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Dilemmas of a Socinian Pacifist in Seventeenth-Century Poland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Peter Brock
Peter Brock
Affiliation:
professor emeritus of history in the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario
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Extract

The antitrinitarian Polish Brethren, from the inception of their denomination as a breakaway from the Calvinist Reformed Church in 1565, had earnestly debated the issue of whether a “true Christian” might collaborate in the workof the sword-bearing magistracy, take part in war, or kill a fellow human being in self-defense. Whereas the brotherhood in the militarily exposed Grand Duchy of Lithuania, with a few exceptions, gave a positive answer, the congregational leaders in the more secure kingdom of Poland for the most part said no. To do any of these things, the latterargued, entailed disobedience to Jesus’ commandments as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere in the New Testament. For Christ replaced the laws of the Old Testament, which had allowed the ancient Israelites to wage just wars and wield the sword for good cause, with a gospel of love and defenselessness. This doctrine of nonresistance the pacifist Brethren, of course, had taken over from the Anabaptists of central Europe, whose insistence on adult baptism they also adopted.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , June 1994 , pp. 190 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1994

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References

1. See especially Kot, Stanislaw, Ideologic, polityczna i spoleczna Braci Polskich zwanych Arjanami (Warsaw, 1932).Google ScholarKot's classic study was later revised and expanded by the author and appeared in an English translation by Wilbur, Earl Morse under the title Socinianism in Poland: The Social and Political Ideas of the Polish Antitrinitarians in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Boston, 1957).Google ScholarSee also my Pacifism in Europe to 1914 (Princeton, N.J., 1972), chap. 4;Google Scholarmy Freedom from Violence: Sectarian Nonresistance from the Middle Ages to the Great War (Toronto, 1991), chaps. 7 and 8;Google Scholarand Tazbir, Janusz, “Pacifism in the Ideology of the Polish Brethren,” Polish Western Affairs 15 (1974): 200–223Google Scholar, and “Polish Defenders of Political and Religious Peace in the 16th and 17th Centuries,” Dialectics and Humanism 9 (1983): 257–276.Google ScholarThe most comprehensive survey of the history of the Polish Brethren, is Wilbur's Socinianism and its Antecedents (Boston, 1945); it forms the first volume of his two-volume History of Unitarianism.Google ScholarWilliams, George Hunston, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia, 1962), is also valuable for background.Google Scholar

2. For Socinus's life and thought, see Chmaj, Ludwik, Faust Socyn (1529–1604) (Warsaw, 1963).Google ScholarChmaj surveys his views on the state, war, and self-defense in chapters 5 and 16. See also Pioli, Giovanni, Fausto Socino: Vita-opere-fortuna (Modena, 1952), pp. 376–411.Google Scholar

3. Szczucki, Lech and Tazbir, J., eds., Epitome colloquii Racoviae habiti anno 1601 (Warsaw, 1965), pp. 78–85.Google Scholar

4. For his activities and writings, see Bock, Friedrich Samuel, Histona Antitrinitariorum, maxime Socinianisnu et Socinianorum (Regensburg and Leipzig), 1, pt. 2 (1776): 763–824.Google ScholarSchlichting's publications are also listed in detail in Estreicher, Stanislaw, Bibliografia Polska Karola Estreichera 27 (1929): 208–215. At the time of writing, the multivolume Polish Biographical Dictionary has not yet reached “Schlichting.”Google Scholar

5. Schlichting, Jonas, Questiones Duae … contra Balthasarem Meisnerum (Raków, 1636).Google Scholar

6. With the cumbrous title Quod Regni Poloniae et Magni Ducatus Lithuaniae homines, vulgo Evangelici dicti, qui solidae pietatis sunt studiosi, omnino deberent se illorum coetui adjungere, qui in iisdem locis falso atque immerito Arriani atque Ebionitae vocantur.Google ScholarIts text, slightly shortened, had appeared earlier, without Socinus's name, in a Polish translation by Stoinski, Piotr, Okazanie … (Raków, 1600).Google Scholar

7. The sections on the sword cover pages 334–460 (with pages 373–460 assigned specifically to war). They are summarized by Kot in a couple of paragraphs; Kot, Socinianism, pp. 143–145. Pages 358–373Google Scholarappeared recently in Polish translation in Ogonowski, Zbigniew, ed. Myśl ariańska w Polsce XVII wieku: Antologia tekstów (Wrocław, 1991), pp. 185–194.Google Scholar

8. Kot, , Socinianism, pp. 143, 165, 181;Google ScholarOgonowski, , ed., Myśl ariańska, pp. 183, 184.Google Scholar

9. Schlichting, , Questiones Duae, pp. 365–368, 373.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., p. 334.

11. Ibid., pp. 358, 359. See also pp. 374–376, 192. Like Socinus earlier, Schlichting, a witness of the disasters of the Thirty Years' War in neighboring Germany, denied the magistrate a jus belligerandi in order to prevent religious oppression. This task, according to Schlichting, must be left entirely in God's hands; Christians should never offer armed resistance to their rulers and ought to be ready patiently to suffer persecution—and even death—for their faith. The sword of the spirit alone and not material weapons could assist them in their plight, wrote Schlichting with the Protestants of Germany obviously in mind. See pp. 352–360.Google Scholar

12. Socinus, we know, opposed capital punishment under all circumstances. Schlichting, on the other hand, grants it is permissible at least in theory, while at the same time urging that instead of imposing the death penalty, rulers should exercise mercy even in the case of the most serious crimes. See Quaestiones Duae, pp. 392–394.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., p. 434; 433.

