274 ANARCH1A
to judge us ... as other nations have.' 'There are', he said, 'two leading members
in the human body, the head and the heart'. 'A merry heart and a sane head make
for a strong and healthy whole.' It was a classic exposition of the theory of the
'two Swords', of the Division of Powers between Church and State, between God
and Caesar. There are three good freedoms, he continued - to refrain from sin;
to decline a foreign master; and to resist a tyrant. But the fourth freedom, a
'devilish', a 'hellish', a 'Satanic' freedom, was 'to live without law'. The mag-
nates rode roughshod over common counsels, and a leaderless Sejm was subject
to intolerable delays and indecision. Looking no doubt at the rows of envoys
before him, he declared: 'What is most pernicious, is that people ascribe such
great powers to themselves ... as if this were a democracy.' To those who were
not previously aware, Skarga thought the noble democracy to be a sin. He
wanted to prune the privileges and immunities of the nobility, starting with the
Neminem Captivabitnus, to strengthen the Monarchy and Senate against the
dietines and the Chamber of Envoys, and to relieve the miseries of the peasantry.
In his final, Eighth Sermon, he returned to the theme of the peasants. Having
treated his congregation to a rich catalogue of the unpunished sins of the
Republic, from blasphemy, sacrilege, murder, usury, adultery, perjury, and
treason, to wine, silks, and horses, he suddenly invited them to reflect on the con-
dition of their own subjects. 'Just ask it of yourselves,' he demanded; 'do you
have any other state in Christendom where the serfs and ploughmen are so
oppressed by an absolute rule as here, where the nobility reigns over them with
no legal restraint?' For the szlachta, so fond of their Golden Freedom, and so sen-
sitive to the absolutist pretensions of the King, it was a bitter rebuke indeed.
Skarga concluded with a salvo of chilling texts from the Prophets:
Set thine house in order: for soon thou shalt die, and not live:And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, neither would he let the children of
Israel go; as the Lord had spoken to Moses.Thus saith the Lord,... I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a King, to pluck
up and to pull down, and to destroy it... Because my people have forgotten me, ... I
will scatter them as an east wind before the enemy; I will show them my back and not my
face, in the day of their calamity.^25The conclusion was stark. If the nobility did not repent, their Republic would
suffer the fate of Sodom, of Egypt, and of Byzantium.
In the seventeenth century, political critics often turned to satire. Krzysztof
Opalinski (1610-56), Wojewoda of Poznan, who led the magnates' opposition
against the supposed absolutist design of Wladyslaw IV, and who had the
doubtful distinction of submitting to the Swedes at Ujscie in 1655, was no
flatterer of the 'Golden Freedom':'Nierzadem Polska stoi'—niezle ktos powiedzial.
Lecz drugi odpowiedzial, ze nierzadem zginie.