144 ANTEMURALEas the 'Sarmatian Athens', pioneered the teaching of those secular subjects such
as mathematics, natural sciences, history, ethics, and modern languages, for
which all the Protestant schools were renowned. Calvinist publicists, among
whom Francesco Stankar (1501—74), Professor of Hebrew at the Jagiellonian
University, and Andrzej Wolan (d. 1610), Secretary to Mikolaj Radziwill,
deserve mention, maintained a high level of scholarly excellence in the public
disputes of their day. Calvinist patrons, among whom the Leszczynski in Poland
and the Chodkiewicz, Sapieha, Dorohajski, Zenowicz, and Sokolinski in
Lithuania vied with the Radziwills, gave an important stimulus to learning and
to all the arts.
The Polish sectarians in contrast made a unique impact on religious life not
through the size of their membership, but through the originality of their social
experiments and theological doctrines.^19 Variously known as Arians, Anti-
trinitarians, Unitarians, Polish Brethren, Racovians, Pinchovians, Socinians,
Samosatenians, Farnovians, Sabellians, Budneans, Theists, Ditheists, and
Tritheists, they professed a multitude of beliefs and associations which explain
the baffling variety of their names. They were united only by their rejection of
the dogma of the Trinity, and by their claim to the absolute right of free thought.
A number of 'anti-trinitarians' came together in Cracow around 1550 in
Protestant discussion groups organized by Queen Bona's Corsican Confessor,
Francesco Lismanino. They included Adam Pastor, a Dutchman; George
Blandrata, Queen Bona's Piedmontese physician; and Lelio Sozzini, a refugee
from Venice and Zurich. They were in contact with a group of Moravian
Anabaptists who had settled in the Carpathians, and with similar congregations
in Transylvania. In the 1550s their ideas were developed by the writings of Piotr
z Goniaz (Gonesius, 1530—72) from Podlasia, whose 'Ditheism' expressed in De
Filio Dei (On the Son of God, 1556), denied the existence of the Holy Spirit; by
Grzegorz Pawel z Brzezin (1525-91), whose treatise O prawdziwej smierci...
(On the reality of Death, 1564) doubted the existence of the Life Hereafter; by
Szymon Budny (1530-93), whose 'Non-adorantism' contained in O przed-
niejszych artykulech (On the first principles of the Christian Faith, 1576) has
been described as the most daring tract of the century; by Marcin Czechowicz
(1532—1613) of Lublin, whose Rozmowy chrystianskie (Christian
Conversations, 1575) preached social equality and the wickedness of private
property; and above all by Faustio Sozzini (Socinius, 1539-1604), Lelio's
nephew, whose treatise De Jesu Christo Servatore (On Jesus Christ, God's
Servant, 1598) precipitated his expulsion from Cracow. The key moment
arrived in 1569—70, when having seceded already from mainstream Calvinism,
the sectarians refused to participate in the Compromise of Sandomierz and in
the united Protestant front against the Counter-Reformation. Thereafter, some
continued on their own lonely path; but many came together in the town of
Rakow in Malopolska, where, under the protection of Michal Sienicki
(1521—82), the 'Polish Brothers' established their celebrated commune.
Abolishing the distinctions of rank and estate, they withdrew completely from