This article analyzes how Tridentine reform was introduced to rural and township parishes of the Cracow diocese in the initial stage of the reform’s implementation. The work focuses on those areas where the Reformation was at its most advanced. Calvinism and to a small extent Antitrinitarianism became popular mostly with the nobility and the gentry, but seldom did they gain followers in other social strata of the day. Several themes are important in what follows. The Catholic church fought with isolated heterodoxy mostly by taking back the parish churches the Protestants had appropriated. The regulating of religious life comprised mostly attempts at the improvement of the morals of both parishioners and clergy as well as the sense of duty of the latter. Diocesan authorities stressed the need to explain the rudiments of the creed to the laity. Their religious practices and the ways they were to be molded represented a continuation of medieval heritage