POLISH BRETHREN. - Antitrinitarian heretics, Socinians, who existed in Poland in the 16th and 17th centuries.
When Faustus Socinus moved to Poland in 1579, he effectively took charge of the various antitrinitarian conventicles that were widely diffused there, having separated in 1562 from the other Protestant “churches,” and constituted them into the Ecclesia fratrum Polonorum, with its center at Raków. There were schools there, a printing press specialized in the printing and dissemination of “Unitarian” writings, and there an annual synod was held. The Synod of 1612, which was attended by about four hundred delegates, was the largest: they represented 115 “churches.”
The decline of the Polish Brethren began in 1627, when they were driven out of Lublin by a popular uproar; ten years later, after some fanatical students from Raków had dared to deface a Cross exposed for public veneration, the Diet of Warsaw ordered the closure of the schools and the printing press of the sect and exiled its leaders. Finally, in 1658, when it was discovered that the Polish Brethren maintained secret relations with the Prince of Transylvania, Rákóczi, who had invaded Poland, King John Casimir banished them all from the kingdom. Some took refuge in Transylvania; others in Holland, where they began the publication of a Bibliotheca fratrum Polonorum, which was inaugurated with a biography of Faustus Socinus. At Amsterdam there was also published the so-called Raków Catechism, by Samuel Przypkowski (Przypkowski), containing the sum of antitrinitarian doctrine. Some other groups dispersed into Germany and England. The movement survived only a few years after the forced diaspora, for the Polish Brethren disappeared completely between the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the next.
For their doctrine, V. SOCINI.