Sacerdotalisation

Changes in Clerical Private Lives in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

Abstract

The Council of Trent expected priests to dutifully perform their professional obligations and to shine as examples of Christian life. Although this new ideal was treated as coherent and holistic by both Catholic reformers and historians, the article proposes to analyse it as two separate processes: clerical professionalisation and sacerdotalisation, which represent, respectively, the attempts to modify professional and private lives. Such a distinction not only sheds light on situations when both post-Tridentine goals were not fully aligned but also draws attention to the specificity of Catholic priests, who were expected to change their private lives more than other professional groups. The article offers a preliminary account of the sacerdotalisation in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1569 to 1795. In an attempt to create an anthropological portrait, it is mostly based on egodocuments, with special attention given to the writings of Kazimierz Dziuliński, a parish priest in Słaboszów within the diocese of Kraków from 1676 to 1701. An argument is proposed that, by the final decades of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the private lives of priests had come to play a unifying rather than dividing role. Clergy were hierarchically divided and maintained close relationships with laymen according to their rank as well as shared with relative groups many everyday practices, especially feasting and trading. However, the belief in the power of ordination, seminary education, social influence and peer control fostered enough commonality for priests to feel and be perceived as members of a distinguished and relatively elevated group. Generally, at the end of the eighteenth century, priests kept celibacy, exhibited specific nonverbal communication, prayed the breviary, wore clerical garb, and usually read religious literature.