Religious tolerance and intolerance in Vilnius in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

ENDespite various negative phenomena (in terms of religious relations) which occurred in Vilnius in the end of the sixteenth century and in the seventeenth century - as well as in other big urban centres in the Commonwealth - the city remained multicultural and multifaith. Whereas Protestant churches disappeared from the royal towns in the Polish Crown (apart from Royal Prussia) already at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - the same thing happened in Polotsk, Vitebsk or Minsk in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the middle of the seventeenth century - in Vilnius, in spite of a few attempts to destroy their church, the Calvinists managed to rebuild it every time. Also, the Lutheran church operated without major obstacles. The non-Catholics were also never deprived of acquiring town privileges, although they were forbidden from taking seats in the municipality. It can be stated that the Counter-Reformation did not spread as much as in other royal towns of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Therefore, Vilnius was a kind of phenomenon in regards to religious relations, especially when we take into consideration the fact that the religious groups that were present in the city in the eighteenth century were joined by new ones: the Karaites and the Old Believers. There was no other town in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in which religious tolerance was as developed as in Vilnius. [Extract, p. 148]

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