Content area
Full text
Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation. By Magda Teter. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2011. Pp. x, 331. $39.95. ISBN 978-0-674-05297-0.)
Politically powerful noblemen in Reformation Poland, attempting to protect Protestants (and enhance their own power), advanced measures limiting the authority of the Catholic Church. This culminated in the 1 560s when the Polish parliament (Sejm) decided that secular authorities would no longer enforce verdicts declared by ecclesiastical courts. Ironically, with the ecclesiastical courts' loss of power, secular courts gradually began to adjudicate religious and moral matters. Acts that once were classified as sins and might have been punished with symbolic acts of penance or excommunication were now criminalized. As Magda Teter notes, "Crimes against religion, such as adultery, blasphemy and sacrilege, almost surely sent the convicts quickly to the stake, while social and sexual crimes, such as adultery, bigamy, abortion and infanticide, became punishable by diverse forms of death. . " (p. 7). In effect, local magistrate courts became the adjudicators of religious and...