King Sigismund of Poland and Martin Luther: The Reformation before Confessionalization

The first major study of the early Reformation and the Polish monarchy for over a century, this volume asks why Crown and church in the reign of King Sigismund I (1506-1548) did not persecute Lutherans. It offers a new narrative of Luther's dramatic impact on this monarchy DS which saw violent urban Reformations and the creation of Christendom's first Lutheran principality by 1525 DS placing these events in their comparative European context. King Sigismund's realm appears to offer a major example of sixteenth-century religious toleration: the king tacitly allowed his Hanseatic ports to enact local Reformations, enjoyed excellent relations with his Lutheran vassal duke in Prussia, allied with pro-Luther princes across Europe, and declined to enforce his own heresy edicts. Polish church courts allowed dozens of suspected Lutherans to walk free. Examining these episodes in turn, this study does not treat toleration purely as the product of political calculation or pragmatism. Instead, through close analysis of language, it reconstructs the underlying cultural beliefs about religion and church (ecclesiology) held by the king, bishops, courtiers, literati, and clergy DS asking what, at heart, did these elites understood 'Lutheranism' and 'catholicism' to be? It argues that the ruling elites of the Polish monarchy did not persecute Lutheranism because they did not perceive it as a dangerous Other DS but as a variant form of catholic Christianity within an already variegated late medieval church, where social unity was much more important than doctrinal differences between Christians. Building on John Bossy and borrowing from J.G.A. Pocock, it proposes a broader hypothesis on the Reformation as a shift in the languages and concept of orthodoxy.

Table of Contents:
PART 1: HYPOTHESIS Introduction: Beyond Toleration - the Reformation before Confessionalisation PART 2. CONTEXTS People, Places, Texts 1: A New Narrative? The Polish Monarchy & the Early Reformation (1518-c.1540) PART 3. EPISODES 2: Drama in Danzig: The Crown & Reformation in Royal Prussia. 3: A Naughty Nephew: The Polish Crown & Lutheran Ducal Prussia 4: Hollow Law? Royal Edicts Against Lutheranism 5: 'A Most Pious Prince': The Reformation Diplomacy of Sigismund I 6: A Smoked Pig, Monsters & Sheep: The Polish Church and Lutheranism PART 4. LANGUAGE ANALYSIS 7: Defining Lutheranism 8: Defining Catholicism Conclusions

About the Author :
Natalia Nowakowska has been a Tutor and Fellow in Early Modern History at Somerville College, University of Oxford, since 2007. She read History at Oxford as an undergraduate, and went on to hold post-doctoral positions at King's College London and University College, Oxford (and to work briefly in social policy). She is the author of a prize-winning first book on late medieval Poland, recipient of a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, and is currently the Principal Investigator of a major five-year European-Research Council funded project entitled 'Jagiellonians: Dynasty, Memory & Identity in Central Europe'.

Review :
a truly path-breaking work. It is based on a command of a large primary and secondary printed and manuscript literature. It will be a must read for specialists in the history of the early modern Commonwealth, and, most welcome – I can't stress this enough – for important, serious scholars of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation With a wide range of sophisticated tools, including both the careful exploration of individual texts and a very insightful discursive analysis of a whole corpus of sixteenth century documents, Nowakowska has transformed our understanding of the Reformation in Eastern Europe (and beyond). Natalia Nowakowska's book reshapes fundamental historical paradigms about the geographic parameters of the Protestant Reformation and the chronology of the Reformation in Poland ... In her marvelously vivid account of Lutheran political movements on Polish territory, Nowakowska captures the complexity of early sixteenth-century church-state relations and fluidly integrates the religious history of the Polish Republic into wider European trends, portraying it as a key example of how Protestantism dramatically ruptured worldviews across the continent. This monograph by Natalia Nowakowska fills an important gap in the research on the Reformation in Poland. This excellent study will serve as a credible interpretation and a handbook not only for students, but also for the broader public [an] excellent monograph ... [it] makes important contributions to the history of religious toleration, Reformation scholarship and research on Central Europe more broadly. It introduces a new way of thinking about toleration in the first half of the sixteenth century Nowakowska's research now provides a detailed case study tracing how this played out in the lands of the Polish monarchy. It further convincingly pinpoints the fundamental shift, not merely to a narrowing down of options, but to the changing discourse about doctrine initiated by Luther ... The implications of the hypothesis are far-reaching ... This book shows how important the study of Central and Eastern Europe is to the history of the Reformation. As the first monograph on the subject for over a century it brings the Polish material back into view and into contact with the core scholarship. On a higher level it prompts us to think not only about the catalysts for historical change, but also about how people lived through, experienced and recognized great historical changes as they happened.