The Protestant Reformation, which began as a broad protest against corruption and the fixation on rituals and sacred objects in the Catholic Church, soon gave rise to a series of more finely tuned doctrinal disputes. One point of fierce contention was "transubstantiation," the longstanding Catholic doctrine that the holy wafer and wine were miraculously and literally transformed into Christ's body and blood during the Eucharist ceremony. Leading Protestants in the German lands came to believe that the transformation of the bread and wine was more symbolic than real. In the course of the 16^th century, this and other heresies began to spread into Poland, where Protestantism was beginning to make significant inroads. The poet Mikołaj Rej, Magda Teter tells us in Sinners on Trial, went so far as to publicly ridicule the entire idea of transubstantiation: "If I am to believe that here is the whole Christ," he quipped at the Council in Cracow in 1570, "I am afraid I might choke on his shin."

Rej doesn't seem to have paid a price for his wisecrack. Protestants of his stature were . . .

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