zeal, which in Poland also under the sons and immediate successors of Jagello, had kindled the faggots in which the disciples of the new doctrines were called to seal the truth of their conviction with their blood, was extinguished before the milder wisdom of Sigismund I; although the early part of his reign was not free from religious persecution.  The activity of the inquisition was restrained.  But the new doctrines found a more decided support in Sigismund Augustus.  Poland became, under his administration, the seat of a toleration then unequalled in the world.  Communities of the most different religious principles formed themselves, at first under the indulgence of the king and the government, and finally under the protection of the law.  Even the boldest theological skeptics of the age, the two Socini, found in Poland an asylum.[17]

The Bohemian language, which already possessed so extensive a literature, acquired during this period a great influence upon the Polish.  The number of clerical writers, however, which in Bohemia was so great, was comparatively only small in Poland.  Indeed it is worthy of remark, that while in other countries the diffusion of information and general illumination proceeded from the clergy, not indeed as a body, but from individuals among the clergy, in Poland it was always the highest nobility who were at the head of literary enterprises or institutions for mental cultivation.  There are many princely names among the writers of this period; and there are still so among those of the present day.  This may however be one of the causes, why education in Poland was entirely confined to the higher classes; while, even during this brilliant period, the peasantry remained in the lowest state of degradation, and nothing was done to elevate their minds or to better their condition.  For it is to the clergy, that the common people have always to look as their natural and bounden teachers; it is to the clergy, that a low state of cultivation among the poorer classes is the most dishonourable.  During this period, however, the opportunity was presented to the people of becoming better acquainted with the Scriptures, through several translations of them into the Polish language, not only by the different Protestant denominations, but also by the Romanists themselves.  Indeed, with the exceptions above mentioned, all the translations of the Bible extant in the Polish language are from the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century.[18]

We meet also, among the productions of the literature of this period, a few catechisms and postillac, written expressly for the instruction of the common people by some eminent Lutheran and reformed Polish ministers.  But the want of means for acquiring even the most elementary information, was so great, that only a very few among the lower classes were able to read them.  The doctrines of the Reformers, which every where else were favoured principally by the middle and lower