TO EARN HEAVENLY SALVATION

PEASANT RELIGION IN LITTLE POLAND FROM THE MID-16TH TO THE END OF THE 18TH CENTURY


The book offers a proposal of the complex, model outlook on the religious culture of the peasantry of Little Poland in the early modern times. Owing to the fact that the subject of the analysis is an illiterate group, the issue concentrates mainly on the impact made by religion upon social and economic life, ethics and beliefs of peasants, that is, on all what could be called an outward religiousness of a specific social group.

As a basic source the village courts’ registers of more than 120 estates or single villages were used, supplemented by the Church visitational reports and town courts’ books of criminal cases, normative sources, devotional prints, miracles collections, local chronicles and belles-lettres of early modern Poland. In general, the ethnographic sources were not used, as the methodological problems connected with their handling would outweigh the advantages.


Contents:

I. The Formation of Peasant Religious Culture of the Early Modern Times

II. Social Aspects of Peasant Religion

III. Economic Aspects of Peasant Religion

IV. Religion and Morality

V. Religion and Superstition