protests and the new constitutional provisions seemed to remain without effect, for in 1533 the szlachta of Great Poland presented the king with a memorial, protesting again against appointments of foreigners and plebeians to cathedral churches. The king in order to pacify the szlachta, issued a new decree, reemphasizing the fact that foreigners and plebeians were excluded from all higher ecclesiastical benefices under penalty of banishment and confiscation of property.[386] However, it seems that the king himself did not conform to law; for in 1534 the szlachta presented a petition to him, requesting him to have regard for his own subjects, their laws and customs, to treat them with greater consideration than foreigners and plebeians, and not to appoint the latter to any high ecclesiastical offices or as his secretaries.[387] The continued disregard and violations of these constitutional restrictions angered the szlachta, and stirred it up to a growing and more determined opposition not only to the clergy, but also to Rome and the Roman Church at large, driving it more and more into the enemy’s camp, the Reformation. To add fuel to the fire, the king, pressed by the Roman clergy,[388] issued February 4, 1535, a severe edict against heretical doctrines and books, the attendance of the Polish youth at Wittenberg or any other place infected with heresy, and ordered any such students to return home under penalty of deprivation of all honors and of perpetual exile.[389] The result was that at the following Diet, held the same year, the szlachta directed a strong attack upon the class privileges of the clergy, and actually succeeded in having the Diet pass three measures relative to the problem of “the execution of laws,” which threatened the very foundation of the church’s rights and privileges. These measures called upon all churches and monastic institutions to present at the next Diet their charters for examination, the purpose being to annul all such rights and privileges of the church as were contrary to the principles of public law and welfare.[390] The sessions of the Diet were very stormy, and the property of the clergy, together with their privileges, was the object of contention. In 1533, Bishop Chojeński wrote to Archbishop Krzycki, primate of Poland, as follows:

When it became evident that the king did not intend to carry out the wishes of the Diet of 1535, the szlachta of Great Poland instructed its deputies to the Diet of 1536-1537 to insist on “the execution of laws,” which included the matter of the church’s privileges. At this Diet the Chamber of Deputies raised, therefore, most violent protests against the abuses described, and vigorously demanded conformity to law and restoration of all illegally acquired benefices and church property. At the same time the Chamber demanded that henceforth the king appoint to abbacies and other lucrative church benefices only native Poles of noble birth, or plebeians of Polish nationality in the event that there are not enough candidates of noble birth to fill vacancies. The leaders in this movement were Raphael Leszczyński, Stanislaus Myszkowski, Nicholas Krzycki, and John Sierakowski, who later on became well-known champions of the Reformation movement.[392] Moreover, in 1538 the Diet passed a law, according to which anyone receiving anything contrary to statutory enactments by courting the favor of the Vatican was thereby ipso facto proscribed and his possessions were confiscated. By the same law all church dignitaries residing in Rome away from their appointments were recalled, and if they failed to return to the country within a specified time, they were to be deprived of their offices and banished, and were not to be permitted to enter the country.[393]

But high ecclesiastical offices richly endowed were after all limited in number. If the Polish nobility was to find larger access to the landed property of the church, it had to get to it in other ways, which it did. If the secular nobles were keen in buying up village mayorships, so were the Polish clergy. In fact, they were in possession of more mayorships than the secular nobles.[394] Then, too, their landed estates were further augmented by bequests of pious persons. These things were a thorn in the flesh to the Polish nobility. It sought ways and means of preventing this constant increase of church property. As early as 1510 testamentary bequests of real estate property to the church were prohibited by statutory enactment.[395] In 1534 the szlachta at its provincial diets unanimously demanded that the General Diet restrain the clergy from buying up village mayorships, with the result that in the end a law was enacted prohibiting all transfers of estates with nobility rights and privileges to the clergy whether by gift, sale, or any other method.[396] The stormy Diet of 1536-1537 went still further, demanding the secularization of all ecclesiastical estates and the sale to the szlachta of all the newly acquired lands of the clergy.[397] Nor did the nobles stop at mere demands and legislative enactments; occasionally they took matters directly into their hands. For instance, whenever and wherever there was an opportunity to seize the land of a parish priest or a prebendary, the nobles were quite ready to take advantage of it. In the sixteenth century, influenced and encouraged by the Reformation movement, the Polish nobles did not hesitate to resort to that method of dealing with ecclesiastical property, and of thus enlarging their own demesne estates.[398]

