Von der religiösen Toleranz zur gegenreformatorischen Konfessionalisierung: Konfessionelle, regionale und ständische Identitäten im Unionsstaat

This article explores the concept of 'toleration' from the Confederation of Warsaw (1573) where the Polish-Lithuanian nobility 'agreed to disagree', establishing a religious settlement in the aftermath of the Reformation, and including the Orthodox church. It also traces the main markers of the 'Counter Reformation' which was driven by the Polish episcopate and the monarch, particularly duringthe period of Zygmunt III Vasa, culminating with the anti-royal Confederation of Sandomierz, based on primary sources and up-to-date secondary material. Recent developments in the scholarship on the Uniate church as well as the cooperation of Orthodox and Protestant forces in Poland are then linked up with research on local identities among the political and cultural leadership in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the sixtenth and seventeenth centuries, finishing with an outlook on the changes that the Enlightenment introduced in the relationship between church and society in a still very much multi-ethnic and multi-confessional Poland-Lithuania in the eighteenth century.