154 ANTEMURALE
to Catholicism as proof of their patriotism. In those same fateful years, the
Muscovite Army systematically attacked the Protestants of Lithuania with brute
force. Chmielnicki's Cossacks treated Protestants to the same violence that
marked their treatment of noblemen and Jews. In 1648-9, the number of active
Protestant communities in the Grand Duchy was reduced from 140 to 45. In this
way, the work of the Counter-Reformers was actually performed by its oppo-
nents.
Even so, it cannot be denied that the massive solidity of the Catholic Church
far outweighed all ephemeral Protestant rivals. Polish Calvinism was associated
from the start with feudal privilege, and never penetrated the peasantry. It could
not compete with Lutheranism for the loyalty of the diminutive Christian bour-
geoisie. Polish Arianism, too, was an intellectual and a political rather than a
popular pursuit, and could not in its very nature appeal to the illiterate masses.
In the event, the Calvinists and Arians mounted but a lightweight challenge to
the Catholic supremacy. They never captured the machinery of the state; they
never loosened the grip of the hierarchy on the populace at large; they never
formed a consolidated front with the Orthodox, Uniates, Lutherans, and Jews.
Oddly enough, their initial success was undermined by that very principle of
Toleration which they themselves had erected. Once the terms of the
Confederation of Warsaw were enshrined in the constitution, the Protestants
had no further cause to protest. They could practise their religion as they
wished, but could extract no significant political or social advantage by so
doing. They denied themselves the likelihood of advancement at Court, and the
company of their Catholic neighbours, without any hope of worldly reward. In
other words, they lacked the stimulus of persecution. As a result, their numbers
were slowly but surely eroded over six or seven decades. The two generations of
noblemen who took to the reformed doctrines with such alacrity in the second
half of the sixteenth century were dying out by the middle of the seventeenth. As
often as not, their sons and grandsons returned unostentatiously to the Catholic
fold. The edicts of limitation directed against the Arians in 1658, and against all
Protestants in 1718 formally terminated a process which to all intents and pur-
poses was already complete.
Even a cursory survey of the religious life of the Republic, therefore, would
seem to prompt some controversial conclusions. In the first place, neither
Poland nor Lithuania could fairly claim in this period to be Catholic countries
on the monolithic scale of Spain or Italy. The myths of Poland's undivided
Catholicity can only have been coined by the apologists of a Church whose
supremacy was constantly disturbed, either by internal dissent or by external
force.
Secondly, the spirit of tolerance was as rare a virtue as elsewhere. In the Age
of Faith, Catholics and Protestants, Orthodox and Uniates, Talmudists and
anti-Talmudists, and presumably Armenians and Muslims as well, almost
everyone in fact, believed that their own particular doctrine pointed the sole
way to eternal salvation. Each of the denominations was as intolerant of its