Moreover, the revival of agriculture created a demand not only for more land, but also for more labor, and cheap labor. We have already noted that farming by tenant peasants was not any more profitable to the landlords in the sixteenth century, and that there was a strong tendency to annex the peasant leaseholds to the demesne estates. But as the demesne estates increased in size the labor problem grew more acute every day. To solve it, the noble landlords began to change the status of the peasants by legislation. Thus former free peasants became gradually, as a result of a series of legislative enactments, glebae adscripti. They were not any longer free to leave their masters at will; and if they did, their masters had the right to demand their return, or to pursue them and bring them back.[399] Of a family of peasant children, only one might leave the estate on which he was born, and go to the city into service, or for the purpose of study or of learning a trade.[400] An only child was forbidden to leave the land; he had to pass into the serfdom of his parents.[401] And if a peasant youth escaped, he was to be restored to his master under penalty of forty marks.[402] Not only were the Polish peasants bound to the soil in the sixteenth century, they were now also compelled to do forced labor on their masters’ estates. In 1477 the provincial diet of “Ziemia chełmska” established one day a week of forced peasant labor on the estate of the lord. In 1520 the General Diets of Thorn and Bydgoszcz extended this local provision to the peasants on all the manors in the country.[403] Thus what had hitherto been a matter of private arrangement was now made a statutory and universal obligation. And gradually as time went on the number of forced labor was increased to two days a week and more.[404] Worst of all, under the influence of Roman law, which recognized only masters and slaves, the Polish peasants lost also their standing before the law, and were subjected wholly to the jurisdiction of their lords.[405] This removed the last vestige of the peasants’ personal rights, and made them practically the property of the aristocratic landlords.

Besides monopolizing agricultural production, the Polish nobles obtained exemption from export and import duties on all products raised on their own estates for export and on all goods imported for their own use and not for trade.[406] By this stroke they secured a monopoly advantage in trade also, and became the chief beneficiaries of all its benefits to the detriment and destruction of the Polish town population.

The changes in Poland’s commerce and agriculture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had a very important bearing on the country’s problems of defense and finance. They disqualified the Polish nobility for warfare, and they undermined the revenues of the state. The szlachta, settled on the land, grew more attached to the soil and to the life of country gentlemen than to the camp and the discomforts of military service. Stimulated by the new commercial opportunities and the prospect for gain and enrichment, it naturally became more interested in agriculture and in exports of its agricultural products than in warfare and military expeditions. The rewards of agriculture and of commerce were greater, more certain, less hazardous, and consequently more alluring than those of war. Moreover, the changes in warfare, resulting from the invention of gunpowder, demanded the employment of new methods in the conduct of war, called for more costly equipment, which the warriors had to provide themselves at their own expense, and were fraught with greater perils to life. Naturally, therefore, the nobility grew reluctant to leave the soil, and to engage in war; and when actually called out in emergency in “pospolite ruszenie” it was far more interested in political than in military maneuvers, in extracting new privileges from the king than in vanquishing the enemy. Whether as a defensive or as an offensive force the “pospolite ruszenie” became now both physically inadequate and temperamentally unfit for war. Yet the country’s wars with the Teutonic Knights, Russia, Moldavia, Courland, and the city of Danzig, and its constant menace of Tartar invasion called for a strong and ever-ready military force to repel aggression, subdue rebellion, and to protect the borders in order to guard the country’s safety and to maintain its integrity and prestige.

These conditions created the necessity of hiring mercenaries. But mercenaries had to be paid. This called for more state funds, which, however, were very hard to raise. The old revenues, which even under ordinary conditions would have been inadequate for the new needs, were rendered all the more inadequate by the fact that their sources instead of being increased were actually diminished. This was due to a number of causes. The lavish generosity of the Polish kings, particularly the Jagiellos, greatly reduced the royal domain and the royal income therefrom. Exemption of the nobility by the Pact of Koszyce (1374) from all taxation except two grosze per łan kmiecy and by the Constitution of 1496 from all export and import duties, and of the clergy from all public burdens and responsibilities, contributed to the depletion of the royal treasury and to the weakening of the country’s defense. This evil was still further accentuated by the processes of annexing “vacant” peasant leaseholds to the demesne estates and of buying up of village mayorships by the clergy. The first withdrew the annexed peasant lands from taxation;[407] the second rendered the mayorships free from participation in the country’s defense. Out of a total number of 14,000 village mayorships, which had in the past participated in the “pospolite ruszenie,” only 2,000 still answered the call to arms by 1539, according to a complaint of the deputies at the Diet of Cracow of that year.[408] These things combined to impoverish the royal treasury, to put the king in constant financial straits, and to jeopardize the peace and security of the country.

