Counter-Reformation in Poland

[2][3][4][5] A year after Luther made his theses public, they were preached in Danzig (Gdańsk), and soon spread over West Prussia province of Poland.

[7] In the 16th century, Poland was a haven for many refugees fleeing persecution from less tolerant parts of Europe, harboring not only Catholics and Protestants, but also people of Orthodox, Judaic and even Muslim faiths.

[10] bishop and royal secretary Martin Kromer, primate Stanisław Karnkowski and Jesuits Piotr Skarga and Jakub Wujek.

[16] Polish historian Janusz Tazbir coined a phrase "state without stakes", illustrating that the level of religious persecution and conflict in Poland was much lower than in most other European countries of that time, a fact that can be attributed to Protestant success in passing laws providing for religious toleration in the 16th century, and later, to the weakness of the Polish central state, which the resurgent Catholics were unable to use to implement more violent methods of conversion or reconversion (such as burning at the stake).

[16][22] Many Protestant nobles converted back to Catholicism to increase their chances of receiving favorable positions from Catholic-leaning monarchs; others did so to prove that they were "patriots".

[1] Following further reforms at the Partition Sejm in 1773, the political rights of the remaining non-Catholics in the Commonwealth were largely restored, half a century or so before similar concessions were granted to Catholics in Protestant countries like Britain (1829) or Sweden (1849).

[1] Critics of the Counter-Reformation argue that it had contributed to the Commonwealth's decline, by reducing its cultural pluralism, tolerance, and receptiveness to foreign ideas, and by bringing about a stagnation in the intellectual life.