RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION

The traditional division between the Middle Ages and modern times is largely conventional. There was nothing special about the year 1500 to justify its treatment as a milestone. Fernand Braudel wrote about the “long sixteenth century” that covered the two hundred years from the mid-1450s to the mid-1650s. Oscar Halecki saw a transition era between the medieval and modern times that encompassed the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Still, if we think in terms of a lengthy process on the one hand, and of a cluster of events in the decades around 1500, the traditional periodization is useful. Although in this chapter we shall not go beyond the first decade of the seventeenth century, it is important to bear in mind this long process during which “medieval” and “modern” forms coexisted and overlapped.

Several great events occurring from the second half of the fifteenth century on were initiating profound changes. The fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 created a semi-permanent military threat to Europe, contributed to the rise of the Third Rome idea in Moscow, split the Balkans from the rest of the continent, and stimulated intellectual developments in the West. The date of the fall of Muslim Granada, 1492, marked the completion of the Spanish reconquista and coincided with the first voyage of Columbus. The French invasion of Italy two years later introduced a new phase in international relations. Luther’s posting of the 95 theses in 1517 was the first step toward the Reformation. One can note a certain chronological convergence of events occurring in East Central Europe: 1466, Polish return to the Baltic; 1490s, collapse of Matthias Corvinus’s centralism, the rise of a Jagiellonian East Central Europe; 1505, Nihil novi constitution; 1525 and 1526 respectively, the secularization of Prussia and the battle of Mohacs. Naturally the fall of Constantinople directly concerned Hungary and Poland.

Europe was changing although only some salient developments can be mentioned here. In the cultural, artistic, and intellectual sphere the Renaissance— understood as a rebirth of cultural achievements of the Greek-Roman world— and humanism as the literary movement had already reached great heights in the

Fifteenth century. The apogee continued and spread throughout Europe. The elitist and sophisticated ideal of the time was the well-rounded man of the Renaissance; Leonardo da Vinci may have epitomized him. The pragmatism and skepticism characteristic of humanism was apparent in Machiavelli’s writings about society and politics. Northern humanists, such as Erasmus of Rotterdam, were particularly concerned with the Bible and early Christianity. Critical of the magnificent and learned, but worldly and corrupt papal court, they still stayed within the church. The Protestant Reformation broke with it, and the repercussions of this event went beyond religious matters, affecting political and socio-economic developments.

Profound changes in economy were an integral part of the entire process of Europe’s transformation: maritime expansion and colonialism, a rapid demographic growth and new needs of the urbanizing community, a price revolution and emerging capitalism, an international division of labor. The old society was becoming more fluid and mobile. The invention of gunpowder and the use of professional mercenary soldiers was undermining the military monopoly of the nobility.

East Central Europe shared in the Renaissance and Reformation, making its own contributions to both. In the political-constitutional sphere there was a growing divergence between Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia on the one hand and the West and Muscovy on the other. The difference is particularly striking if we think of the overseas expansion of the West and the phenomenal overland expansion of Muscovy-Russia. The latter occupied 750,000 sq. km in 1462 and reached 2.8 million sq. km in the first half of the sixteenth century. True, in East Central Europe a tendency toward regional consolidation continued. The Jagiellonian rule over Bohemia and Hungary from the 1490s to the 1520s was superseded by that of the Habsburgs. But the Bohemian-Hungarian realms, in turn, were hardly more than an annex to the Habsburg Germanic-Spanish-American worldwide empire on which “the sun never set.” The Polish-Lithuanian dynastic union was transformed into a real union in 1569, which led to an increased eastward drive. A mid-sixteenth-century Polish economist actually advocated a colonization of the Ukraine, comparing it to West European overseas expansion and to Muscovite territorial growth, but the scale was hardly comparable.

