Michał Nowakowski – författare

Foreign Intruders is the first study in English to examine the rise of anti-Jesuit literature in Poland–Lithuania during the reigns of Stephen Báthory and Sigismund III (1576–1632), a period of profound political and religious change. Through an analysis of theological treatises, political pamphlets, speeches, and poetry, the book reveals how fear of the Jesuits transcended confessional divides, uniting Protestant and Catholic critics alike. It examines key figures like Jakub Niemojewski, Andrzej Wolan, Marcin Czechowic, and Jan Brożek, while reassessing long-debated texts and their attribution, including Monita privata and Equitis Poloni in Jesuitas actio prima.

This book examines how Jesuit political, social, and polemical ideas functioned in seventeenth-century Poland–Lithuania through the case of Jan Chądzyński (c.1602–1660). It reconstructs his biography, establishes his dispersed and often misattributed writings, and analyzes his political and social treatises and anti-Protestant satires. Drawing on Jesuit archival records and textual analysis, the study situates Chądzyński’s views on royal authority, noble liberty, social injustice, and Protestantism within the political debates of the Commonwealth and the wider framework of early modern Jesuit thought in Europe, while showing how local controversies in Vilnius shaped the form and aims of his writing.