Polish brothers
The Polish Brothers (Polish Bracia Polscy ) were a Unitarian Church of the Radical Reformation between 1565 and 1658 in the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania . They were strongly influenced by socinianism and in part by the Anabaptist movement and rejected the idea of the Trinity of God . As the anti-Trinitarian church, they were sometimes inappropriately referred to as Arians in the literature . The sister church in Lithuania at the same time was called the Lithuanian Brothers .
history
The Polish-Lithuanian theologian Petrus Gonesius played a major role in the creation of the Polish Brothers . Gonesius had come into contact with the anti-Trinitarian theology Michael Servetus and Matteo Gribaldis while studying in Padua , Italy . Later he met in Moravia on from the Anabaptist movement originating Hutterer , who also influenced him long term. In January 1556 Gonesius campaigned for anti-Trinitarianism at a church synod taking place in Secymin, Small Poland . Lesser Poland was already heavily influenced by the Zwingli and Calvin Reformation , while the neighboring Greater Poland was more influenced by Lutheran and Bohemian positions. Although Gonesius could not prevail, he was able to gather a number of supporters in the following years. Sections of the clergy and nobility also took their side. Gonesius found support above all from the Polish-Lithuanian magnate Jan Kiszka .
At a further synod in Brest in December 1558 , Gonesius spoke out not only for anti-Trinitarian but also for Anabaptist positions such as confessional baptism and non-violence . In the mid-1560s, the Reformed congregations of Poland-Lithuania finally split into an Anabaptist-anti-Trinitarian Ecclesia reformata minor (≈ Small Reformed Church) and an Ecclesia reformata maior (≈ Large Reformed Church), which adhered to the Trinity and infant baptism . After ties with the Polish-Lithuanian Calvinists were broken, an independent synod of the anti-Trinitarian church, composed as Polish and Lithuanian brothers, took place for the first time on June 10, 1565.
The congregations of the Polish-Lithuanian brothers concentrated mainly on Lesser Poland, Volhynia and parts of Lithuania, where Reformed congregations were also represented. The cultural centers were the towns of Pińczów and Raków , where the influential Raków Academy was located between 1602 and 1638 . The Polish Brothers were initially not recognized by the other Protestant churches in Poland-Lithuania as an equal church. They were not admitted to the Union Synod of Sandomir, which was held jointly by Lutherans, Reformed and Bohemian Brothers in 1570 , and were accordingly not included in the inner-Protestant consensus of Sandomir .
In the 1570s, the Polish Brothers were shaped by an internal church dispute between the pacifist-Anabaptist positions represented by Petrus Gonesius and Marcin Czechowic and the state-loyal and nonadorantist views represented by Szymon Budny . If one side saw confessional baptism (partly through immersion) as essential for entry into the church, the other side saw it as a mere external rite. While Czechowic intended Jesus to act as a mediator with the father, the nonadorantists around Budny refused to invoke Jesus. There were also different attitudes towards other religions. If the Budny party represented a universalistic tolerance between all religious communities, Czechowicz and Pauli , for example, represented a superiority of Christianity and especially of Unitarianism and derived active mission from this.
In the following period, the Polish Brothers were mainly influenced by the writings of the Italian theologian Fausto Sozzini , who settled in Poland in 1579 and also supported the Raków Catechism , which was completed by Valentin Schmalz , Johann Völkel and Hieronymus Moskorzowski and published in 1605 . Characteristic of the socinianism named after Sozzini were, in addition to the rejection of the Trinity and pre-existence of Christ, above all the rejection of church dogmas and a turn to rationalistic Bible exegesis .
Already under pressure from the Catholic Counter-Reformation , the Church of the Polish Brothers was finally banned by the Polish Parliament on July 20, 1658 . The Rakov Academy was closed in 1638. The first fatality occurred with the execution of Ivan Tyszkowic in 1611. The re-establishment of the academy in Kieselin in Volhynia , where Unitarian synods were still held in 1638, 1639 and 1640, fell victim to the Counter-Reformation in 1644. In the following years, many Polish brothers were accepted by the Unitarians in Transylvania or in the Netherlands , where the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum was published in 1668 . In some cases, individual communities could also be founded in Prussia , such as the community founded by Samuel Przypkowski in 1666 and existing until 1803 in Andreaswalde in East Prussia . Efforts have been made in Poland to revive the Polish Brothers since the 1930s. Today there are churches again that appeal to the former Polish Brothers.
Theologically, the Polish Brothers stood for an anti-Trinitarianism shaped by Matteo Gribaldi and later mainly by Fausto Sozzini. The pre-existence of Christ and the belief in hell were rejected. In addition, there were also pacifist-Anabaptist positions and the rejection of feudalist social structures. The Lord's Supper was celebrated purely as a memorial. With regard to the liturgy, they upheld the principle of the greatest possible simplicity. Since the Polish Brothers anticipated many positions of the later Enlightenment with regard to tolerance, the state, the church and society , they still have a special place in the history of European theology.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Janusz Małłek: Sandomir, Consensus of . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE), Vol. 30: Samuel - Seele . De Gruyter, Berlin 1999, pp. 29-32.
- ^ Olaf Reese: Lutheran metaphysics in dispute. Reports of Calov's anti-Socinian campaigns , Göttingen 2009, pp. 93–94.
- ^ Theodor Wotschke : Schleswig-Holstein and the Polish brothers . In: "Writings of the Association for Schleswig-Holstein Church History", 2nd series (articles and communications), Vol. 8, 1926, pp. 62–87, here p. 70.
- ↑ They were mainly accepted by the Remonstrants and the Mennonites, cf. Gerhard Krause, Gerhard Müller (Ed.): Theologische Realenzyklopädie , Vol. 3, Berlin / New York 1978, p. 173.
- ^ Horst Robert Balz, Gerhard Krause, Gerhard Müller: Sozzini . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie , Vol. 31, Berlin 2000, p. 602.
- ↑ Lorenz Hein: Italian Protestants and their influence on the Reformation in Poland during the two decades before the Sandomir Consensus (1570) , Leiden 1974, p. 23.