Before turning to the question of the economic foundations of developments in East Central Europe, and of the parting of the ways between the two halves of the continent, let us look at the cultural evolution. In East Central Europe the Renaissance spread mainly through direct Italian contacts. In the case of humanism, however, one should note the strong influence of Erasmus of Rotterdam on Poland and Hungary, and of the Wittenberg circles on Bohemia. In all three countries there was an obvious connection between the cultural development and the political situation, for example, the growing constitutional-religious friction in Bohemia, a national catastrophe (at Mohacs) in Hungary, and the Golden Age in Poland.

The Renaissance triumphed in art and architecture in Bohemia in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and took the form of Mannerism. The style radiated throughout East Central Europe. The Prague of Emperor-King Rudolf was a fascinating city, to which alchemists and astrologers flocked. The legendary Rabbi Low of Golem’s fame was Rudolf’s contemporary. The architecture of Czech and Moravian castles made an original contribution to art, but humanist writers lacked prominence. The chief chronicler, Vaclav Hajek of Libocany, was little affected by the new historiography. The Kralice Bible, however, associated with the Unity of Czech Brethren—of which more later— stood out as a monument of literary Czech. Printing activity in Czech was also impressive. In the 1560s two Jesuit colleges, notably the Prague Clementinum, came into existence.

In Hungary where the early Renaissance style in architecture still mingled (as in Bohemia) with Gothic—the so-called Vladislav Gothic exemplified by the Kassa cathedral—the political vicissitudes were not conducive to art. The defeat of Hungary by the Turks at Mohacs led to a threefold division of the state: the Habsburg-ruled north-western parts, the Turkish-occupied center, and a semiindependent Transylvania. During the constant wars many outstanding buildings in Visegrad, Esztergom, and other towns were destroyed. But the door and window frames and tombs as well as late sixteenth-century palaces testify to the impact of the Renaissance. In 1541 the first book in Hungarian came off the press: a translation of the New Testament. Among the writers one great name stands out, that of the first national lyric poet, Balint Balassi.

Nearly fifty years older than Balassi was the great Croat dramatic writer Marin Drzic. Both men lived under the shadow cast by the Turks, and indeed an antiTurkish theme was the most prominent in Croatian humanist writings of the sixteenth century. The marked dependence on the Christian tradition is also considered characteristic of this literature. Because of the constant wars, Croatian literary and artistic activities flourished more on the Dalmatian coast— Dubrovnik (Ragusa) was Drzic’s home—and on the islands, than in the more exposed regions, particularly the newly created zone, the Military Border.

In Poland, where there were favorable political and economic conditions for the Renaissance, architecture, literature, and science reached unprecedented heights. The royal castle, Wawel, in Cracow, rebuilt in the early sixteenth century under King Sigismund the Old and his Italian wife Bona Sforza, exhibited the purest and best-preserved Renaissance features. The Sigismund Chapel is regarded as one of the finest gems outside of Italy. The style affected the building of numerous palaces throughout the country as well as of churches. The founding of the university of Wilno (Vilnius), originally as a Jesuit college, marked great strides in higher education, as did a new private academy in Zamosc —a city built entirely in a Renaissance style. The popularization of the literary vernacular through printing (the first book in Polish came out in 1513) conformed to the pattern seen in the neighboring countries. The 8,000 titles published in Poland during the sixteenth century compared favorably with the 10, 000 that appeared in England.

Amidst several other names in belles-lettres, history, or political literature, Mikolaj Rey (Rej) stood out as the father of Polish vernacular literature. Jan Kochanowski wrote both in Latin and Polish. He epitomized the age of the Renaissance in Poland and the highest achievements of artistic form. Together with the famed astronomer Nicholas Copernicus (Mikolaj Kopernik), the pride of the Jagiellonian university (as it came to be called), and the stimulating political writer Andrzej Frycz-Modrzewski, he deserved the praise of Erasmus of Rotterdam, who wrote that Poland rivaled the most glorious of European nations.

The masses may have been less affected by the new trends; the levels of literacy and the school networks were inferior to the West, but the disparities were probably not too great. The fact that the encyclopedic vocabulary of the period, the Calepini Dictionarium, comprised among its eleven languages Czech, Polish, and Hungarian, showed how well the region had become integrated. Its well-traveled elite was receptive to and participated in the main cultural, ideological, and religious currents of the age. One of them was, of course, the Reformation.

Lutheranism entered the region in the early decades of the century, penetrating the towns in Royal Prussia (Polish Pomerania), the mining towns of northern Hungary (Slovakia), the Saxon regions in Transylvania, and cities in Bohemia. This was understandable, for Luther wrote in German which most burghers knew. Moreover municipal autonomy made it harder to forbid or to combat the new faith. A certain suspicion of the “German creed” on the part of the Czechs was lessened by Luther’s assertion that all Protestants were Hussite at heart. The writings of Calvin were in Latin, which partly explains their rapid successes in the 1540s and 1550s among the nobility and gentry of Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, and the lands of the Crown of St Wenceslas. This near identification of the new creed with these social groups made Calvinists accept the political and social ideas of the nobility. Polish Protestants, for instance, supported the “execution of the laws” noble program, of which more later (see p. 64). Only the theologically more extreme groups, such as the Unity of Czech Brethren and the Anti-Trinitarians (known also as Unitarians, Socinians, Arians, or Polish Brethren) who rejected the dogma of the Holy Trinity, developed a kind of social egalitarianism and in some cases pacifism. These revolutionary positions isolated them from the rest of the Protestants. The strongholds of the Anti-Trinitarians were in Transylvania and in certain regions of Poland and Lithuania.

The successes of the Reformation—purely religious reasons apart— were due, as elsewhere, to the criticism of the worldliness of the clergy, accusations of its undue interference in fiscal matters and of dependence on Rome. Among the more extreme demands voiced by the Protestants were those for a national synod, the use of the vernacular in liturgy, and for the secularization of the church land. The latter demand, however, did not figure among Polish grievances.

The main contributions of the Reformation in East Central Europe lay in the cultural field: national literature, education, and the growth of national consciousness. Relying heavily on the Scriptures and propagating their creed through written works, the reformers sought to reach a wide audience. Hence, the necessity of publishing translations in the vernacular. Polish, Czech, and Hungarian Protestant Bibles included the Radziwill or Brzesc Bible (1563), the Kralice Bible, and the Karolyi Bible (1590). They stimulated in turn the publication of Catholic Bibles, for instance, the Polish translation of Wujek. While in Lithuania a Bible in the native tongue would not appear until the eighteenth century, and the Slovak Protestants used a Czech-language Bible, the Reformation stimulated publications in languages having virtually no literature of their own—for instance, Slovak. With regard to Lithuania one could say that it was through the Reformation that the country became fully drawn into the orbit of Western civilization. Polemical literature, religious and political, appeared increasingly in the vernacular throughout the region, contributing to the perfection of the literary tongue.

The reformers placed a great emphasis on education, and indeed their schools attained high standards. In Poland the most important schools were run by the Czech Brethren at Leszno, by Anti-Trinitarians at Rakow, and in Transylvania by the Lutherans at Brasso. While the Reformation in East Central Europe could claim many outstanding intellectuals, it had few leaders of national stature. The Pole Jan Laski (better known abroad where he was very active as John a Lasco), Karel Zerotin from Moravia, or Peter Meliusz, the chief organizer of the Reformed Church in Hungary, were among the best known. The Croat Matthias Flacius Illyricus belonged among the most important Protestant theologians. Yet none of them had the stature and influence of a Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, or John Knox.

The sixteenth century was the age of religious wars and such outrages as the massacre of St Bartholomew in Paris. The Holy Inquisition was striking fear in people’s hearts throughout Spain and Italy. By contrast, Poland, Bohemia (especially Moravia), and Transylvania were oases of toleration. There were several reasons for it. The Jagiellonians, and even their early Habsburg successors, displayed a moderating attitude. Luther and Melanchthon corresponded with the Polish court. So did Calvin, who also addressed Hungarian and Polish magnates and dedicated one of his works to the Polish prince Sigismund Augustus, hoping for his accession to the Reformation. This did not happen, but as king, Sigismund Augustus uttered the famous remark in the sejm: “I am not a king of your conscience.” In 1570 the Polish Calvinists, Lutherans, and Czech Brethren reached an agreement (Consensus Sandomirensis) to cooperate in the defense of freedom of religion. Three years later the Warsaw Confederation made toleration a de facto part of the law of the land. Both acts were praised widely throughout Europe.

Toleration in Poland came from the political nation rather than the ruler, and applied to Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and Jews, in addition to the various

Protestant groups. But it did not apply to the masses, and it was largely up to the nobleman whether he would seek to impose his creed on the peasantry. Generally, he did not. The attitude of the Catholic nobility toward Protestants may have been summed up by one of the magnates who said that he would give half of his life that they all return to Catholicism, but would give all of it if anyone forced them to do so.

The sixteenth century saw a new wave of Jewish immigrants to Poland. While there were sporadic outbreaks against them in towns (and in 1495 they had been briefly expelled from Lithuania), the Jews fared better than in most other states. Their figures rose to some 150,000 by 1576, a fivefold increase since the end of the fifteenth century; it was due partly to migration (often forced), from Bohemia and Hungary. They achieved a self-governing status under their own assembly (vaad). A prominent Jew was ennobled in 1525 without having to become Christian. At that time Jews in Habsburg lands had to wear a distinctive garb.

In Bohemia in 1512 the Prague diet had already confirmed previous religious agreements pertaining to the maintenance of peace. The expulsion of the Czech Brethren, who went to Poland, was exceptional and linked with the 1457 political upheaval. In 1575 the Bohemian diet agreed on a common Protestant platform, based largely on Lutheranism. It was called the Confessio Bohemica. It was not recognized by the ruler until 1609, in Rudolf’s “Letter of Majesty”; this restricted toleration to its adherents, among whom it included the peasantry. In a sense toleration was more all-embracing in Moravia, for it accepted the Unitarians expelled from Transylvania in 1569-70, and gave a certain autonomy to the Jews. The Moravian estates declared that “Moravia would rather perish in fire and ashes than consent to a forced imposition of any faith.”4 Indeed, late sixteenth-century travelers reported on a multitude of religious sects operating freely in Moravia. As for the semi-independent principality of Transylvania, its regime was based on the 1571 acceptance of four religions: Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Unitarian-Anti-Trinitarian, and the toleration of Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Armenians. After some vacillations this was confirmed by subsequent diets. But no other religious denominations were allowed.

The Reformation in East Central Europe had in the sixteenth century made important strides peacefully, partly because of the originally lukewarm opposition of the Catholic Church and the rulers, partly because of its association with the gentry. The Protestants on their side lacked the fanatic zeal that distinguished them in other countries. A British historian, R. J.W. Evans, spoke of a “fuzzy-edged” Reformation in Hungary. The Polish Protestant nobility did not run any great risks or make great sacrifices to practice their faith. Little pressure was applied to them.

The Catholic Reformation, or Counter-Reformation, proceeded slowly, concentrating on education. The great Polish Jesuit preacher Piotr Skarga or the internationally known Cardinal Hozjusz, did not appear in the guise of inquisitors. The decrees of the Council of Trent were not applied in Poland nor,

Initially, in the Habsburg lands. If Protestantism survived in Hungary it was largely because it was associated with an anti-Habsburg stance of the nobility. It declined in Poland largely for reasons that were not directly connected with theology. In Bohemia the forcible eradication of the Reformation in the seventeenth century was tied to political developments.