Rykštėmis ir kalaviju: pasaulietinės valdžios kova dėl pavaldinių sielų Prūsijoje XVI-XVIII amžiais

ENSecularisation and Reformation in Prussia formed a new type of very close relationships between the political powers and the Church. The type of the relations is quite difficult to clearly define. One can state the supremacy of the political powers over the Church and, as a consequence, their broad rights to interfere with religious matters and church governance. The sovereign enjoyed the status of the senior bishop of the Church, therefore, he would issue both ecclesiastical and secular decrees. From a time perspective, one can observe gradual elimination of church autonomy and its integration into the state government structure. Thus, the supremacy of the political power over church, the integration of the church legislation into the overall state legislation, and, incidentally, the elimination of the church organisation autonomy and its integration into the state government apparatus, while at the local level, substantial empowerment of the government officials in the matters of church supervision, etc., allows to view secular authorities as responsible for the subjects' faith, piety, and morals. Despite that, the fight of the Prussian state for the souls of its subjects can be seen from a different perspective. Important support of the authorities to the Church discipline can be first of all seen in the codes of secular law and in criminal justice. In theory, the Church engaged in discouraging the parishioners from sin, while the state fought against the subjects' crimes. However, in the period of Confessionalisation, it was hardly possible to make a clear distinction between a sin and a crime, as their contents overlapped: quite a few sins were simultaneously considered as crimes. Therefore, in that period one can talk about double disciplining of the citizens: for sins, a parishioner would be sanctioned by the Church and simultaneously would be put on trial by the secular bodies in charge of criminal justice.The educational and diciplinary measures of the Church were pastoral in nature and frequently did not have anything to do with corporal punishments; those were preaching, catechism, public penance, confession, and excomunication. The relatively mild sanctions of the Church often had just limited effects. The state sanctions for crimes were strict, they had tangible physical expression and therefore were more effective: fines, different corporal punishments, deportation, or the death penalty. The usual practice was to initially discourage people from offences by some disciplinary measures of the Church, and when those failed, the people were subjected to a strict mechanism of secular sanctions. Important secular law collections of the Prussian state-regional regulations (1525-1640) and the codes of law (1620-1720) - laid out a number of religious-moral provisions whose violation, depending on mitigating or aggravating circumstances, resulted in the above-mentioned sanctions: a fine, flogging, deportation, or beheading. The so-called mixed or common offences (considered as sins by the Church or as crimes by the secular authorities) included: slander, swearing, blasphemy, witchcraft-prediction, debauchery, marital infidelity, bigamy, etc. The inclusion of religious-moral provisions in the secular law documents are to be treated as the impact of confessionalisation on the Prussian secular law. A review of criminal cases from Klaipėda rural administrative district proved that -the principal state legislation - the articles and directives of the code of law, regional regulations, and of other important decrees - functioned and were implemented in practice even at a local (from the administrative-teritorial viewpoint) level of Klaipėda rural administrative district.Therefore, one can assume that the local authorities that were charged with the justice administration and policing functions, such as the district manager, his subordinate officials, and the court of law, strongly contributed to the formation of a pious, loyal to the government and to the Church, and a socially disciplined type of a subject and thus undoubtedly supported the mission of the Church and its servants: to save parishioner souls.