Friday, February 1, 2013

Warsaw Confederation

440 years ago, in the 28th January 1573 in Poland a so called Warsaw Confederation was hold. It was an official declaration of religious freedom. Below is my translation of a piece of it:

And since in the Republic our there is a discord concerning the Christian religion, preventing a malevolent disagreement that could occur for this reason that we can see in other kingdoms, we are promising this mutually for us and our descendants for eternal time as an oath with faith and our conscious, that those of us being dissidentes de religione will keep peace among ourselves and for different faiths and difference in the churches not to spill the blood and not to punish anybody with confiscation of goods, infamy, prison and banishment and in that matter not to help to any authority to do this.

At the map you can see the religions at that time, Catholics (white), Orthodox (green), Calvinist (purple) and Luteran (blue). There were also Jews and Tatars.

Only one Catholic bishop dared to sign the act of the Confederation. His name was Wawrzyniec Goślicki. He did it against the will of the Pope and was excommunicated for that. Respect!

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