16 NARODhierarchy of the Church was consistently hostile to nationalist aims. Certainly,
the situation was not free from ambiguity. The tendency to identify Catholics as
Poles, and non-Catholics as non-Poles, was more common in border areas of
mixed religious affiliations than in solidly Catholic neighbourhoods. But to
deny that Catholicism acted as one of the major spurs to national consciousness
is as absurd as to maintain that Polishness and Catholicism were identical. It
was often the case that fervent nationalists would reject their Catholicity in
protest against the political lethargy of the supposedly 'priest-ridden' commun-
ity from which they originated. But their actions only underlined the
significance of Catholicism in defining the Polish national community which
they so desperately hoped to arouse.^15 (See Chapter 7.)
The Polish language expanded its horizons enormously, especially in con-
junction with the spread of mass education. Under the old Republic, it had been
obliged to take second place. The royal court had been Italianate, Francophile,
and Germanophone by turns; and both Church and state promoted Latin as the
best vehicle for communicating with a heterodox population which spoke any-
thing from Low German or Ruthenian to Armenian or Yiddish. The advocates
of vernacular culture, from Kochanowski onwards, achieved considerable
results; but they had sought to put Polish on an equal footing with Latin, not to
replace it. They were generally regarded as the enemies of traditional education
methods, and never gained the ascendancy until the establishment of the
National Education Commission in 1773. Oddly enough, Polish had been
stronger as a cultural medium in Lithuania than in Poland. In contrast to the
Latinized nobility of the Kingdom, the nobility of the Grand Duchy had culti-
vated the Polish language as a means of setting themselves apart from the
Lithuanian or Ruthenian peasantry. After 1697, when Ruski was finally abol-
ished as the official language of the Grand Duchy's courts, the supremacy of
Polish in social and political life was complete. In the Kingdom, the decisive
change did not occur till after 1795, when the partitioning powers removed
Latin as the official language, and tried to impose Russian or German. In this
situation, Polish was thrust into a role to which it had never pretended. It now
became a great force for unity, where previously it had divided. It united the
nobility with the peasantry, pushing them together towards a common cultural
heritage. It united Catholics and non-Catholics. It linked the Polonized gentry
of Lithuania, who in the early years produced almost all its literary exponents
of genius, with the farmers of Poznania, the assimilated Jews of the cities, the
professors of Cracow, the peasants of Silesia and Pomerania, and the citizens of
Warsaw. It crossed all frontiers with impunity, and quickly became a vehicle for
all those ideas and feelings which the authorities wished to suppress. For those
who continued to oppose the effects of the Partitions, it became the 'language of
freedom'. Indeed, with time, it became an essential touchstone of Polish
nationality. In strict contrast to the English-speaking world, where Irish, Scots,
Australian, or American nationalisms have less to do with language, families
who ceased to speak Polish, ceased to be regarded as Poles. The 'homeland' was