osiol
27 Apr 2009
History / Heretics Asylum - The First Republic of Poland [50]
So how did Poland go from accepting all these Calvinists and Quakers, Muslims and Menonites to being almost entirely Roman Catholic?
About things like the inquisition, it is quite interesting. The situation seemed to be harshest in places like Portugal and Spain - also very Catholic although not entirely. When Rome decided to change the calendar, dropping the Julian in favour of the still-used Gregorian, Poland-Lithuania was one of the very first countries to change.
Of all the Poles I have met in real life here and in Poland, whose words I have read on this forum and about whom I have read in various places, it is interesting that there are German names, Scottish names, Lithuanian names, all neatly Polonicised. There are Poles with obvious Jewish ancestry, some less obvious. There's even PF's very own Polish Protestant, at least one Polish atheist. There was a Pole I worked with whose dark complexion suggested that he may have been Gypsy or even Tatar. One of the Poles at work is even, dare I say it...? A homo...
With such an interesting cultural background and such diversity, why are there so many (mostly the ones I read on PF) who try to narrow Polishness down to the simplest, most constricting definition of Catholic, Slavic and straight. Not that I have anything against anyone who is Catholic, Slavic and straight! It's just that if you look back a few generations, you'll always find something unexpected.
So how did Poland go from accepting all these Calvinists and Quakers, Muslims and Menonites to being almost entirely Roman Catholic?
About things like the inquisition, it is quite interesting. The situation seemed to be harshest in places like Portugal and Spain - also very Catholic although not entirely. When Rome decided to change the calendar, dropping the Julian in favour of the still-used Gregorian, Poland-Lithuania was one of the very first countries to change.
Of all the Poles I have met in real life here and in Poland, whose words I have read on this forum and about whom I have read in various places, it is interesting that there are German names, Scottish names, Lithuanian names, all neatly Polonicised. There are Poles with obvious Jewish ancestry, some less obvious. There's even PF's very own Polish Protestant, at least one Polish atheist. There was a Pole I worked with whose dark complexion suggested that he may have been Gypsy or even Tatar. One of the Poles at work is even, dare I say it...? A homo...
With such an interesting cultural background and such diversity, why are there so many (mostly the ones I read on PF) who try to narrow Polishness down to the simplest, most constricting definition of Catholic, Slavic and straight. Not that I have anything against anyone who is Catholic, Slavic and straight! It's just that if you look back a few generations, you'll always find something unexpected.