Small Polish Church

This unitarian church created for itself by the activity of theologists resulting from the radical Réforme

Geopolitical situation

The laic ones especially were active, according to the principle of Martin Luther: all theologists . Some exceptions put aside, for example Ochono , the antiones of the 16th century were the laic ones cultivated: philologists, writers, doctors, lawyers or nice men; all of enthusiastic Christians decided to seek the religious truth by studying the Holy Scriptures with zeal, but also with critical direction. By seeking themselves the direction and the range of the biblical texts, these laic removed with the catholic theologists as with the reformers Protestant the monopoly of the study and the interpretation of the Bible. By the results of this research, they carried a serious blow to the authority and professional prestige of these the “of the religion” .

Three reasons explain the tolerance whose the antiones in Poland could enjoy and in Lithuania.

  1. autonomy, even as regards religions, recognized with the noble , i.e. with the great landowners.
  2. the tolerance expressed by the kings Sigismond I {{er}} and Sigismond II Auguste.
  3. the reception that the queen Bona Sforza, wife of Sigismond Ier, granted readily to humanistic Italian (for example Lelio Socin, Georges Biandrata), then with the Italians condemned by the Inquisition or Jean Calvin (for example Alciati and Gentile). Thus lived side by side, in Poland, of the catholic , the Lutherans, the Anabaptistes and the calvinists, and even of the Jewish .

It goes without saying the antiones were apostles of the religious Tolérance. Being persecuted, their methods were those of any clandestine movement: to make seeming and to entrust only to sure friends; to abstain from speaking in public; to make circulate anonymous manuscripts and printed texts or under a pseudonym; to maintain a correspondence and to travel. Let us quote here the letters of Lelio Socin in Calvin where it expresses his doubts ingenuously, putting questions embarrassing with charm, without anything to affirm. Also let us mention the easy way imagined by Ochino , in one of its “Dialogs” published in Zurich in 1563, where he pretends to defend the dogma trinitaire against an adversary - but the arguments which he puts in the mouth of this anti-trinitaire are much more solid than them his! In spite of these methods, the adversaries of the Trinité were condemned to disappear for a time from Western Europe. The movement emigrated towards the East.

During their studies in Western Europe, many noble young people or sons of reformed pastors discovered the two little books of Michel Servet on the Trinity and made known them in their country. Thus, this Pierre de Goniatz (or Gonesius), which, left to be formed with the priesthood, returned Pasteur calvinist and at the same time eager to bring the reformed Church of Poland to the acceptance of the theses of Servet. Addressing itself boldly to his/her colleagues, it in convainquit a growing number, so that a synod, at the end of 1558, condemned it and obliged it to leave Poland. It went to Lithuania where the tycoon Ziska made it possible to him to organize, with Wengrow, the first anti-trinitaire local Church.

This same year 1558; Biandrata arrived of Geneva. He quickly became the chief of the anti-trinitaire movement of Pinezow, close to Cracow, city which had soon its anti-trinitaire Pasteur. Alciati and Gentile joined the movement, them having also fled Geneva.

Calvin was annoyed by learning success from the heresy which he had condemned. He wrote letters to show the danger which represented such men, but in vain. On the contrary, the prince Nicolas Radziwil of Lithuania, offusquant himself of this interference calvinienne, granted in 1562 his support to Gonesius and Biandrata and became itself anti-trinitaire. 1564 saw the entry in Poland Jesuits. Those did not obtain large-thing, if not the eviction from some abroad, among whom Gentile. This unhappy, already if abused with Geneva, had the bad luck to fall between the hands from the Bernese police force. He was decapitated in Bern in 1566. Other expelled, Bernardino Ochino, which went in Moravie and died there.

With the hope to solve the crisis which tore the reformed Church of Poland, a diet - assembly of the noble ones - meets in Prothow in 1565. The antiones had become all the more heretics with the eyes of the orthodoxe calvinists whom they had adopted various options anabaptists such as the refusal of the baptism of the children, nonthe recourse to the weapons, voluntary poverty, etc the Diet realized that the schism was inevitable and accepted the creation of a reformed Church “minor” , which gave itself a significant name: “Church of the Brothers of Poland and Lithuania which rejected the Trinity” . In practice, it was called “Small Church Polish” or “Brothers Polish” .

Development

Although private of the councils of Biandrata , left in 1563 to occupy the post of doctor at the court of Transylvania, but in addition being able to count on Gonesius, the young anti-trinitaire Church of organized. Its members in majority of noble, as pious as educated, were decided to live the Gospel.

Some sold their grounds and freed their serfs; others reflect their goods with the service of the community. The Church combined with happiness of the practices inherited the anabaptism with the received christologic doctrines of Michel Servet. It accepted in 1569 a center, Rakow, which became, thanks to its printing works and with its considered college, a very important hearth of radiation.

If it is exact that the Church of the Brothers opened out under the benevolent glance of Sigismond II Auguste, nevertheless crises reached the community. Some noble was opposed to the absolute pacifism inherited the Anabaptisme; pastors disputed certain points of the doctrines (preexistence of Jesus, worship of Christ). It is especially in Lithuania that some dissenting communities emerged.

The Petite Polish Church needed a theologist having the authority of a Luther or a Calvin. It receives it in the person of Fausto Sozzini .

In this beginning of the XVIIe century, the writings of Socin and the Catéchisme of Rakow - often brought by students having attended excel it college of Rakow - were spread in Germany, in France even (thanks to Wissowaly , grandson of Socin, which lived some time with Paris), in England and especially in Holland, where one started to publish the whole of the books sociniens ( Bibliotheca Fratrorum Polonorum ) towards 1660.

Proscription

On the other hand, in Poland, the situation of the Brothers became increasingly difficult. Without realizing that they sawed the branch of the religious tolerance on which they had sat, the calvinists united with the catholics to obtain the elimination of the sociniens. The principal focus of the Brothers, in Rakow, was destroyed in 1638 and the church given… to the catholic S. Twenty years later, in 1658, a Diet proscribed the Church of the Brothers , giving the members two years to embrace the Catholicisme (what much made, for the form) or to leave the country.

The year 1660 saw indeed the voluntary exile of faithful groups, leaving to research a place reception. Those of the Brothers who lived in the South reflect on the way towards the Transylvania, undergoing losses under the blows of the brigands, in Carpates. But arrived at Kolosvar, they accepted a fraternal reception of the unitarian brothers. Other groups sought asylum near the German Voters , but received asylum was in general temporary and precarious, especially because of the hostility of the clergy Lutheran. It is in Holland that the reception was most fraternal, thanks to the Showing again. In Poland, some Brothers had heroically remained hung to their faith and with their fatherland, but, with time, any trace of Socinianisme disappeared.

Cet article integrates materials copyleft resulting from Unitarian Correspondence, Oct.-2002

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