The author discusses the Dominicans' activity in the southeastern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the period of Order's eventful development before the 1648 civil war. Stolarski's detailed analysis of the magnate and noble patronage over Dominican convents allows him to conclude that the friars met their protectors' spiritual expectations, which testifies to the laity's sincere devotion as molded successfully by the friars. The author shows that the Dominican piety was attractive to those nobles who were against the Jesuits. An increase in the number of Dominican cloisters, the fathers' sermonizing, their drawing on the Order's tradition, while responding to the needs of the laity prove, according to Stolarski, the vitality of Polish Catholicism in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries.
The author concludes that the friars' cure-of-soul labors and the nobility's positive response require that historians fundamentally revise their hitherto assessment of the Polish post-Tridentine Church and its Counter-Reformation policy. He sees the policy as inspired by genuine devotion, attractive also to Protestants. This totally negates, the author says, the opinions of Polish historians who have falsely trivialized the program of post-Tridentine Church and conversions to Catholicism as motivated by other factors than true appreciation of the faith. The Polish “communist” historiography, as the author calls it, propagated the primitive ideology of Sarmatism. It reduced the clerical—lay relations to the clergy's material expectations, and the nobles' routine practices. According to the author, a new look at patronage, a due appreciation of the Dominicans, whose role has been minimalized, a proper evaluation of the Jesuits' traditionally overestimated influence allows the explanation of authentic, deep bonds between the clergy and the laity.
The author has employed a wide selection of manuscripts and old prints. The secondary sources he has consulted are extremely selective, however, referring mainly to the output of Polish researchers that has been published in the recent thirty years. This often results in false conclusions. They correspond with a major point Stolarski makes, that in Poland “work on Church history was hampered, if not extinguished, after 1939” (1), but even the bibliography of the book belies that opinion. Another major thesis that the Society of Jesus has been taken as “synonymous with Polish Catholicism in the period under scrutiny” (5) is groundless too. The approach to this issue is, in fact, balanced by the appreciation of the Franciscan Orders, cathedral chapters, and bishops' roles in the Church reform and conversions (See, for example, S. Litak, Od Reformacji do Oświecenia. Kościół katolicki w Polsce nowożytnej [Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL, 1994]).
Stolarski happens to raise out-of-date problems, for instance, when he writes: “Catholic culture in Poland-Lithuania was extremely deeply-rooted, complex and multi-faceted, with enormous local variation. . . . This diversity, its concomitant rivalries, and its role in renewal, has been ignored for too long, to the detriment of our historical understanding” (6). The richness of Polish religious culture, its continuity and change, are obvious if one considers the findings of Stanisław Bylina, Krzysztof Bracha, Kazimierz Dola, Izabela Skierska, Maria Starnawska, Beata Wojciechowska, who research the fifteenth to early sixteenth century, as well as the studies of early modernists: Waldemar Kowalski, Jan Kracik, Stanisław Litak, Bogdan Rok, Tomasz Wiślicz, and, especially, Karol Górski. Stolarski mentions the latter's volume published in 1962 but skips its revised 1986 version. Thus his polemics with the idea of Sarmatian Catholicism (8–12), which was publicized in the 1970s, is pointless. Today there are no doubts that all social strata represented various types of religious conduct: from the do ut des attitude to sincere devotion.
Stolarski is right when he shows the importance of mendicants and of their medieval heritage. A number of publications, including the series Zakony franciszkańskie w Polsce (The Franciscan Orders in Poland) and an article from the author of this review in Church History (“From the ‘Land of Diverse Sects’ to National Religion: Converts to Catholicism and Reformed Franciscans in Early Modern Poland,” 70.3 [2001], 482–526), contradict, however, his assertion that mendicants are “all but ignored in the historiography” (150). Exempli gratia, the monograph of Mikołaj Rey, outstanding Polish Protestant poet and theologian, by Janusz T. Maciuszko (Mikołaj Rej: Zapomniany teolog ewangelicki z XVI w. [Warszawa: Chrześcijańska Akademia Teologiczna, 2002]) belies the thesis that “there is still no interpretive study linking the Polish Renaissance to the Protestant and Catholic reform movements” (11).
The opinion that the continuity of religious customs between medieval and modern times has not been studied extensively enough by Polish historians is justified. However, the judgment that they “refuse to consider the Catholic Church's logical continuity across both periods” (15) is an unacceptable exaggeration. It is a merit of the reviewed book that it exposes the significance of pre-Tridentine tradition for the shaping of religiousness in the following decades. Unclear remains, however, the “orthodox Catholicism” the author often mentions (11).
The central, and informatively most valuable, chapters present the complexity of the nobles' anticlericalism. Stolarski shows the debates about the legal and fiscal settlement, known as compositio inter status, and the conflict between the Society of Jesus and Cracow academics. He also brings attention to the Order of Preachers' participation in the Counter-Reformation before 1560. The author convincingly demonstrates the political aspects of patronage.
Stolarski argues persuasively that the friars were successful in the promotion of their piety especially thanks to sermonizing and rosary fraternities. They coexisted and rivaled locally with other brotherhoods, factors which should have been highlighted, for example, following Dominika Burdzy's article, “Religious Confraternities in a Polish Town: The Case in Sandomierz from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries,” in Confraternitas (15.2 [2004]: 10–40).
The final chapters, which again evaluate Polish historiography, deepen the aforementioned misunderstandings. The reader may assume that the “Communist-era Polish historiography” (168) includes not only Janusz Tazbir, Górski, but also, for example, Paweł Sczaniecki OSB, whose works Stolarski totally ignores. Stolarski rehabilitates early modern Polish Catholicism contrary to the sources and historiographic reality. He strays from methodology toward ideology when says that “Protestant ‘confessions’ never formed particularly strong and exclusive identities in Poland-Lithuania,” while internal conflicts made Catholicism “more coherent” (176), or when he excuses anti-Protestant actions maintaining that “the Catholic clergy did not habitually advocate violence against non Catholics” (183).
Stolarski's book is an interesting exploration of the socioreligious milieu of the Polish nobles, royal court and the Dominicans. His arguments are important when explaining the motivations and consequences of their interactions. This is, however, far too insufficient a basis to radically revise the hitherto opinions on the Catholic Church and its attitude toward the Protestants.
