Palaeologus played an active role in the high politics of European religion and diplomacy over a period of twenty years before he lost imperial favour; and having been extradited to the Papal States, was executed for heresy by the Roman Inquisition.

[3] In 1558, he escaped to Constantinople, but was rearrested in Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and brought to the prison of the Roman Inquisition under the personal investigation of the Grand Inquisitor, Michele Ghislieri (a fellow Dominican friar, later Pope Pius V).

Within their own extensive feudal estates they exercised substantial religious freedom – beyond the reach of Catholic bishops, Reformed city councils or the Inquisition – and many were sympathetic to radical Protestant ideas.

During 1573, Palaeologus undertook an extended trip to Constantinople and Chios (which had been captured by the Ottoman Empire from the Genoese Republic in 1566) – intended in part to impress Maximilian with his value and contacts – and then became Rector of the Unitarian college at Kolozsvár (Cluj) and the leading theoretician of nonadorantism, the strain of radical Protestantism that denied the validity of addressing Jesus in prayer.

Following two failed uprisings, Bekes conceded defeat in 1575 and Palaeologus moved to Kraków where he promoted the cause of Maximilian, against that of Stephen Báthory in the 1576 Royal election in Poland; and then settling in Moravia.

[18] Moreover, he was a strong critic of all forms of social subversion;[19] and with his education from the University of Bologna, he was readily at ease in the Italian-speaking and Italian-educated aristocratic houses of central and eastern Europe.

Even amongst those who did not share his vision of radical Christianity there were many, like Giustiniani and Dudith,[20] who sympathised with his pleas for toleration; and his eloquent defence of free religious expression and debate in a Europe increasingly policed into tight bounds of conformity on one side or another.

[6] All scholars agree, however, that Palaeologus' radical views in his subsequent published work are more representative of his earlier private opinions;[4] and that he may well have become covertly convinced by antitrinitarian arguments as early as his stay in Pera in 1554–1555.

Palaeologus appears to believe that counterpart fabricated doctrines may function to maintain the dominance of a clerical elite in Judaism and Islam; if all three religions were to apply a critical appraisal to their traditions, then substantial common ground would be found, and Satan's design to undermine scriptural revelation would be confounded.

[26] But in any case, in Palaeologus view, Jews and Muslims cannot be expected to respond fully to Jesus as Messiah and Prophet so long as Christians continue to worship him as God.

[27] For Palaeologus the religious life of a Christian (or Muslim or Jewish) congregation is a school of blessedness for its members; by which they may become prepared to respond to God's offer of salvation in full freedom.

Just as hearing the revealed scriptures provides for Palaeologus an assured route to truth; so the exposure and confounding of error in free and open debate ensures the defeat of the Master of Lies.

[29] As formalised in the Catechism of George Schomann published in 1574, the church in Rakow retained many of the elements of trinitarian worship and doctrine, but re-expressed in accordance with antitrinitarian principles.

[30] For Palaeologus this was wholly unacceptable,[23] as he understood the task of anti-trinitrarians in the present age to be "witnesses of the truth" (Revelation chapter 10),[31] standing in open opposition to a world given temporarily over to the dominance of Satan.

The veneration of Christ within the doctrine of the Trinity was, for Palaeologus, "Satan's design" to extend the period of his rule and stall the promised parousia, by corrupting the church into a form where Almighty God, in his absolute individual oneness, must turn away from it;[12] and true antitrinitarians must not be compromised with it in any way.

The Polish Brethren, like almost all antitrinitarians, held that the Grace of salvation could only be achieved through full participation in the fellowship of faithful believers; and they consequently sought to reinforce this by separating themselves from the sinful world in an exclusive egalitarian community; in which secular distinctions of power and possession did not apply, and which resisted the demands of civil allegiance and military service.