Raporty dotyczące diecezji żmudzkiej i inflanckiej z końca XVIII wieku

ENThe publication is a source edition of the reports made by church authorities and sent to the Roman-Catholic Affairs Department at the College of Justice (Justickolegium) in Saint Petersburg soon after the third partition of Poland. In 1797, this institution issued an order stipulating that bishops in Russia should prepare reports about the state of their dioceses and deliver them until December that year. The current publication presents two of these reports regarding the dioceses of Samogitia and Livonia or, more specifically, the Courland part of the latter, which did not enter the diocese of Mohilev. The present body of knowledge is insufficient for providing a detailed picture of the visitation and reporting system in the Catholic church soon after the third partition of 1795. These issues require broader examination that goes beyond the scope of this publication. The book consists of the introduction that describes the history of the Samogitia and Livonia dioceses, intended to place the source material in context. The actual text of the Report is preceded by the order of Bishop Jan Stefan Giedroyć of November 24, 1797 concerning the method of reporting the situation of the Samogitia diocese. The presented Report, which covers the dioceses of Samogitia and Livonia, is untitled. The annotation from the end of the 18th century, made on the first page, says that it is the reply of the Samogitia Bishop to the questions asked in the letter from the College of Justice. The content of the source is consistent with the acts of the official visitations carried out by church superiors. It discusses the administrative position of the parish (nationality, not deanery), its geographical size and the number of faithful taking Holy Communion (communicantes), the temples on its area and the priests that serve there.Apart from this general information about the parish, the report gives much attention to the situation of the clergy: it examines their career tracks and education, the size of their income and its sources. Moreover, quantitative data on christenings, marriages, and deaths are provided as well as information on the public and parish schools and seminaries and the subjects taught therein. The full Report concerning both dioceses comprises 295 sheets, that is 590 pages, out of which only 492 are actually used. The report on the Samogitia diocese is placed on sheets 1 through 262 (sections 1 through 7), with sheets 1–248 providing written replies to the questions asked by the College of Justice, and sheets 248–262 being a recap supplement to the content, which included tables summarizing the data presented earlier, and therefore it is omitted in the current publication. All information is given in the question-answer format. Notably, the archivist divided the manuscript into eight sections, marking the relevant number on separate pages, which is also indicated in the edition. A content-driven nature of the division is noticeable. Section one (sheets 1–20) is devoted to the general state of the diocese (e.g. listing of the higher clergy and their remuneration), schools, hospitals or monasteries as well as general statistics describing the diocese and its material basis. Section two (sheets 21–38) takes on the nature of a typical report and concerns the Samogitia cathedral chapter, the cathedral church in Wornie, and the seminary. Section three, the longest of all (sheets 40–222), is dedicated to the 95 parishes under the administration of the diocese clergy (secular parishes).They are ordered mostly alphabetically (according to the Polish alphabet) according the counties (powiat): Dorbiany-Żorany – Telsze county, Gruździe-Stare Żagory – Szawle county, Johaniszkiele- Szadów – Upit county (Troki province), Andrzejów-Wewirżany – Rosienie county. Section four (sheets 224–248) covers monasteries for men and women, and hospitals run by the Brotherhood of Saint Roch on the territory of the Samogitia diocese. Section five (sheets 252–262) contains the abovementioned tabulated recapitulation of the data. The final section six (sheets 263–295) is devoted to the churches located in Courland. It is difficult to say how many people authored the text, but they were certainly a few dozens. Each report was signed by the relevant parson and other priests working in the parish, which suggests they were probably made outside the consistory and subsequently sent there (presumably collectively from the deaneries). [...] Keywords: the diocese of Samogitia, Samogitia, Courland, College of Justice (Justickolegium), Jan Stefan Giedroyć, report, clergy.