XVIII amžiaus studijos / The Eighteenth Century Studies

The article highlights the story of one provincial feudal family ( Jacob and Marianna Nagórsky) from the second half of the eighteenth century in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and attempts to trace its emotional climate. There is a quite large base of sources about it, such as personal letters, wills, economic letters, etc. Unfortunately, Jacob Nagórsky’s letters to his wife are missing, which makes it difficult to trace his emotional relationship with his spouse. The study is influenced by the English historian Lawrence Stone who wrote about the “rise of the nuclear family” in the eighteenth century, which gradually pushed out the “open lineage family”. The historian perceived this concept of the nuclear family as a social and psychological unit based on the emotional connection and closed kinship ties. e surviving correspondence of Jacob Nagórsky and other sources show his rather cold and unemotional attitude towards his wife, but he was constantly concerned about the well-being of his family. Meanwhile, Marianna’s surviving letters reflect more expressions of love. Children were the main binding tie of the family.

The article is based on twenty-two letters written by Teresa Rachela Sapieżyna to her husband Antoni Kazimierz Sapieha, an elder of Merkinė, between April and October 1727. The article provides the context in which this correspondence arose as the letters reflect a period during which the A. K. Sapieha couple spent most of the time apart. Therefore, the letters were not only a means of maintaining an emotional relationship, but also a means of sharing updates on the work accomplished. The content of the letters shows that T. R. Sapieżyna was familiar with her spouse’s concerns: she was well acquainted with his milieu and maintained contacts with his creditors, legal advisors, and other persons close to him. Therefore, she could not only assess various situations but also advise her husband; in exceptional cases, she would act on her own, resorting to the assistance both of the relatives and the wives of A. K. Sapieha’s clients or creditors, thus forming her own circle of influence.

The article addresses the theme of peasants in the work of Pranciškus Smuglevičius (Franciszek Smuglewicz, 1745–1807) and discusses the most significant works on this theme extant in the collections of Lithuania and Poland. Special attention is devoted to the compositions depicting two Cracowians in a tavern. It is noted that a group of paintings of a similar composition exists and most of them are attributed to P. Smuglevičius. In this article, an attempt is made to figure out which works were painted by P. Smuglevičius himself, which paintings should be attributed to copies, and how the abundance of versions of this small modest composition can be explained. A discussion of the examples of the image of Cracowian peasants in other fields of eighteenth-century culture revealed that, unlike P. Smuglevičius’s numerous earlier works on the peasant theme, Cracowians in a Tavern is not just a manifestation of his interest in the life and daily round of the third estate. This composition can be read as an allegoric painting that hides a generalised picture of the peasantry as an inseparable part of the nation under a “mask” of an everyday scene and a study of folk types.

The article is focused on the image of St Anne in Lithuanian art of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century. It briefly presents the prevailing iconographic types that have not yet been widely discussed and highlights the continuity of the established iconography. Through the social model of the family “encoded” in the images of the saint, the aim is to reveal whether the visual images of St Anne relate and interact with the spiritual and moral attitudes of the Enlightenment and emphasis on education during this epoch. With the help of iconographic, partly iconological, and source studies methods, the socio-cultural level of the past is addressed, questions are raised about the power of St Anne’s images, which could have been resorted to for the understanding and change of reality. Compared with Western Europe, the images of “The education of the Virgin” appeared in Lithuania quite late: they emerged in the second half of the seventeenth century and gradually gained popularity in the second half of the eighteenth century. Two variants of the composition of “The education of the Virgin” evolved conveying the image of the Embodiment of Christ and of St Anne, who brought her daughter up perfectly. They continued into the nineteenth century, when in their abundance they surpassed other iconographic types of St Anne. In Lithuania, the most influential and most replicated “The education of the Virgin” image of the period discussed is the engraving of Joseph Wagner made according the drawing of Jacopo Amigoni in 1725–1766. Like in the paintings of “The St Anne Trinity”, several late-eighteenth-century paintings of “The education of the Virgin” place emphasis on St Anne’s piety, which is also confirmed in hagiographic literature.

