Parapijos dangaus ir žemės globėjų vaidmuo formuojantis bendruomenės identitetui : Polonkos pavyzdys 1437-1529 m.

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Bendruomenė; Krikščionybė; Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė (LDK; Grand Duchy of Lithuania; GDL); Parapija; Parapija, brolija, Polonka, krikščionybė, LDK, Vilniaus vyskupija; Polonka; Christianity; Community; Parish; Parish, Confraternity, Polonka, Christianity, GDL, Vilnius diocese; Polonka.

ENAmong other things a parish is an economic unit, a centre for distributing and receiving the Sacraments and a hub of local and regional mission. First and foremost it is a Christian community which includes all believers, not just clergy and secular administrators (the patrons, the vitricius, and others). This paper seeks to present in as far as is possible a picture of such a community and its communal identity from the late-mediaeval and eraly-modern Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Polonka Confraternity joined together people of various estates into a single parrochial and supraparochial (diocesan) community of women and men, lay people and clergy, the palatine of Polotsk and the stableman of Cherniekhovo. Their documents often mention the word parochia and this parish was included in a broader community with its Orthodox neighbours. Members came from various manors - Polonka, Cerniechovo, Pinčin Skrobova, Zadvieja, Zibortai. On several occasions priests from neighbouring parishes (Horodiščė, Naujoji Horodiščė, Iškoldė, Krošinas, Lipa, Niedviedičiai, Nesvyžius) took part in the confraternity's business. Superficially at least and perhaps more deeply fraternity members had quite a good and fashionable understanding of Christian morality.Church benefactors more commonly offered foodstuffs and raw materials (honey, corn, wax, timber) rather than plots of land. At the end of the fifteenth century here, as in other Vilnius diocesan parishes, such benefactors no longer gave indiscriminately ob salutem, but sought to inscribe themselves in parish memory and obtain specific spiritual benefits in return, usually Masses, especially at embertide. In this case the experience of Polonka matches that of other diocesan communities, be it the eleven-parish confraternity in Geranainai and surrounding centres, or the parishes of Maišiagala, Paberžė, and Kernavė. Local devotion was quite long-lasting and stable - various similar documents were issued from the 1470s to the end of the 1520s. [From the publication]