Years ago, looking at books from libraries of heterodox Presbyterian churches in Dublin, among other gently decaying volumes, I noticed several weighty tomes of the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum– Socinian commentaries in Latin on the New Testament, polemical works by Faustus Socinus and other neo-Arians. These volumes were handsomely printed in Amsterdam in the mid 17^th century, though the title pages prudently disguise the place of publication. Here was evidence of the widespread dissemination of heterodoxy boosted by the suppression of anti-trinitarianism in early modern Poland. Among others driven out of Poland was the grandson of Faustus Socinus, Andrzej Wiszowaty, who settled in Amsterdam, dying there in 1678. Other refugees settled in Prussia and Transylvania, but their teachings travelled much further and ‘winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth’.

Unitarians (erstwhile Socinians), like the majority of historians of the Catholic revival in Poland during this period, have mostly regarded this expulsion as further evidence of the thorough-going ‘Triumph of the Counter Reformation’. However, Magda Teter has the gravest doubts about the extent of this so-called ‘triumph’: ‘The Church [in Poland-Lithuania] continued to live in the era of the “Counter Reformation” and did not seem to notice its “triumph”.’ A revisionist assessment along such lines has become increasingly current over the last quarter century. She concludes that only today has the Catholic Church in Poland ‘perhaps reluctantly…begun to admit that it never had and never will triumph.’

In this exhaustively researched book, Teter sets out in detail the religious sources to enable us to weigh the claim. She persisted in her researches in Poland even when occasionally she was at first refused access to a Church archive. She was particularly keen to assess the evidence for the charge of rabid anti-Semitism which is still often levelled at the Church in this period. She gives us ample data drawn from works of piety and instruction, sermons and polemics for a much more nuanced judgement. She writes: ‘I did not find large quantities of anti-Jewish works’. What she did find is much more significant: as the Church attempted to impose its authority in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the presence of the largest Jewish population in Europe became a target for attack by zealous Catholic spokesmen mainly when other minorities challenged the Church's bid for hegemony. She reveals not a triumphant but ‘…a besieged Church, fearful of anyone opposing it.’

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was culturally diverse and Poland continued so until the Second World War when the huge Jewish population was reduced by genocide to a mere 20,000. In the early modern period there were also substantial minorities of Eastern Orthodox, Protestants and Moslems. Catholics were not in a majority. Even where Catholics were in a majority there was persistent tension between the Church and the nobles whose power flourished under a weak monarchy and inefficient central government. These noblemen were often patrons and protectors of Jews who exercised considerable influence as bankers, merchants, tax collectors, leaseholders of mills and breweries and managers of nobles' estates. Within their localities, nobles resented challenges by the Church to their authority – as one anonymous nobleman wrote: ‘…we are born nobles first and only then Catholics.’ This defiant attitude persisted until, after disastrous successive military defeats in the second half of the 17^th century by the armies of Russia, Sweden and Turkey, nobles became convinced that Catholicism and Polish identity had to be synonymous. Military defeat was attributed to the toleration of non-Catholics and legislation was passed so that, by 1733, Protestants were deemed to be outside the ‘Pale’ of the Polish nation and apostate Catholics were severely punished.

Poland in the 18^th century appears to have been in a ‘time-warp’ and, long after other European nations, was fighting the issues of the Reformation. Teter gives us evidence of deplorable standards of scholarship. In 1717 the synod of Chelm prohibited the reading of any book, including the Bible in the vernacular, not approved by the Church. Hebrew and Greek ceased to be taught until the second half of the 18^th century, except by the Jesuits at Braunsberg on the Prussian border. This claustrophobic culture encouraged the revival of medieval anti-Semitic myths of ritual murder and desecration of the Host. Despite this regressive bigotry, not all Catholics were bent upon promoting hatred of the Jews. Like the nobles, clergy also had good reason often to employ Jewish businessmen. Teter tells of a Jewish wine merchant who stored his wine in a Carmelite monastery cellar while he and his partner lived on the premises. The papal encyclical: A Quo Primum (1751) expresses deep concern over Jewish/Catholic interdependency.

This fascinating book provides detailed evidence of a fearful, anxious and embattled Church usually content to live alongside Jews as long as other threats to hegemony did not pose serious challenges. When that happened, polemics against Jews were ratcheted up and adapted to attack other minorities. The Jews had stubbornly resisted conversion down the centuries – a perpetual challenge to the ideals of Christendom. ‘Oh, rabid and cruel Jewish Synagogue, you lashed your God and mine…you wanted to beat, cudgel and lash my Saviour’– a rabble-rousing denunciation by an 18^th century Dominican preacher. Magda Teter helps us to understand that this was far from being the attitude of all Polish Catholics in this period and that the so-called ‘Triumph of the Counter Reformation’ was not only to a considerable extent illusory, but the fearfulness of the Church continually demonstrated that it was indeed so.