Warsaw Confederation (1573)

The Warsaw Confederation (January 28, 1573), was an important development in the history of Poland and Lithuania that extended religious tolerance to nobility and free persons within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. is considered the formal beginning of religious freedom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and in fact is the first such document in Europe. While it did not prevent all conflict based on religion, it did make the Commonwealth a much safer and more tolerant place than most of contemporaneous Europe, especially during the subsequent Thirty Years' War.

Religious tolerance in Poland had had a long tradition (e.g. Statute of Kalisz) and had been de facto policy in the reign of the recently deceased King Sigismund II. However, the articles signed by the Confederation gave official sanction to earlier custom. In that sense, they may be considered either the beginning or the peak of Polish tolerance.

Following the childless death of the last king of the Jagiellon dynasty, Polish and Lithuanian nobles (szlachta) gathered at Warsaw to prevent any separatists from acting and to maintain the existing legal order. For that the citizens had to unconditionally abide the decisions made by the body; and the confederation was a potent declaration that the two former states are still closely linked.

In January the nobles signed a document in which representatives of all the major religions pledged each other mutual support and tolerance. A new political system was arising, aided by the confederation which contributed to its stability. Religious tolerance was an important factor in a multiethnic and multi-religious state, as the territories of the Commonwealth were inhabited by many generations of people from different ethnic backgrounds (Poles, Lithuanians, Ruthenian, Germans and Jews) and of different denominations (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish and even Muslim). "This country became what Cardinal Hozjusz called “a place of shelter for heretics”. It was a place where the most radical religious sects, trying to escape persecution in other countries of the Christian world, sought refuge.

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