SKARGAS, Piotr.

by Piotr Skargas

£4,250 · Offered by Sokol Books

.A good copy of the first edition of this rare and important vernacular polemic in defence of Catholicism, with contemporary annotations. The Polish preacher Piotr Skargas (1536-1612) was the first rector of the Jesuit Academy at Vilnius, professor at the Krakow College, and a major Counter-Reformation figure in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Undoubtedly, [he was] the most widely read Renaissance writer during the C18 [in Poland]. His devotional materials and sermons were among the most published works from the C16 through the C19 (Althoen, p.518). In addition to popular vernacular books, he wrote polemical pamphlets on Polish religious controversies. Upominanie a warning is addressed to Evangelicals and other non-Catholics , at a time of religious unrest and Catholic persecution of dissidents and heretics , such as Lutherans and Socinians, through the destruction of places of worship, attacks on funerals and the plundering of graves (Wilbur, p.443). Upominanie was written in the aftermath of the demolition of the first Evangelical Church in Krakow, established in St John s Street in 1572. Skargas remembers how thousands gathered to attack dozens of heretics. The remainder of the work is a harsh critique of the reasons for this unrest: i.e., the General Act passed by the Warsaw Confederation in 1573, recognising freedom of religion for nobles and freemen within the Commonwealth. The contemporary annotator was especially interested in the explanation of the Act, which, ac

• Binding: Hardcover

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