14. For all its vagueness, this is in itself a significant concession.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., pp. 426, 427.

16. Ibid., pp. 394–401. See also p. 425.

17. Ibid., p. 433.

18. Ibid., pp. 379–392, 424.

19. Ibid., pp.412–420. See also p. 405.

20. Ibid., p. 421. My italics. Schlichting followed Socinus in approving payment of taxes, even when it was known that the government would spend the money on war preparations—as almost always happened in those times. He argues it was indeed Christ who had sanctioned this response when he approved rendering Caesar his due. Moreover, Schlichting went on, were paying war taxes to signify a general approval of fighting, then this would also mean that “Christians, at the commandment of the magistrate, are obliged to serve in an unjust war”—this last a position, we may note, that at that date many mainstream Protestant theologians supported.Google Scholar

21. Quakers in colonial Rhode Island were to make the same distinction as Schlichting had done between the pacifist as private citizen and the pacifist as magistrate helping to govern a polity that had not yet accepted “true Christianity.” See my book The Quaker Peace Testimony 1660 to 1914 (York, U.K., 1990), chap. 11.Google Scholar

22. In Poland-Lithuania this had become largely a theoretical issue by the 1630s. But in previous centuries the military obligation of the Polish szlachta (nobility) included their attendance at the pospolite ruszenie (general levy) when required. In many other European states militia service remained compulsory for able-bodied adults, although it was almost always possible to opt out by paying a fine.Google Scholar

23. See note 3 above.Google Scholar

24. Printed in Johannis Ludovici Wolzogenii Baronis Austriaci Opera Omnia, Exegetica, Didactica, et Polemica. Volume 2, pt. 2: “Annotationes ad questiones Jonae Schlichtingii a Bucowic de magistratu, bello, defensione” (pp. 65–78) and “Responsio ad Jonae Schlichtingii a Bocowietz annotationes in annotationes de bello, magistratu, & privata defensione” (pp. 92–132).Google ScholarWolzogen's, Collected Works form part of the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum (Amsterdam, 1668). Volume 2, pp. 65–71, appeared in Polish translation in Ogonowski, , ed., Myśl ariańska, pp. 196–213, and pp 102–104, 114, 115, 125–127Google Scholar, in his Filozofia Myśl ariańska XVII wieku (Warsaw, 1979), pt. 1, pp. 228–242.Google ScholarFor a summary of the controversy, see Kot, , Socinianism, pp. 172–181;Google Scholaralso my Studies in Peace History (York, 1991), pp. 25–28. Kot writes (p. 181): “We do not know the exact chronology of the dialogue between Szlichtyng and Wolzogen, but it began in the peaceful years under Ladislas IV and ended after the storm of the Cossack invasion burst in the reign of John Casimir, perhaps about 1650.”Google Scholar

25. Wolzogen, , Opera Omnia, 2, pt. 2: 71, 75; 101.Google Scholar

26. Kot, , Socinianism, pp. 181, 182.Google Scholar

27. Wolzogen, , Opera Omnia, 2, pt. 2: 75, 77.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., 75, 76.

29. Ibid., 78, 119, 120. The final suggestion here is found earlier not only in Socinus (1581) but also in Czechowic, Marcin (1575); see my Studies in Peace History, pp. 18Google Scholar.

30. Wolzogen, , Opera Omnia, 2, pt. 2, 116; 114, 115.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., pp. 71, 120; 125; 118.

32. Whereas Socinus in his Reply to Palaeologus of 1581 includes a specific discussion of conscientious objection to military service, neither Schlichting nor Wolzogen raise the subject in any detail confining their treatment of the military question within general terms as a problem of Christian ethics. The abstract nature of their controversy over war reflects the fact that refusal of military service was no longer practised among the Polish Brethren. Such had already been the case when Schlichting was writing in the 1630s, and indeed for many decades earlier. See Socinus, Opera Omnia, 2: 80, 81;Google Scholaralso my article “Conscientious Objectors in the Polish Brethren Church, 1565–1605,” Slavonic and East European Review 70 (1992): 678–680.Google ScholarThe last echo of nonresistance in a Brethren Church publication occurred in the 1680 edition of the Racovian Catechism produced in exlie by Wiszowaty, Benedykt.Google ScholarSee Williams, G. H., ed. The Polish Brethren: Documentation of the History and Thought of Unitarianism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Diaspora, 1601–1685 (Missoula, Mon., 1980), pp. 714–717.Google ScholarWilliams, (p. 416, n. 10) comments: “It is quite striking that Benedykt Wiszowaty should expressly mention Szlichtyng, along with himself, as one of the five revisers of the Catechism. This would make his sympathy with Szlichtyng's pacifist opponent, Wolzogen, whom he also mentions expressly, all the more pointed; for he would have no doubt been in possession of copies of Szlichtyng on magistracy, etc., which have since been lost. He seems, however, to have been a factor in having pacifist Wolzogen in BFP instead of Szlichtyng on magistracy.” Williams“s italics.Google Scholar

33. See my Pacifism in Europe to 1914, p. 474; 475.Google Scholar