As some are well aware, one of the most important names for us belongs to Zbigniew Ogonowski – Polish philosopher, a specialist in the history of modern philosophy, and one of the main representatives of the Warsaw School of History of Ideas which has been a great inspiration towards the creation of our Centre for the History of Renaissance Knowledge (whose longer description is given here).

Prof. Ogonowski published many works and was awarded the KLIO Award* of the 1st degree in the category of authors and scientific monographs for the book of ‘Socinianism. History, views, legacy’. Unavailable for non-Polish speakers, this book has been recently (December 2021) translated to English**.

Until today, this book had been the only comprehensive work dedicated to Socinianism in the context of contemporary historiography. The study opens on Polish Antitrinitarianism, then traces the origin, the diffusion, and the heritage of Socinianism and analyzes its major doctrinal points – it presents not only the history of the movement, but the religious, philosophical, socio-political thought of its major representatives, with special regard to the idea of tolerance. With the thought of being published in Poland, the author admitted that he wrote his book for a wider audience than the specialists of the ‘Radical Reformation’, namely to all scholars interested in the history of intellectual culture in the seventeenth century.

The English version of the book would not be within our reach if it were not for Prof. Danilo Facca who was the prime mover behind the publication of this very edition. Due to his actions, the proposal of translation the whole volume has been submitted to the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland and has obtained funding. Prof. Facca was also supervising the entire editorial process.

We hope you find this reading to be an interesting book opening the door to Polish and European Socinianism. And if not quite – we offer you our guidance on this path.

*The initiator of the award is the Agreement of Historical Book Publishers (Porozumienie Wydawców Książki Historycznej).
**Thanks to the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland – National Program for the Development of the Humanities (Narodowy Program Rozwoju Humanistyki, years 2018-2022, project number 21H 17 0302 85).