§ 163.1. =The Socinians= (§ 148, 4).--The most important of the Socinian congregations in =Poland=, for the most part small and composed almost exclusively of the nobility, was that at Racau in the Sendomir Palatinate. Founded in 1569, this city, since 1600 under James Sieninski, son of the founder, recognised Socinianism as the established religion; and an academy was formed there which soon occupied a distinguished position, and gave such reputation to the place that it could be spoken of as “the Sarmatian Athens.” But the congregation at Lublin, next in importance to that of Racau, was destroyed as early as 1627 by the mob under fanatical excitement caused by the Jesuits. The same disaster befell Racau itself eleven years later. A couple of idle schoolboys had thrown stones at a wooden crucifix standing before the city gate, and had been for this severely punished by their parents, and turned out of school. The Catholics, however, made a complaint before the senate, where the Jesuits secured a sentence that the school should be destroyed, the church taken from “the Arians,” the printing press closed, but the ministers and teachers outlawed and branded with infamy. And the Jesuits did not rest until the Reichstag at Warsaw in 1658 issued decrees of banishment against “all Arians,” and forbad the profession of “Arianism” under pain of death.--The Davidist non-adoration party of =Transylvanian= Unitarians (§ 148, 3) was finally overcome, and the endeavours after conformity with the Polish Socinians prevailed at the Diet of Deesch in 1638, where all Unitarian communities engaged to offer worship to Christ, and to accept the baptismal formula of Matthew xxviii. 19. And under the standard of this so called _Complanatio Deesiana_ 106 Unitarian congregations, with a membership of 60,000 souls, exist in Transylvania to this day.--In =Germany= Socinianism had, even in the beginning of the century, a secret nursery in the University of Altdorf, belonging to the territory of the imperial city of Nuremberg. Soner, professor of medicine, had been won over to this creed by Socinians residing at Leyden, where he had studied in 1597, 1598, and now used his official position at Altdorf for, not only instilling his Unitarian doctrines by means of private philosophical conversations into the minds of his numerous students, who flocked to him from Poland, Transylvania, and Hungary, but also for securing the adhesion of several German students. Only after his death in 1612 did the Nuremberg council come to know about this propaganda. A strict investigation was then made, all Poles were expelled, and all the Socinian writings that could be discovered were burned.--The later Polish Exultants sought and found refuge in Germany, especially in Silesia, Prussia, and Brandenburg, as well as in the Reformed Palatinate, and also founded some small Unitarian congregations, which,