ABSTRACT
This chapter reexamines the growth of religious pluralism in Poland and Lithuania from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Populated by various ethnic and religious minorities - Ruthenians, Jews, Armenians, and Tartars - late medieval Poland and Lithuania pioneered in promoting the notion of religious tolerance. Peaceful coexistence within the Polish Kingdom, and later the commonwealth, was secured by the Jagiellonian kings and enjoyed the support of the majority of the nobility. Much debated and negotiated during the parliamentary sessions in 1550s and 1560s, the principles of tolerance gave rise to the mechanism that protected minorities and prevented mass outbreak of religious violence.
