The Racovian Catechism (Pol.: Katechizm Rakowski) is a nontrinitarian statement of faith from the 16th century. The title Racovian comes from the publishers, the Polish Brethren, who had founded a sizeable town in Raków, Kielce County, where the Racovian Academy and printing press was founded by Jakub Sienieński in 1602.
The Polish Brethren or Ecclesia Minor were an antitrinitarian minority of the Reformed Church in Poland who had separated from the Calvinist majority, or Ecclesia Major, in 1565.
Several authors had a hand in drafting the Catechism: Valentinus Smalcius, Hieronim Moskorzowski, Johannes Völkel and others. It is likely that some of the text had been prepared by the Italian exile Fausto Sozzini, who had settled among the Polish Brethren in 1579, without ever formally joining, and who died in the year before the Catechism was drafted. Despite his lack of any official status in the church Sozzini had been influential in bringing the Polish church round to a Christology which closely resembled what he had learnt from his uncle Lelio Sozzini in exile in Switzerland as a young man.
The Racovian Catechism was published in 1605, and subsequently translated into other languages. Smalcius produced a German version.
The Ecclesia Minor survived in Poland until 1658 when it was outlawed by the Polish Sejm in the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation. These nontrinitarians, and their Catechism, would later become known as Socinians due to the prominence given to Fausto Sozzini's writings after his death in the series Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum published in Amsterdam 1665 and widely circulated in England and elsewhere.
In August 1650 John Milton licensed the Racovian catechism for publication by William Dugard.[1][2] On April 2, 1652, The English Parliament voted to seize and burn all copies circulating.
A revised Latin edition of the Racovian catechism appeared in 1680 in Amsterdam, revised by Sozzini's grandson Andrzej Wiszowaty Sr. and great-grandson Benedykt Wiszowaty. This was the base of Thomas Rees' 1818 English translation.[3]
Preface
The most distinctive element in Socinian, as opposed to Arian, Christology is the rejection of the personal pre-existence of Christ. The theme of Christ's preexistence occurs repeatedly in the Racovian Catechism, with detailed discussion of disputed verses, such as:
Most early Socinians accepted the infallibility of the New Testament and so accepted the account of the literal virgin birth of Jesus, but many later Socinians (i.e., Unitarians) did not.
The Racovian Catechism makes muted reference to the devil in seven places[9] which prompts the 1818 translator Thomas Rees, to footnote references to the works of Hugh Farmer (1761) and John Simpson (1804). Yet these references are in keeping with the somewhat subdued handling of the devil in the Biblioteca Fratrum Polonorum.[10] The Collegia Vicentina at Vicenza (1546) had questioned not only the existence of the devil but even of angels.