To eliminate these difficulties and to provide adequate defense for the country, special contributions or taxes had to be voted from time to time. The demand for these special contributions grew greater and more frequent as time went on. With every year the nobility felt the burden of defense more keenly. It looked around for help and for new sources of revenue. These were by no means hard to find. The wealth and resources of the clergy presented an excellent source of defensive strength. The szlachta began, therefore, to demand the participation of the clergy in the responsibilities and burdens of public life and of the country’s defense. This resulted in a sharp conflict between the clergy and the Polish nobility, a conflict which lasted for two centuries and which found expression in the fifteenth century in the Hussite movement and in the sixteenth in the Reformation.

The Polish clergy’s privileged character respecting their participation in public responsibilities and burdens constituted the most sensitive point of difference between the Polish szlachta and the Polish Roman Catholic clergy.[409] According to Casimir’s Code the duty of participation in the country’s defense rested upon all hereditary estates of the Polish knighthood, regardless of the fact as to whether any of their owners happened to belong at a particular time to the ranks of the clergy or not.[410] Moreover, it was very early established that lands newly acquired by the church were subject to military service. A statute of 1437 provided that all church lands acquired by purchase within the last forty years and those that might be thus acquired in the future were required to render military service.[411] But throughout the fifteenth century the owners of these lands were clever and successful enough in evading these provisions and in maintaining the principle of their freedom from participation in the country’s defense. In 1506 at the Diet of Lublin they even succeeded in securing royal sanction of their freedom from rendering military service due from these lands. Gradually, contrary to the law of Casimir the Great, they extended this principle of their exemption from military service even to their hereditary lands and to village mayorships purchased by them.[412]

Naturally, the Polish szlachta rose in arms. It demanded that the mayors of ecclesiastical villages render military service as did the mayors of secular villages; that if the clergy objected, they should produce their privileges exempting the mayors of their villages from that public duty; that the Diet should prohibit the clergy from buying village mayorships; that all newly acquired ecclesiastical lands should be sold to the nobility, which was bearing the burden of public defense; that the clergy be placed on the same footing with the secular nobility in respect of participation in public defense; that their lands be secularized and the income from them be used for purposes of public defense; and that the clergy assume their fair share of special taxes levied by the diets. To be sure, all these demands were not made at once; but they were all made with varying insistence in the course of the first three-quarters of the sixteenth century.

According to a statute of Casimir the Great of the year 1347 the mayors of ecclesiastical villages as well as the mayors of secular villages were required to participate in military expeditions.[413] This obligation was reaffirmed by the Constitution of 1538,[414] and again in 1550.[415] But, as we have already noted, the clergy succeeded in evading these statutory provisions not only throughout the fifteenth, but also in the sixteenth century. It is not strange, therefore, to find that as the burden of defense was increasing in weight the Polish nobility repeatedly demanded that the mayors of ecclesiastical villages take part in the country’s defense in compliance with the law. The first demand of this nature in the sixteenth century was made as early as 1510; then we find it repeated at the Diet of 1536-1537; and again in 1563. In 1510 the king referred the question at issue to the provincial synod for review, and the synod was to report on it at a subsequent general diet.[416] But the matter was evidently laid aside and remained so as long as it was possible to keep it from coming to the front again; for when it was brought up at the Diet of 1536-1537, it was again treated in a similar manner. The bishops agreed to comply with the law, provided it was proved to them that the mayors of their villages were subject to military service. Their special privileges, which they claimed to possess, were to be examined at the following synod, and then the matter was to be reported on at the general diet.[417] Presumably the matter stopped there as before; for at the Diet of 1558-1559 the Chamber of Deputies raised the old question again, and demanded of the bishops the presentation of their special privileges exempting the mayors of ecclesiastical villages from military service. But even then the clergy did not produce this documentary evidence until at the Diet of 1563; and when actually produced, it was found wanting, owing to its indefiniteness.[418]

