If Sigismund I was tolerant, his son, Sigismund Augustus, who succeeded his father to the throne in 1548, was still more so. Reared in the liberal atmosphere of the court and educated by humanists in sympathy with the ideas and doctrines of the Reformation, Sigismund Augustus was a religious liberal. Out of state policy he remained in the Catholic Church and stood by it, though to all appearances his personal convictions and sympathies leaned in the direction of the Reformation movement, certainly so in his earlier if not in his later years. He surrounded himself with humanists and with supporters of the Reformation. He read books of the reformers, participated in religious discussions with his friends, and corresponded with Calvin. He formed an intimate friendship with Nicholas Radziwill, the powerful magnate and grand hetman of Lithuania, and an avowed and staunch Calvinist, and married his beautiful sister, Barbara, who, too, had embraced the Calvinistic faith. With Franciscus Lismanini, the former Franciscan confessor of his queen mother, he maintained a friendly connection for years, even after Lismanini had become openly known as an ardent admirer and sympathizer with Calvinism. He favored certain church reforms, and had gone so far as to send an embassy to Rome to secure the pope’s sanction of them, which sanction, however, was not granted. And when at one time the Pope urged him to exterminate the heretics from his land, Sigismund Augustus gave the Holy Father this characteristic reply: “I fear that by trying to pull up the tares, I might uproot the wheat also.”[255] The same religious broad-mindedness, liberality, and tolerance characterized the person and the reign of the third notable Polish king of the sixteenth century, Stephen Batory (1576-1586). King Stephen was a faithful Catholic, a generous supporter of Jesuitism, and a ruler who saw the strength of the royal power in a close alliance with the Church of Rome. Yet, in spite of his strong Catholic loyalty, he would not tolerate any religious persecution. He steadily discountenanced all religious disturbances, and firmly kept his coronation oath to maintain peace among the adherents of different religious faiths, asserting that he did not wish to violate anybody’s conscience.[256] He, too, like Sigismund I, wished to rule peaceably over the goats as well as over the sheep.