Jubilee Sermons of Rev. Michał Karpowicz and Wilhelm Kaliński in Changing Assessment of Researchers

Abstract

In 1776 - a jubilee year in the Vilnius diocese - among 52 priests invited to preach on the occasion there were priests Michał Karpowicz and Wilhelm Kaliński. In the eyes of their contemporaries they were outstanding preachers. In the centuries that followed their fame faded away. