The crown owned estates all over the country which it did not administer itself. Some were granted to individuals for services to the crown, to favourites, and even to merchants in return for cash advances. Others were granted with the office of starosta. The starostas were the linchpin of local government, the king’s officers in charge of law and order in a given locality. The starosties came with profitable estates which the incumbent was supposed to administer on behalf of the king, taking 20 per cent of the profit for himself as payment for the office he carried out. The rest went to the crown. All starosties and royal lands were the inalienable property of the crown, and reverted to it on the incumbent’s death. In practice, things worked differently.
The office of starosta had degenerated into a sinecure, while the administration of the lands, which was not subject to any verification, afforded endless scope for venality, with the result that most of the revenue went not to the crown but into the pocket of the incumbent. The starosties were therefore highly sought-after; their holders could increase their revenue without any extra effort or outlay of funds and at the same time enjoy the prestige and power of the office. Influential families began to collect them, with the result that a magnate might hold up to half a dozen important starosties, and a number of other royal estates, and his family would be understandably loath to give them up on his death. Although the lands were supposed to revert to the crown, successive kings found it increasingly difficult not to award them to the son of the deceased incumbent without alienating the whole family. To all practical purposes, the starosties were therefore becoming hereditary in the richer families.
This enraged the szlachta, since it both bolstered the position of the magnates and diminished the crown’s financial resources. Again and again the executionists clamoured for a return to due process and the repossession by the crown of multiply-held starosties. On this issue, however, the magnates in the Senate who normally supported the executionists against the Church would vote with the bishops against the executionists, and the king, who by the middle of the century relied more and more on the magnates for support, would cooperate with them. Only minimal success was achieved in 1563, when the Sejm decreed a general inspection of all accounts and inventories to catch out corrupt administrators.
The executionist movement distracted much of the zeal which might otherwise have been concentrated on religious questions. At the same time, Catholic voters elected Calvinist deputies because they were executionists, and Catholic deputies voted with the executionist Calvinists on issues such as the demand for a national Church, the abolition of ecclesiastical tribunals, and the law forcing the Church to contribute financially to defence. Even at the height of the Reformation no Pole, be he Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist or Arian, was prepared to place religious issues before constitutional and legal ones. That is why the Reformation failed in Poland. After raging and blustering in word and print for a few decades, the Protestant movement gradually burnt itself out, while the energies which had fuelled it were diverted to political matters.
The Catholic Church, which had dodged the heaviest blows and avoided confrontation, slowly went over to the offensive, as the Counter-Reformation gained strength. In Poland its progress was unsensationaclass="underline" no inquisition, no burnings at the stake, no anathemas, no forfeitures of property, no barring from office. It could hardly have been otherwise, given the spirit pervading Polish society and the stature of the leaders of the Counter-Reformation. The greatest of these, Cardinal Stanisław Hosius, was fundamentally opposed to violence and, referring to Mary Tudor, warned in 1571: ‘Let Poland never become like England.’
Hosius and his principal colleague, Marcin Kromer, were unusual among sixteenth-century Catholic prelates. Both had worked in the royal chancellery for the king before they went into the Church. Hosius then went on to play an important role at the Council of Trent. Kromer was a historian, and in his writings he demonstrated the unifying role the Church had played in Polish history. He preferred to argue with heretics rather than condemn them. Hosius favoured a similar approach, but he made a greater and more categorical statement on the matter of religion—something the Calvinists were unable to do. His Confessio (1551), a lucid reaffirmation of Catholic dogma, was one of the most powerful arguments of the European Counter-Reformation. It was translated into several languages, and between 1559 and 1583 ran to no fewer than thirtyseven separate editions in France alone. In 1564 Hosius brought the Jesuits to Poland, to reconquer the hearts, and more specifically the minds, of the Poles, and the most outstanding of them, Piotr Skarga (1536-1612), proved a worthy partner.
Hosius and Skarga pinpointed the principal arguments for returning to the fold, letting time do the rest. And time was on the side of Rome. In 1570 Mikołaj Sierotka Radziwiłł, son of the man who had introduced Calvinism to Lithuania and been one of its greatest financial and political supports, went back to the Church of Rome. Others followed suit, for a variety of reasons. Even the mixed marriages which the hierarchy had fulminated against worked in favour of Catholicism, since women had been largely left out of the religious debate and their conditioning led them to stand by their old faith. Jan Firlej, Marshal of Poland, had become a Calvinist, but his wife, Zofia Boner, had not. She covertly brought his sons up to love the Catholic faith, and three of the four became Catholics when they grew up. After her death, Firlej married Barbara Mniszech, another fervent Catholic. Although their son was ostensibly brought up a Calvinist, the mother’s influence prevailed, and he later became Primate of Poland. As Piotr Skarga foresaw, the country would be reconquered for Rome, ‘not by force or with steel, but by virtuous example, teaching, discussion, gentle intercourse and persuasion’.
As Calvin grew more strident and Protestants in various European countries began to execute not only Catholics but other Protestants, the Polish prelates showed forbearance. They pointed out that Protestantism could be more repressive than Catholicism. They explained that it was not only divisive, but irresponsible, and in this they were helped by the example of the Arians.
Under the influence of Fausto Sozzini, the Arian movement displayed a tendency to splinter while attracting all manner of dissenters and schismatics migrating from other countries. But what made the Arians really unpopular with the szlachta were the starkly political implications of their faith. ‘You should not eat bread made by the sweat of a subject’s brow, but make your own,’ they would hector. ‘Nor should you live on estates which were granted to your forebears for spilling the blood of enemies. You must sell those estates and give the money to the poor.’ Since the status of the szlachta was based on their readiness to bear arms, the Arians’ pacifism was downright subversive. (In an attempt to square the circle, their synod of 1604 allowed them to bear arms provided they did not use them.)
With the impending extinction of the Jagiellon dynasty, Poland and Lithuania needed unity of purpose rather than dissent and refusal to take responsibility. Nevertheless, the constitutional and legal aspects of the issue were still paramount. After the death of Zygmunt Augustus the Sejm which met in 1573 under the name of the Confederation of Warsaw to shape Poland’s future passed an act whose most memorable clause ran as follows: