Polish Brethren & Academy of Raków

The Polish Brethren were the largest and theologically most mature antitrinitarian movement of the early modern period. In Raków they maintained their own academy, a printing press and a network of congregations — until they were expelled from Poland by edict in 1658.

1. Beginnings: the split of 1565

In 1565 a movement broke away from the Polish Reformed church that examined the Trinity on a purely biblical basis. It called itself the Ecclesia Minor ("Lesser Church") or simply the Polish Brethren. Initially it was theologically heterogeneous — antitrinitarians of various shades, pacifists, social reformers.

It received its systematic doctrinal core only through Fausto Sozzini, who came to Poland in 1579. He gathered the arguments from scriptural exegesis, philosophical clarity and Reformation tradition into a coherent theological system.

2. Raków — the centre

In 1569 Polish nobles had founded the town of Raków in the Holy Cross Mountains as a place of refuge. It quickly became the centre of the Polish Brethren: congregation, printing press, academy. Three pillars that together formed a theological ecosystem:

• Congregation — peace-loving, socially critical, with believer's baptism by water and a simple Lord's Supper.
• Printing press — produced from 1602 onwards Latin, Polish and German writings that were read across Europe.
• Academy — founded in 1602, with theologians, philosophers, jurists and natural scientists. A place of study for Reformed students from Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Transylvania, Germany, the Netherlands and even England.

3. The most important figures

• Fausto Sozzini (1539–1604) — the theological architect; see the biography.
• Valentin Schmalz (1572–1622) — principal author of the Racovian Catechism, translator and polemicist.
• Johann Crell (1590–1633) — the most important systematician after Sozzini, author of Vindiciae pro religionis libertate.
• Joachim Stegmann (1595–1633) — mathematician, logician, early philosopher of religious freedom.
• Andrzej Wiszowaty (1608–1678) — editor of the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum after the expulsion.

4. The Racovian Catechism (1605/1609)

The most important textbook of the Polish Brethren is the Racovian Catechism. It appeared in Polish in 1605 and in Latin in 1609 under the title Catechesis Ecclesiarum Polonicarum. Structure:

1. On Holy Scripture — authority and interpretation
2. On God — the Father, the one true God
3. On the person of Christ — man and Messiah
4. On the work of Christ — his prophetic, priestly and kingly office
5. On the Church — the assembly of believers
6. On the sacraments — baptism and the Lord's Supper as signs of confession
7. On the Christian life — faith, love, hope

5. Persecution and expulsion

The successes of the Polish Brethren provoked the resistance of the Counter-Reformation. In 1638 the Sejm ordered the academy and printing press in Raków closed. Twenty years later, in 1658, the same Sejm passed the infamous "Sozzini Edict":

"Whoever does not convert to the Roman Church within three years must leave the country — under penalty of death."

Thousands of families went into the diaspora — chiefly to the Netherlands, Transylvania, Prussia and England. There the writings of the Polish Brethren became an important source for the Enlightenment. Without them Spinoza, Locke, Newton and the early English unitarians are scarcely conceivable.

6. Legacy — the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum

Between 1665 and 1668 the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, quos Unitarios vocant appeared in Amsterdam — a multi-volume Latin edition with writings by Sozzini, Schmalz, Crell, Stegmann and Wiszowaty. To this day it is the central source of Socinian theology and the basis of modern translations.

The Polish Brethren themselves no longer exist as a congregation. Their legacy lives on: in the biblical-unitarian movements worldwide, in the congregations of Transylvania, in the Anglo-American unitarian tradition — and in every Christian who tests the Trinity by Scripture and reason.

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Further reading

• Fausto Sozzini — biography
• Timeline of Socinianism
• Books & free library
• Glossary — look up terms