Protestantism in Poland and Bohemia - James Aitken Wylie

generation was being created brimful of that
"loyalty" which Rome so highly lauds, and which
makes the understandings of her subjects so
obdurate and their necks so supple. The Protestants
were as yet too powerful in Poland to permit of
direct persecution, but the way was being prepared
in the continual decrease of their numbers, and the
systematic diminution of their influence; and when
Sigismund III. went to his grave in 1632, the glory
which had illuminated the country during the short
reign of Stephen Bathory had departed, and the
night was fast closing in around Poland.
Footnotes:
1. The fact that Bathory before his election to the
throne of Poland was a Protestant, and not, as
historians commonly assert, a Romanist, was
first published by Krasinski, on the authority
of a MS. history now in the Library at St.
Petersburg, written by Orselski, a
contemporary of the events. (Krasinski, Hist.
Reform. Poland, vol 2., p. 48 )
2. Krasinski, Hist. Reform. Poland, vol. 2., p. 53.
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