The stubborn opposition of the Polish hierarchy to share in the burden of defense in this mild form caused the Polish nobility to stiffen its demands. Since the Polish bishops so strenuously objected to the participation of the mayors of ecclesiastical villages in the pospolite ruszenie, the szlachta came forward at the Diet of Thorn in 1520 with the demand that the clergy as a class be put on the same level as the secular nobility in regard to military service.[419] All the clergy in possession of landed estates were to participate in the pospolite ruszenie along with the szlachta. This demand was renewed and firmly insisted upon at a local diet of the nobility of Great Poland at Kolo in 1533, at the General Diet of 1535,[420] and even as late as 1562 at the Diet of Piotrków.[421] This summary demand on the part of the Polish nobility that the clergy as a landowning class share equally with the szlachta the burden of defense startled the clergy, and finally induced them to present their documentary privileges, on which they based their claim of exemption from the burden of defense at the subsequent Diet of Piotrków, which met in the fall of 1563. On examination these documents were found to be anything but explicit and clear; yet the nobility had relented by this time, and ceased pressing this particular demand any further.[422]

Owing to this stubborn opposition on the part of the clergy to their personal participation in military service and to that of the bailiffs of ecclesiastical villages as well, the Polish nobility turned its attack now directly upon the landed property and the incomes of the clergy. In 1534 and in 1535 it vehemently protested against the purchases of village bailiwicks by the clergy. In 1536-1537, at the Diet of Piotrków, it went still further, and urgently demanded the secularization of all ecclesiastical property. As a result of this determined stand, a plan was actually agreed upon between the Chamber of Deputies and the secular members of the Senate for partial secularization of church lands. According to this plan all ecclesiastical lands acquired by the clergy whether by gift or by purchase since Louis the Great, 1370-1382, were to be sold to the nobility.[423] The demand for the secularization of ecclesiastical estates was first made in the first half of the fifteenth century, then in 1524, with increasing vigor and insistence at the Diet of Piotrków in 1536-1537, and again in 1576.[424] How determined the Polish nobility was to get hold of the property of the clergy may be seen from the fact that in 1539, when the old king, Sigismund I, was critically ill, a conspiracy was actually formed, the purpose of which was not to recognize Sigismund Augustus in the event of his father’s death until he agreed to and sanctioned the confiscation of one-third of the church lands for purposes of national defense.[425] The leaders in this conspiracy, as well as in the rebellion of 1537, were Martin and Peter Zborowski, ardent advocates of the Reformation after 1550.

Nor were the incomes of the clergy to escape the Polish nobility’s attack. Whenever the country was in financial straits, the nobility in a general diet assembled voted special taxes to meet special emergencies. The clergy, however, were not liable to these special taxes voted by the diets. They claimed exemption from them. Yet they did come forward in each emergency with a voluntary contribution, known as “subsidium charitativum.” This was based on a general estimate of the clergy’s general income. As this estimate usually constituted only one-third and frequently one-eighth of the real income of the clergy, their voluntary contributions based on such estimates were obviously far below their ability to pay. Manifestly this was unfair and unjust to the nobility. It, therefore, demanded that the clergy pay a contribution based on an evaluation of their specific sources of revenue, such as their estates, their tithes, and other sources of income.[426]

To this demand of the nobility the clergy were most decidedly opposed. At the same time they were not a little apprehensive that it might result in consequences unfavorable to them. To safeguard themselves, they voted a liberal contribution of 40,000 florins in 1511 for the purpose of redemption of certain royal lands in Red Russia; and in exchange for this contribution they exacted from the king a solemn pledge that henceforth they would be free from military obligations and from all other burdens, with the exception of the customary subsidium charitativum, based on an evaluation of their general income, in cases of a pospolite ruszenie. A written document confirming the pledge of 1511 was issued to the clergy by the king, December 10, 1515.[427] This furnished the clergy a certain legal basis for their opposition to the nobility’s demands. When, therefore, the Diets of 1525 and 1527 imposed a tax on the specific sources of the clergy’s income, the clergy at their Synod of Łęczyce in 1527, owing to a threatening Tartar invasion, again voted a voluntary contribution to the country’s needs, but flatly refused to be taxed by the diets.[428]

