Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post- Reformation Era (review)

Scintillating her audience, Dr. Teter begins with her own life experiences in Poland and the history of her Jewish people and other "heretics" in post-Reformation Poland. Pages of murals, drawings, and sketches spill out at the very beginning to entice the reader to discover what secrets Polish history holds for the Jews and other "heretics." Also in the beginning is an excellent, helpful map of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which readers familiar with Eastern Europe will appreciate. Teter's dramatic, illustrative start includes the murals from the Cathedral of Sandomierz, her hometown. These include various scenes of torture and murder of Catholics by not only Jews, but Tartars, Swedish Lutherans, other Protestants, "Schismatics (Eastern Orthodox)," "Pagans," and "bad and disobedient Catholics." She also includes a portrait from a 1737 work which discusses the execution of a Polish woman for conversion to Judaism in Krakow in 1539. Sources for Teter included numerous archives in Kraków, Rome, and the Vatican. (Some archives remain closed, including that of the Sandomierz Cathedral.)

Her interest in illustrations fascinated me since she acknowledges not having found large numbers of anti-Jewish texts. I have found that visual images and oral traditions often precede, exist simultaneously with, and continue long after certain texts are popular. Images and oral history also reach a larger audience. My peasant ancestors, from the diocese of Tarnów, were illiterate for centuries but learned of Jews and others in non-written ways. The ancestors I knew were not anti-Semitic, but they were extremely pro-Church. This is one of Teter's themes, that the Jews were only one of only many groups that concerned the Roman Catholic Church. In my opinion, throughout most of history, people in political power have viewed religion as an essential unifying force, and therefore, usually, have seen a need for a state religion. As a frequent student and, later, Fulbright Researcher in Poland, I saw this continue at least until Communism fell in Poland, because the Catholic Church was seen as almost a political party, the only "bloc" to oppose and engage the Communist Party.

Teter is correct in distinguishing the power of the Polish Church from that in many other European countries, especially given the power of the Polish nobility, which by the eighteenth century was basically a "republic of the Magnates." Some nobles attracted to Protestantism returned to the Church to keep their political power. The Polish triangle of power, a system of checks and balances, included the Church, the nobles, and the monarch. She also correctly stresses the ebb and flow of the privileges of Jews depending on the vicissitudes of the Polish state at the time. She makes the good point that the Church would co-operate with other powers in so far as the outcome would be good for the Church itself.

While Teter focused on religion in large part, more emphasis could have been placed on the Jews, not only as theological "deviants" but also as political, economic, intellectual, and social threats. At different times in Polish history, Jews would have been perceived as much more threatening than the other "outsiders." Also needing more attention is the great role the Jesuits played in the education of post-Reformation Poland and in the winning back of the nobility. Overall, Teter only gives the Jesuits eight pages, which does not give their accomplishments full credit.

Half of the book contains a glossary, extremely extensive notes, and a selected bibliography of archival as well as published sources, and an index. The notes are especially helpful, drawn from an extremely wide range of literature, often broadened by Teter's own penetrating analysis.