The Polish Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1788-1792 : a political history / Richard Butterwick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Butterwick-Pawlikowski, Richard, 1968-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Church and state--Poland--History--18th century.

Church and state.

Church history.

History.

Poland--History--Partition period, 1763-1796.

Poland.

Poland--Church history--18th century.

Physical Description:

xvii, 369 pages : illustrations, maps, tables ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2012.

Summary:

The Polish Revolution cast off the Russian hegemony that had kept the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth impotent for most of the eighteenth century. Before being overthrown by the armies of Catherine the Great, the Four Years' Parliament of 1788-92 passed wide-ranging reforms, culminating in Europe's first written constitution on 3 May 1791.

In some respects the Polish Revolution's policies towards the Catholic Church of both rites (Latin and Ruthenian) were more radical than those of Joseph II, and comparable to some of those adopted in the early stages of the French Revolution. These policies included taxation of the Catholic clergy at more than double the rate of the lay nobility, the confiscation of episcopal estates, the equalization of dioceses, controversial concessions to Orthodoxy. But the monastic clergy escaped almost unscathed. A method of explaining political decisions in a republican polity is developed in order to show how and why the Commonwealth went to the verge of schism with Rome in 1789-90, before drawing back. Pope Pius VI could then bless the mild revolution of 3 May 1791, which Poland's clergy and monarch presented to the nobility as a miracle of the Divine Providence. The stresses would be eclipsed by dechristianization in France, the dismemberment of the Common-wealth, and subsequent incarnations of unity between the Catholic Church and the Polish nation.

Probing both 'high politics' and 'political culture', Richard Butterwick draws on diplomatic and political correspondence, speeches, pamphlets, sermons, pastoral letters, proclamations, records of local assemblies, and other sources to explore a volatile relationship between altar, throne, and nobility at the end of Europe's Ancien Régime. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 2

2 The Polish Revolution, the Catholic Church, and the historians 6

3 Decision-making in a republican polity 14

Part I Plunder

1 The Commonwealth and the Catholic Church in 1788 27

1 The bishop and bishopric of Cracow 27

2 The sejmiks of August 1788 35

3 The instructions of 1788 41

4 A comparison with the cahiers de doléances 46

5 'An ill humour, against the clergy' 49

2 The republican revolution 52

1 The inauguration and confederation of the sejm 52

2 The army and the Military Department: 13 October-3 November 1788 53

3 The 'public' in revolutionary Warsaw 57

4 Casting off the Russian guarantee: 5 November 1788-19 January 1789 60

5 The implications for the Catholic Church 63

3 The first wave of ecclesiastical polemics (to the summer of 1789) 65

1 Staszic, Nax, Kollataj 65

2 Ecclesiastical temporalities and public utility 70

3 The patriotic paradigm 77

4 Tax or offering? 79

1 The episcopal response to the threat 79

2 'Who is poorer than the Fatherland?' 12-16 March 1789 82

3 Disputes over tax reductions and exemptions: 17-20 March 1789 90

4 Baiting the primate: 19, 23, and 24 March 1789 92

5 Catharsis and controversy: the 'Perpetual Offering' and the peasants 96

6 Implementation 99

5 The secularization of the bishopric of Cracow 102

1 Patrimonium Reipublicae? 102

2 The king's predicament: between Lucchesini and Stackelberg 104

3 Trading the bishopric of Cracow 111

4 The dénouement: 17 July 1789 113

5 Equalizing the bishoprics: 20-24 July 1789 118

6 A political turning point 125

Part II Compromise

6 Pamphleteers, journalists, and the Church: summer 1789-spring 1791 133

1 Pawlikowski, Kollataj, Staszic 133

2 The discourse of scandal: anti-clerical pamphlets 139

3 Defences of the clergy: Canons Skarszewski and Jezierski 142

4 In the columns of the press: France and the Habsburg Monarchy in turmoil 145

5 Providentialism and covenantalism in pastoral letters and sermons 147

7 On the brink of schism: August 1789-May 1790 151

1 'The temporality of the Church of Cracow' 152

2 The 'clerical deputation', the episcopate, and the nuncio: preparations 157

3 Recruitment, local government reform, and the Educational Commission 160

4 Religious dimensions of the urban and constitutional questions 162

5 The negotiation of a compromise: October 1789-May 1790 168

6 Deus ex machina 176

8 A limited ecclesiastical reform 179

1 'When war is a hair's breadth away from us...' 179

2 Episcopal salaries or estates? 25-26 May 1790 180

3 National sovereignty and noble equality: the Duchy of Siewierz, 27-29 May 1790 183

4 A measure of episcopal reform: 29 May-1 June 1790 187

5 Among 'lesser matters': the Ruthenian rite 190

6 High noon for abbots, and the limits of reform 194

7 Implementation 199

9 'Une renaissance de barbarie'? The autumn of 1790 206

1 The Project for the Form of Government 207

2 The dominant faith and tolerated faiths 212

3 Controversies in advance of the sejmiks 216

4 'So much fury against education' and the call to restore the Jesuits 218

5 Anti-clericalism and local ecclesiastical interests 229

6 Social, political, cultural, and fiscal questions 232

7 An inexperienced but enlightened new cohort? 234

Part III Providence

10 The Law on Royal Towns and the Constitution of 3 May 1791 239

1 The preoccupations of the sejm: December 1790-March 1791 239

2 The Law on Royal Towns: citizenship, toleration, and religion 241

3 The Revolution of 3 May 248

4 The Revolutionary leadership 252

11 Propagating and sacralizing the Providential Revolution 256

1 A 'miracle of the Divine hand, delivering us from ultimate calamity' 256

2 Referendum: the sejmiks of February 1792 259

3 Apotheosis: 3 May 1792 266

12 Antichrist comes from France 273

1 A whip, an aspergillum, a stove lid, and a file 273

2 'The French contagion' 277

3 The return of the primate 281

13 Caesar's moral realm 284

1 Rome and the Code of Stanislaw August 284

2 Plans for 'uniform and public education' 289

3 The question of the ex-Jesuits at the sejm 290

4 The Police Commission and the Catholic Church 294

5 The battle for ecclesiastical censorship 296

14 Ecclesiastical reform-for the Orthodox 300

1 Raison d'état versus raison d'Église 300

2 'So that no clergyman would be useless in his condition' 303

3 Autocephality for the Orthodox 307

4 The final effort to reform the Catholic clergy 311

5 A Ukrainian coda 314.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [332]-343) and index.

ISBN:

9780199250332

0199250332

OCLC:

730413886