THE BULWARK OF CHRISTENDOM 153
Ligata nihil voluit fateri jednom chorzi ludzi omywala ziotkami... (Having been bound,
she was willing to say nothing except that she had sometimes bathed sick people with
herbs);
Tracta... (Having been racked, she said she was not with her, and was innocent, God
knows.. .);
Usta candellis ... (Burned with the candles, she said nothing, only that she was innocent);
Spuszczona... (Having been lowered, she said that she was innocent to Almighty God
in the Trinity);
Remissa et iterum in terra sedens usta candellis... (Replaced; then again burned with
candles as she sat on the ground, '... Ach! ach! ach! For God's sake, she did go with
Dorota and the miller's wife to Mrs. Wysocki.') Thereafter the confessions agreed
with those of Dorota.^30
In the sixteenth century, only 4 per cent of those charged with witchcraft were
actually burned. In the seventeenth century, this figure rose to 46 per cent, and
in 1700-25 to 50 per cent. The total number of victims has been calculated as
20,000 in Silesia, and 10,000 in the Kingdom of Poland. Their sufferings did not
come to an end until the royal decree of 1776.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the religious scene in Poland-Lithuania
was considerably altered. In 1569, at the Union of Lublin, the Roman Catholic
establishment had commanded a dominant minority in a population of multi-
farious denominational allegiances. In 1791, on the eve of the final Partitions, it
commanded a clear majority. The Lutherans, Orthodox, and Arians had virtu-
ally been eliminated, the Uniates reduced, the Calvinists decimated. Only the
Jews had matched the Catholics in both their absolute and their relative
increase. (See Diagram G(b), p. 127.)
This 'Triumph of the Counter-Reformation' in Poland is sometimes cited as
the only instance of a country where the Roman Catholic Church successfully
attacked and reversed the gains of the Reformation. Yet the Roman Triumph is
a deceptive, not to say an illusory phenomenon; and is largely attributable to
arbitrary or external factors. In the northern provinces, for example, the
Lutherans were never reconverted to Rome. They dropped out of the reckoning
by virtue of the frontier changes of the Partitions, which left them in the expand-
ing Kingdom of Prussia. In the East, the Orthodox were advancing at the
expense of the Uniates. They only disappeared from the Polish purview, when
they were incorporated into Russia. In both these areas the Roman allegiance
had actually diminished. It had only increased in real terms in relation to the
Calvinists and Arians. Yet in this regard, the foreign enemies of the Republic
achieved drastic results of a kind which the Jesuits could never emulate. At the
time of the Swedish Wars, by openly championing the Protestant cause, the
Swedes inevitably pushed their Polish co-religionists under a cloud of political
suspicion, and obliged large numbers of the Calvinist and Arian nobility to turn