Religious regionalization of the Polish Crown in the second half of the eighteenth century: a geographical-historical approach

ENThe historical territory of the early modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, covering the area of almost all of today’s Poland as well as Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine, is characterized by religious diversity, which constitutes one of the most significant factors configuring the geographic and demographic landscape of the country. To date, in studies delving into the religious and confessional geography of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth two main methodological trends are evident: the organizational (structural) and the demographic. The works of the first category are based on the assumption that the distribution of churches and buildings of worship are the mirror image of the real geographical distribution of confessions, and correctly represent quantitative proportions of individual denominations. The books and articles using the second approach refer to demographic resources in order to present the overall confessional make-up of the selected territories. The present article follows mainly the first, the organizational approach, but it partially also has a demographical foundation, taking into account statistical information about the population. Nevertheless, we should recognize that there are no comprehensive demographic sources for the entire territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from before the end of the eighteenth century. The main aim of this article is to present the territorial distribution of religions and confessions in the Crown part of the Commonwealth shortly before its first partition in 1772. Special importance will be assigned to determining the geographical reach of particular religions and denominations, and to designating religious borderlands in the Crown’s territory. It is part of a larger project embracing the whole territory of the former Polish-Lithuanian state in this period. [...].My analysis covers buildings of worship of all religious communities and confessional groups present in the area of the Crown that created organizational structures. The group of Christian churches included Catholic churches of three liturgies (Latin, Uniate and Armenian), as well as Orthodox, Lutheran (Augsburg Evangelical), Mennonite, Calvinist (Reformed Evangelical), and the Unity of the Brethren churches. Among non-Christian buildings of worship, Jewish synagogues took the first place, whereas the number of Karaite kenesas and Muslim mosques was small. [...]. [Extract, p. 174-176]