But if the clergy were stubborn in their resistence to taxation by the diets, so were the diets in their insistence on such taxation of clerical property. At the Diet of 1525 a revaluation of ecclesiastical property was proposed. The bishops opposed this course resolutely, fearing that a precedent might be established for the diet to tax their tithes. Their fear was not groundless. In 1529 at the Diet of Warsaw the deputies refused to take up the business of the diet until the bishops declared what percentage of their tithes they would give as a contribution to the defense of the country. The bishops strenuously objected on the ground that the nobles did not tax their own incomes but insisted on taxing those of the clergy. The conflict reached a deadlock, and finally the whole question was referred to the king. When at the subsequent diet, called for November 11, 1530, at Piotrków, the Chamber of Deputies moved to impose a tax on the tithes of the clergy, its attempt encountered a determined opposition, not only on the part of the clergy, but also on the part of the king. In consequence of this combined clerical and royal opposition the Chamber developed an equally solid front against the immunities of the church, and demanded the passage of a law taxing the clergy in proportion to the real value of all their property. In case the clergy refused to comply, the deputies threatened to suspend all payments of tithes, and to put the proposed law through and in force at the very next pospolite ruszenie of the szlachta.[429]

Nor was this an empty threat. For more than a century and a half, ever since the reign of Casimir the Great (1333-1370), the Polish nobility had chafed under the burden of church tithes. In its relation to the king it was free from all special compulsory taxes for the benefit of the royal treasury, save a nominal tax of two grosze per łan kmiecy, paid in reality by the tenant peasants rather than by the landlords themselves. But in its relation to the church it was not as free. The burden of church tithes rested upon it. Originally voluntary, it became compulsory in the first half of the fifteenth century; and it was a burden that could not be shifted. It was, also, a burden which the clergy never failed to exact.

Conflicts over the payment of tithes were, therefore, frequent. They occurred as early as the reign of Casimir the Great,[430] and as time went on they grew more bitter and more frequent. Owing to the growth of the church in wealth and of the clergy in arrogance as a result of Wladislaus Jagiello’s great liberality and even subserviency, the nobility was forced to consider measures at the Convocations of Piotrków in 1406 and 1407 for protection against this exploitation.[431] By the Privilege of Czerwieńsk forced from the king in 1422 it further secured itself against the relentless exaction of tithes.[432] A decade later the special privileges concerning tithes given the clergy by Wladislaus Jagiello in 1433,[433] and the king’s assurance that he would assist in the collection of this tax, are evidence of the difficulties encountered. To force the clergy to desist from their pretensions, the nobility, under the leadership of Andrew Zbonsz, Spytek of Melsztyn, and John Strasz, decided at the Convocation of Piotrków, August 15, 1435, to withhold the payment of tithes altogether.[434] A similar resolution was adopted by the Confederation of 1439.[435] These decisions, however, were never fully carried out in practice. In the second half of the fifteenth century, influenced by the economic changes that were taking place and encouraged by such radical humanistic ideas as those of John Ostrorog, embodied in his “Monumentum pro reipublicae ordinatione congestum,” the Polish nobility moved still more resolutely toward the abolition of the tithes.[436]

In the sixteenth century this conflict became even more determined. If the nobility objected to the tithes in the preceding century, it did so now all the more. The wealth of the church had increased as a result of the economic changes in progress, the incomes of the clergy were princely, the needs of the country greater and more exacting; and yet the clergy shirked all public burdens and responsibilities. Naturally, therefore, the nobility began to withhold the payments of tithes. The situation was so serious that the clergy became very much concerned. At several of the provincial synods, notably those of 1544 and 1551, they gave a good deal of time to discussions of ways and means by which to force the nobility to pay tithes.[437] But the situation seemed to be beyond repair. Incensed at the immunities, pretensions, and exactions of the clergy, the nobility was turning away in great numbers from the established church to the Reformation after 1550, and thereby was cutting down ecclesiastical revenues.

