Warsaw Confederation Act of 1573 and the Project of Establishing the National Council in the Political Program of the Polish Reformation Movement of the XVI Century

Abstract

The key features of the Reformation movement in Poland in the second half of the XVI century are reconstructed and characterized, the role of the idea of establishing the National Council in thepolitical program of the Protestant szlachta and the main mechanisms of the Reformation influence on the Polish ethno political environment are defined. It is established that the anti catholic politicalactivity played an important role in spreading of the Polish ethnic values on the sphere of state power and served their further legislation. In practice, this influence was realized with the help of substantiating of the gentry political demands with the interests of the Polish people and the Polish state, the struggle for the Polish National Church establishing and by the affirmation of the priority ofthe Polish law over the orders of the Roman Curia. The main points of the Act of Warsaw General Confederation 1573 as the key political document of the Polish Reformation are analyzed. It is asserted that the reformation slogans actively used by the Protestant nobility in the political struggle contributed to strengthening of the basic principles of the gentry democracy, the basic traditions of the Polish parliamentarism and the Polish ethnopolitical culture in general. It is shown that the reformation movement in Poland was a powerful ethnicitydeveloping factor in the political sphere that caused the social and political interiorization of the Polish ethnic values and contributed greatly to the formation of the Polish ethnopolitical environment.