Abstract

The text is of a research nature. Its source basis is political writing and its aim is to check how the genesis, consequences and most characteristic features of the Reformation were perceived in the period from the first interregnum to the Bar Confederation, with particular emphasis on the apogee of Counter-Reformation activities under the reign of Sigismund III Vasa. Th e author has attempted to answer some key questions: 1. Whether and to what extent the Reformation tradition was referred to as a religious movement. 2. How deeply the historical memory and knowledge of the Lutheran beginnings of the Reformation reached those people who were mostly associated with the Calvinist Reformation. 3. What features and consequences of the Reformation were considered the most important for the fate of Protestantism in the Commonwealth. 4. How references to the Reformation tradition were used in political discourse. 5. Whether it was only the Polish Reformation, or also the history of the Reformation and Protestantism in other European countries, that was the subject of interest to journalists of the nobility.