Konfederacja warszawska, ksiądz Piotr Skarga i mowa podszyta nienawiścią

The Warsaw Confederation, Piotr Skarga SJ, and Hate Speech The discourse involving the feeling of hate is understood here rather as a soft than a hard “discourse of hate”. The Warsaw Confederation called “a jewel of a free conscience” was hated (more or less) by the contemporary elite of the Church. The subjects of analysis in this paper are two booklets by Piotr Skarga (Upominanie do ewanjelików i do wszystkich społem niekatolików iż o skażenie zborów krakowskich gniewać się i nic nowego i burzliwego zaczynać nie mają [An Admonition to Protestants and to all other non-Catholics], Kraków 1591; Dyskurs na konfederacyją – [A Discourse on Confederation], Kraków 1607) and Protestant responses to them. The fundamental question is: can “the discourse of hatred”, i.e. “a concept of multiple meanings (...), involved in political and philosophical disputes, so typical for the beginning of the 21st century”, be used as a way of analysing and interpretating texts written 400 years ago? Such an indisputable argument as the title of the book by Wacław Sobieski published already 100 years ago: Nienawiść wyznaniowa tłumów za rządów Zygmunta III-go [The religious hate of crowds during the reign of Sigismund III] supports an affirmative answer to it. In a kind of “hierarchy of beliefs” in Skarga’s argument Protestants are ascribed to the lowest and exceptionally godless place and described by comparisons: 1. with adulterers, thieves and parricides (Protestants are equal to them) and 2. with pagans and Jews (Protestants are perhaps even worse than them). Th e purpose of such an argumentation is severe condemnation of the Protestant godlessness since the Catholic love towards God evokes hate towards people who – like Protestants – turned away from Him. So, on the one hand, Skarga admits that Protestants are still Christians, but on the other, he claims there is no God outside his, i.e. Catholic, church.