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Th e article discusses how the notion of the Church was understood and explained by authors of sixteenth-century Polish Catholic and Evangelical catechisms. Teaching of the constitution of a church was a basic pastoral duty and part of the rudimentary knowledge provided to the faithful. Six Catholic catechisms of the years 1553 to 1600 and thirteen Evangelical ones, which were published between 1543 and 1609, constitute the main source base, the latter manuals being penned under the infl uence of Luther, Melanchthon as well as South-German and Swiss theologians. Following the Tridentine programme, the Catholic authors present their Church as unifi ed under the Pope’s authority and the only inheritor of the works of the Apostles. IDEA OF “TRUE” CHURCH IN POLISH CATECHISMS 47 Th e veracity of its teaching is testifi ed to with God’s unnatural interventions.  Th e Protestant authors explain the basically coherent, relevant ideas of the Reformation’s protagonists. Th ey teach about “the visible and outward Church”, which is manifested by all those congregations that are fed by God’s pure Word, and where the sacraments are duly administered. Th ere is also “the inward and invisible Church”, which the faithful confess in the Credo. It comprises all disciples of Christ, who is the only head of His Church. Th us, the teaching on the Church presented in the Evangelical sources that are employed belongs to the mainstream of sixteenth-century Protestantism and aptly illustrates the reception of Evangelical theologies in the Kingdom of Poland and in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the analysed sources, arguments for the veracity of the Church are always supplemented with the refutation of contradictory standpoints through reference to the Bible and the Church Fathers, mostly to Augustine. Despite strong polemical tone, the Biblical grounds of the Church could contribute to communication and understanding between Christians of antagonistic denominations, and this could sometimes result in conversion. Th e explanation of ecclesiological rudiments was easier for the Catholic clergy, who referred to tradition and emotions, while Evangelical pastors could not ignore the abstract concepts of the “veracity” and “spiritual connectedness” of Christians, which were more diffi cult to render to the laity. Waldemar Kowalski, professor in history at the Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce. His scholarly interest encompasses interconfessional and ethnic relations, history of the Catholic Church in Poland from the fi fteenth to the eighteenth century, emigration from the British Isles to Central Europe from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, auxiliary sciences of history, and – in particular – the history of archives and epigraphy. E-mail: kowalski@ujk.edu.pl Trans. by Bartosz Wójcik First published as: “‘To jest owczarnia onego Dobrego Pasterza’. Pojęcie ‘prawdziwego’ Kościoła w polskich szesnastowiecznych katechizmach,” Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce 60 (2016), pp. 29–71 Th e publication of this English translation has received additional funding from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland

“Verily, This Is the Sheepfold of that Good Shepherd”: The Idea of the “True” Church in Sixteenth-Century Polish Catechisms