This touched the clergy in the most tender spot, and aroused them to action. To save its revenues, the church began to resort to the use of its ecclesiastical jurisdiction; it summoned the rebellious nobles before its episcopal courts, and if they did not relent and penitently submit, they were placed under the ban of the church. This procedure put the nobility, their persons, their honor, their property, and their very lives at the mercy of the clergy. Their very existence, individual and collective, was in jeopardy as long as they were subject to the jurisdiction of episcopal courts. That such a situation could not last long soon became perfectly evident. The indignation of the nobility rose to a high pitch. The relation between the two estates became more tense and hostile than ever, and inevitably precipitated a bitter struggle over the fundamental question of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

The jurisdiction of the clergy now became an intolerable burden to the Polish nobility. Its scope had gradually expanded until, in the fifteenth century, in spite of protests and attempts to fix limits, it came to cover not only questions of religion, but also all sorts of civil matters. In fact, it so happened that there was scarcely a question that the ecclesiastical courts regarded as foreign to their jurisdiction. Their authority, moreover, was greatly strengthened when the government, by the Edict of Wieluń (1424) and by a statute of 1458 confirming it, committed the execution of their verdicts to the starostas, thus lending the clergy the executive arm of civil authority.[438]

The administration of justice by ecclesiastical courts in Poland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was very harsh, arbitrary, and light-minded. The most severe penalty, namely, that of excommunication, which carried the confiscation of property, deprivation of honor, exile and death, was frequently inflicted upon offenders for most trivial offenses. A noble was in danger of excommunication for getting into a fight and beating a precentor, an organist, or a grave-digger, not to speak of more serious offenses, such as seizing or withholding the tithes.[439] Sometimes a landlord was excommunicated for offenses committed by his peasants on the ground that he should have used his authority to bring the peasants to terms and into submission to the church. So terrible in its consequences was the church’s excommunication in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that everyone dreaded it.

Naturally, then, attempts were made very early to define and limit the scope and authority of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. At the Convocation of 1420, in answer to the synodical statutes of Nicholas Tromba, archbishop of Gniezno, the nobility forbade its members to appeal to ecclesiastical courts.[440] According to a document of 1433, issued to Bishop Bodzanta of Cracow, laymen were not to be cited before ecclesiastical courts.[441] In 1447 the nobility sought to confine episcopal jurisdiction to matters strictly ecclesiastical, such as questions of faith, heresy, marriage, and religious indifference in cases of those that had not confessed once a year at least.[442] Disputes over tithes, seized or withheld, according to this foregoing agreement between the nobility and the clergy, were to be settled in episcopal courts, but they were to be adjudicated according to law. If the accused failed to answer the first summons, a second one was to be issued to him at his expense; and he could not be excommunicated until he was duly tried.[443] In matters belonging to civil courts the clergy were forbidden by the Statute of 1496 to summon persons before their courts.[444] By the Constitution of 1505 civil matters were withdrawn from episcopal courts altogether, and henceforth ecclesiastical judges were forbidden to adjudicate them.[445] Furthermore, to avoid complications in the administration of justice and to minimize difficulties in the execution of verdicts, the Diet of 1532 called upon the clergy in synod assembled to determine what cases they regarded as belonging to their jurisdiction, and instructed the commission appointed to revise existing laws to define the exact scope of the jurisdiction of the spiritual and secular courts.[446] Unfortunately, the commission allowed the episcopal courts too wide a scope, and consequently its report was rejected. The Statute of 1543 again undertook to define the jurisdiction of the two classes of courts, but it was in force for one year only.[447] And once more, a statute of 1550, confirming existing laws, provided that no person should be summoned before any court unless his case fell within the jurisdiction of that court,[448] and a clergyman was forbidden to hold the office of clerk in a secular provincial court.[449]

By 1550 the question of ecclesiastical jurisdiction became one of the burning questions of the day. It was precipitated by Orzechowski’s defiance of ecclesiastical authority. Stanislaus Orzechowski was a nobleman priest in the diocese of Przemyśl. He publicly announced that he would enter the state of matrimony. Bishop Dziaduski of Przemyśl in turn announced publicly that if Orzechowski should carry out his intention he would excommunicate him at once, depriving him of honor, confiscating his hereditary property, and exiling him from the country. The bishop’s threat was a sweeping violation of the most fundamental rights of the nobility by the clergy. It endangered the nobility as a class. The Polish nobles were not slow to see that Orzechowski’s case was not merely a question of church discipline, and that if the Bishop of Przemyśl was allowed to carry out his threat, their property and their lives would not be safe. They took up Orzechowski’s case as their own, and rose to his defense. They viewed the episcopal threat as an attack upon them and their liberties, and therefore resolved to stand by Orzechowski. The matter came before the Diet of 1550. Orzechowski found supporters in some of the most influential magnates of Poland, like James Górka, Martin Zborowski, Raphael Leszczyński, Nicholas Radziwill, and Nicholas Oleśnicki, all of them adherents and champions of the Reformation. Through the intervention of John Tarnowski, grand hetman of Poland, and Peter Kmita, starosta of Przemyśl, a compromise was effected, the terms of which were that Orzechowski was to apply to the Pope for sanction of his intention and was not to be married until he received the Pope’s permission.[450]