Artykuł jest poświęcony poetyckiemu utworowi pochwalnemu wydanemu z okazji zaślubin wojewodzianki wileńskiej księżnej Karoliny Katarzyny Radziwiłłówny (1740–1778) ze starostą chełmskim Stanisławem Rzewuskim (1737–1786). Utwór zatytułowany „Rozprawa Litwy z Polską...” napisany „imieniem Collegium Nieświeskiego” został wydany w 1758 roku w drukarni akademickiej w Wilnie. Dotychczas nie doczekał się szczegółowej analizy w literaturze przedmiotu. Druk został opatrzony ryciną przedstawiającą dwupolowy herb, symbolizujący połączenie dwóch rodów – Radziwiłłów i Rzewuskich. Fabuła utworu jest wzorowana na Iliadzie Homera i została zbudowana w postaci konfliktu Litwy z Polską o księżnę Karolinę Katarzynę, którą Rzewuski zabiera Litwie, podobnie jak Parys porwał Helenę. Artykuł przedstawia analizę utworu zasługującego na uwagę ze względu na fabułę zbudowaną w postaci konfliktu Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego z Koroną, przytoczenie postaci mitologii rzymskiej i greckiej, występujące opisy. Nieświeża oraz posiadłości Rzewuskich, liczne nazwy geograficzne: Wawel, Kraków, Wiedeń, Dniestr, Wilia i inne. Ślub Radziwiłłówny z Rzewuskim został zaprezentowany jako związek równych sobie sławą i honorem osób, jako unia dwóch narodów, która ma wzmocnić potęgę militarną państwa.

The Council of Trent established that all convents had to adhere to strict enclosure. Western historiography notes that this Tridentine decree met with resistance in many countries and was only partially implemented. The article deals with the case of the Bernardine convent in Kaunas, which existed from the end of the sixteenth century until 1864. The Bernadine nuns of Kaunas followed the Rule of the Third Order of St Francis, which was adapted for the Bernardine monasteries of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and printed in 1740. It placed great emphasis on enclosure, poverty, and communality and foresaw severe physical punishment for transgressions. In practical life, however, this did not stop the development of distinctive customs in the Bernardine convent of Kaunas. Occasional visitations (1767, 1781) or the nuns’ letters to the bishop showed that the convent was in violation of enclosure and poverty and that there was no fence separating the enclosed part of the nuns’ living quarters from the folwark. The Bernadine nuns of Kaunas had their own understanding of enclosure and poverty: they interacted

Wdowieństwo w Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów XVII i XVIII wieku dla magnatek z jednej strony wiązało się z ryzykiem utraty majątku, z drugiej stanowiło pośrednią drogę samorealizacji między małżeństwem a klasztorem. Ojcowie Towarzystwa Jezusowego utrzymywali ścisłe relacje z wdowami, zapewniając im opiekę duchowną. Pełnili przy tym swoistą funkcję kontroli społecznej z ramienia Kościoła katolickiego. Starania jezuitów o przychylność wdów w celu zagarnięcia ich majątku i nakłonienia ich synów do wstąpienia do zakonu podkreślali nawet tacy autorzy, którzy nie przejawiali chęci polemizowania z Towarzystwem Jezusowym, jak np. Jędrzej Kitowicz. Celem artykułu jest określenie funkcji i roli jezuitów w życiu wdów w Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów.

In Catholic canon law, the terms used to refer to the sexual disorders causing difficulties in marriage were “impotence” (Lat. impotentia) or “frigidity” (Lat. frigiditas). These terms, although not gendered, were nevertheless most often used to describe men’s physiological problems. In the Catholic consistories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, impotence-related cases were perhaps the rarest category of all marital litigation. In the surviving sources of the seventeenth-eighteenth-century ecclesiastical courts, it was possible to find data on ten such cases, of which seven were examined. Due to the scarcity and chronological inconsistency of the data drawing generalising conclusions is problematic, nonetheless, it is possible to observe certain trends and to reveal aspects that are relevant from the point of view of micro-history.All bar one of the cases involved male impotence, and five out of seven resulted in the decisions declaring the marriages null and void. The analysis of case materials clearly reveals an aspect of publicity characteristic of this type of cases that had evolved in canon law since the Middle Ages, namely, third-party inspections. It was the expert insights of women or doctors that had a decisive influence on the decisions on whether to annul the marriage or to order the spouses to stay in it. This rather unwanted limelight may have precluded many of the cases from ever reaching the courts.