Author Description

Today Poland is widely regarded as a staunchly Catholic nation with little in the way of a protestant tradition. Yet during the early modern period, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth witnessed a remarkable flowering of protestant churches, that posed serious challenges to the established Catholic orthodoxy. Focusing on these protestant churches - their structures and liturgies - in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this book provides a redefinition of the Polish Reformation and its key events between 1550 and 1648. It argues - contrary to much previous scholarship - that the formation of the Polish Reformed Church with a distinct Reformed theology and polity was far from complete by the1570s. Instead it is suggested that the next quarter of a century was spent in the futile hope of maintaining unity with Lutherans, only for hopes to finally be dashed at the 1595 Synod of Torun. It was at this point that the process of Reformed confession building began in force, bringing with it a short flourishing of Reformed Christianity in Poland. The study also looks at political developments within the Commonwealth through the eyes of Protestants, showing how the years between 1595 and 1606 witnessed a resurgence of Catholicism with interesting parallels to patterns of confessionalization in other European countries. In so doing the book challenges previous emphasis on the importance of events during the 1570s, and provides alternative explanation of the failure of Calvinism to attract a substantial and enduring presence within Poland.