Rusnės parapija 1774-1794 m. bažnytinių vizitacijų duomenimis

ENThe unpublished and later lost Tolminkiemis parish visitation records of 1772-1799 found by Professor F. Tezner at the end of the nineteenth century encourage us to look for analogies with other rural parish visitations. In other words, this study aims to examine more closely how visitations of rural parishes were carried out during K. Donelaitis’ time. At the same time we will try to answer the question of what visitations were like at thus period, what is stressed in visitation records and how, what priorities and requirements were made by the spiritual authorities and how far detailed -accounted was given of parish life in such records. The 1774-1794 Rusnė visitation records which we discovered encourages us to take the matter to hand. However, we must admit that little is known at all about parish life in the Klaipėda District during the eighteenth century owing to a shortage of source material. It was during the second half of that century that religious life in Prussia underwent great change. The mid-eighteenth century marks a caesura after which clear signs of increased deconfessionalisation or a weakening of confessionalisation can be seen. In other words, Lutheran confessionalisation, which had dominated thitherto, gave way to increasingly predominant ideas of religious movements based on universal utility and toleration of freedom of conscience. In this period we see clear signs of a decline in internal church discipline and religious life in general.The significant changes that took place in the religious-spiritual sphere in Prussia encourage us to examine how this was reflected at local level, as in the parish of Rusnė during the second half of the eighteenth century. The visitations carried out in Rusnė were guided by detailed directives to examine and record the qualifications of parish and school officers, the quality of the service they provided, the maintenance of established liturgical order, the religious instruction of parishioners and the level of education of young people, and the state of church books and registers. Visitors were to assess the state of parish buildings, determine what material shortages and other problems affected the parish, offer recommendations for dealing with shortcomings that were discovered and so on. The visitation records from Rusnė are marked by their formulaic content, information that changed little year on year and cliche-ridden texts. The matters under inspection were recorded very vaguely without greater detail, superficially. We are hardly likely to discover any deep cross-section of parish life here. We would think that these visitation records give a slightly crooked or at least incomplete image of parish conditions. This leads us to suppose that we should regard parish visitation material from Donelaitis’ day with a certain amount of reservation and caution. This is not because the records contain mistaken facts but because the image they give in not complete. Without a doubt we should correlate and compare visitation records with other contemporary sources […].