Natalia Nowakowska wins George Blazyca prize for King Sigismund of Poland and Martin Luther: the Reformation before Confessionalisation

BASEES is delighted to announce that Prof. Natalia Nowakowska has been awarded the George Blazyca prize, 2018, for her work, King Sigismund of Poland and Martin Luther: the Reformation before Confessionalisation (Oxford, 2018). This will be awarded at the 2020 Annual Conference.

The judges’ citation reads as follows:

This is a professionally executed work of original scholarship both in subject matter and approach. Nowakowska first reconstructs a basic historical narrative of a period ignored by the current generation of historians and then subjects it to a meticulous and original linguistic analysis to identify a ‘pre-confessional’ understanding of the Reformation. All of the apparent contradictions of Sigismund’s domestic and diplomatic policies that have been identified by previous scholars fall into place once this early period in the Polish Reformation is seen through this pre-confessional lens, a lens that would soon be superseded as Europe began to make confessional distinctions between Lutherans and Catholics. The book makes a substantial contribution to the history of the Reformation generally and to the Polish Reformation in particular by questioning earlier claims that Lutherans in Poland were mainly German, and that Poland at the time was prematurely tolerant.

Jury: Dr. Alison Long, Keele University, and Prof. Nigel Swain, University of Liverpool

BASEES has established the George Blazyca Prize in recognition of the outstanding contribution to its field of study made by the late George Blazyca.