Historicising the Mass: Protestant Narratives on the Liturgy in Polish Vernacular Works (ca. 1560)

Abstract

This paper investigates how Protestant writers in sixteenth-century Poland–Lithuania and Prussia employed historiographical and literary strategies to challenge the legitimacy of the Roman Catholic Mass and promote liturgical reform. Focusing on three works published in Polish – Marcin Krowicki’s Obrona nauki prawdziwej (1560), Valentin Wanner’s Praktyka o Mszej (1559), and Bernardino Ochino’s Trajedyja o Mszej (1560) – the article seeks to explore how each text utilised different vernacular narrative frameworks to argue for purging the liturgy of unscriptural additions and, in doing so, how it formed arguments based on acknowledging the Mass as a custom that changed over time and therefore has its own history. By uncovering the “historicity” of the Mass as a rite prone to changes, these authors sought to delegitimise Catholic rituals, establish theological authority and contribute to confessional self-definition during a moment of particularly intense religious debates in sixteenth-century Poland–Lithuania.