Tėvo Tiburcijaus 1754 metais vykdyta Lenkijos ir Lietuvos kamaldulių vienuolynų vizitacija

ENIn 1754, Camaldolese Father Tiburtius visited the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The purpose of his visit and the reasons behind it are unusual, to say the least: he was a visitator to the monasteries of the Camaldolese order in the province of Poland and Lithuania appointed by Pope Benedict XIV. The situation in the province, the transgressions and disagreements were so glaring that the leadership of the Camaldolese congregation of Monte Corona resolved to plead for an intervention of the Holy See. For this reason the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the spiritual leaders, and the papal nuncio were informed about the visit. From 13 July to 29 October 1754, visitator Father Tiburtius visited all seven active Camaldolese hermitages (in Cracow, Pažaislis, Rytwiany, Warsaw, Bieniszew, Wigry, and Szaniec), interviewed the monks, and on 15 November submitted the act of visitation to nuncio Niccolò Serra, the Apostolic representative in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth residing in Warsaw. The surviving documents of the visitation – the act of the visitation, the minutes of the interviews, the monks’ testimonies, and correspondence allow not only a fairly detailed reconstruction of the process of the visitation, but also an understanding of the situation that the visitator found in the province. Some of the transgressions (the failure to invite capitulum culparum, violation of the vows of silence, poor attendance of the choir, and frequent departures from the hermitage) were symptomatic of all the hermitages. A group of influential monks led by Father Florian who, as vicar general, held the highest position in the province, not only disregarded others, often violated the rules prescribed by the Camaldolese Constitution, but even interfered with election results. The visitation interviews show which hermitages had the poorest administration and which monks committed the grossest transgressions.At the end of the visitation, the visitator re-assigned twenty seniors of the province, dismissed those with the grossest transgressions, and redistributed the monks across the hermitages. The documents of the visitation are specific: they mostly refer to transgressions and errors, and hardly ever mention praise or examples of proper behaviour. For this reason the information they provide is one-sided. Nonetheless, these documents, and especially the monks’ interviews, offer a better understanding of the daily life in Camaldolese hermitages of the mid-eighteenth century, and shed some light on the individual traits of some of the monks. [From the publication]