Converting physicians: the apostasy of Socinian Gaspar Wilkowski and the confessional boundaries of medicalization in 16th century Poland-Lithuania
ENWithout question this story ought to begin with two interconnected events which took place on Low Sunday, April 17, 1583, in Venice and in Lublin: in Venice, the most important Polish and Lithuanian soul reclaimed from Protestant ranks, Duke Mikolaj Krzysztof Radziwill “Sierotka” [the Orphan] (1549-1616), boarded a ship along with his escort and set off on a voyage along the Adriatic coast to reach Jerusalem and Egypt (Kempa: 2000, 119); thanks to the efforts of Jesuits, Radziwills account of this journey became the most recognizable literary emblem of a penitential pilgrimage in the region in the seventeenth century. On the same day, it appears, in St Michaels church in Lublin, a public apostasy took place of Gaspar (Kasper) Wilkowski (d. after 1608), a future physician to Radziwill “Sierotka": the young man left the Anti-Trinitarian community where he had grown up and matured, by publicly adopting the Catholic faith. One of the reasons for Radziwills pilgrimage was repentance and hope to recover from his illness. Today we can only wonder whether Wilkowski then knew about his future employment as the princes physician. Such a possibility cannot be excluded, although in the sixteenth century we find many examples of physicians and their patients belonging to opposing faiths; it is obvious, however, that in the second half of the sixteenth century the Jesuits of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were highly concerned with a growing network of “heretic physicians” while suffering a shortage of trained Catholic medical practitioners. [Extract, p. 213]
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