The compromise was absurd. It did not settle anything; it only delayed the settlement of the question raised. Górka and Zborowski, therefore, spurred on Orzechowski to break the compromise agreement and to carry out his plan in defiance of episcopal authority.[451] The magnate Nicholas Oleśnicki of Pińczów decided to make a test case of the whole issue. On the advice of the Italian reformer Franciscus Stankar, he broke openly with Roman Catholicism, accepting the Reformed faith and taking away from the monks at Pińczów their church and monastery. Immediately the Polish bishops brought charges against him. He was tried, not according to the canon law of the church, but according to the law of the country, before the king and the senate. He was acquitted on condition that he dismiss Stankar and restore the seized monastery to the monks, neither of which orders Oleśnicki actually carried out.[452]

Thus spurred on by his friends, Orzechowski took courage, renounced his clerical vows, and entered the state of matrimony. Bishop Dziaduski, struck with consternation, did not at first know what to do, but in the end resolved to carry out his threat, On April 8, 1551, he issued his verdict against Orzechowski, annulling his marriage and excommunicating him. On presentation of the case by the primate to the king, Sigismund Augustus confirmed the episcopal verdict in accordance with his pledge given the Polish bishops in December, 1550,[453] and instructed Peter Kmita, starosta of Przemyśl, to execute it. At the same time the king issued an order to all the starostas to execute the verdicts of episcopal courts in all cases of condemned and excommunicated heretics. Excommunicated by the church, Orzechowski was deprived of honor and property, exiled from the country, and in danger of being put to death, if caught.[454]

The news of Orzechowski’s excommunication by Bishop Dziaduski and of the royal confirmation of the episcopal verdict without a trial came like a lightning stroke from the clear sky. Orzechowski’s case was the first instance in the history of the Polish Commonwealth of a noble deprived of honor and of his hereditary possessions and condemned to exile and death as a result of episcopal excommunication, without due trial, according to law, guaranteed the Polish nobility by the Charter of Jedlnia (1483). Immediately the nobles, not only of Orzechowski’s province, but of the whole of Poland, rose as one man against this high-handed attack on their liberties both by the clergy and by the king. Orzechowski’s neighbors were ready to defend him in case the starosta tried to execute the verdict; but Peter Kmita neither dared, nor wanted to execute it. He preferred to wait and see what the Diet of 1552 was going to do about the whole matter.[455]

The local diets of 1551, at which the szlachta elected the deputies to the General Diet of 1552, fairly seethed with the indignation of the Polish nobility. The clergy, on the other hand, greatly elated over their apparent victory and pleased with the king’s stand regarding the Orzechowski affair, called a synod at Piotrków, at which they decided to bind the king still closer to their cause by offering him the estates of all condemned heretics; and to frighten the nobility into submission they excommunicated at this synod Stadnicki and Lasocki, two very influential and popular heretics in their respective palatinates. The excommunicated magnates went from one local diet to another, informed the szlachta of the ecclesiastical verdicts, reported the resolutions of the synod, and read the king’s pledge given the bishops secretly in 1550 in exchange for their consent to Queen Barbara’s coronation, and which had been secured and made public by Nicholas Lutomirski, castellan of Zawichow. They called upon the szlachta to defend their lives and property.[456]

The indignation and anger of the nobility of Little Poland rose so high that it almost reached the point of massacring the clergy and of bringing in Protestant ministers from abroad to take their places. As deputies to the Diet of 1552 they chose the most decided opponents of the clergy, and instructed them to take up no measures until the king defined episcopal authority and invalidated the above mentioned verdicts of episcopal courts.[457]

The Diet of 1552 convened at Piotrków. The secular nobility, both the senators and the deputies, were in a most hostile frame of mind toward the clergy. Even as faithful a Catholic as Hetman Jan Tarnowski refused to shake hands with Bishop Dziaduski of Przemyśl, turning away from him, when the latter came to the hetman’s house to greet him.[458] Raphael Leszczyński, president of the Chamber of Deputies, stood with his head covered during the celebration of the opening mass. When the diet had been duly opened, the Chamber, under the leadership of Leszczyński, unequivocally demanded the abolition of episcopal jurisdiction, stating that no other measure would be considered until that demand was complied with. The secular portion of the Senate, under the leadership of Jan Tarnowski, did not go quite so far, but it seconded the Chamber’s demand to this extent, that it, too, called for bringing ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the limits of law.[459] The Polish nobility stood firm by their demand for the abolition of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The bishops, on the other hand, were equally determined not to surrender it. The decision rested finally with the king. After a bitter struggle of two months, due partly to the royal vacillation, the king at last handed a decision that in all cases of heresy the bishops have jurisdiction. The verdict created no small consternation among the secular senators as well as among the deputies. But, though apparently fully victorious, the bishops, sensing the feeling against them and taking counsel of wisdom in time, consented to suspension of their jurisdiction for one year until at the next diet or at a national synod the country’s laws and the church’s canons could be harmonized, provided the nobles agreed to continue the payment of tithes.[460]

This concession on the part of the Polish episcopate, did not, however, conciliate the Polish nobility. The nobles felt that their rights and liberties had been outraged and were in danger of being completely violated. The turn of events in 1552 made them only all the more determined to fight. In great numbers they came out now for the Reformation. Inside of one year nearly all the Polish nobility, according to Dr. Kubala, left the Roman Catholic Church and embraced the faith of the Reformation. The speed with which the Polish nobles tried to change their form of worship had no parallel. They invited reformers from abroad; they converted their manor houses into places of worship; they built hospitals, schools, and homes of refuge for persecuted dissidents; and the new doctrines were preached through the whole length and breadth of the country.[461] Great Poland, where the influence of Hussitism still survived, accepted, under the leadership of James Ostrorog, the tenets of faith and form of worship of the Bohemian Brethren. By 1557 there were thirty Bohemian Brethren churches in Great Poland, and all the leading aristocratic families, the Ostrorogs, the Leszczyńskis, the Tomickis, the Krotowskis, and the Opalińskis, turned Protestant.[462] Little Poland, under the leadership of the Zborowskis, Nicholas Oleśnicki, and Stanislaus Stadnicki, became Calvinistic. In “terra Sandeceniensis,” the home province of Orzechowski, all the nobility became Protestant by 1554; and by 1560, according to a letter of Bishop Przyrębski to Bishop Kamerini, one hundred and sixty churches in Little Poland broke away from the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome.[463] In Lithuania, under the leadership of Nicholas Radziwill, the foremost aristocratic families accepted Calvinism. They were the Radziwills, the Kiszkas, the Chlebowiczes, the Sapiehas, the Słuźkis, the Zawiszes, the Wiśniowieckis, the Wojnas, the Paces, the Abramowiczes, the Wołowiczes, the Ogińskis, the Zienowiczes, the Pruńskis, the Naruszewiczes, the Talwoczes, the Drohostajskis, the Puzynas, the Szemiotas, the Gruźewskis, the Góreckis, and others. By 1559 the Catholics in Lithuania constituted only one-thousandth part of the population.[464] So strong was the sentiment now against the Church of Rome that men well known for their antagonism to Rome, like James Uchański and Andrew Frycz Modrzewski, were selected and sent as Poland’s delegates to the Council of Trent.[465] In 1535 at the Diet at Piotrków the calling of a National Synod to adjust the existing differences and difficulties was agreed upon, and a delegation was dispatched to Rome by the king with a request for the Pope’s sanction of that plan as well as of a number of practical reforms. Needless to say, the desired papal sanction was not granted. On the contrary, the Pope immediately sent a legate to Poland in the person of Alois Lippomano, bishop of Verona, to stave off any such possibilities. In his first interview with the king Lippomano advised the Polish monarch, for the sake of an example and a warning, to execute twenty leading dissidents. Owing to his harshness and lack of tact, this papal nuncio became so unpopular in Poland, that when in 1556 he entered the Diet Chamber, the deputies shouted: “Salve, progenies viperarum!”[466] At the Diet of 1557 security and freedom were guaranteed all foreign Reformed ministers.[467]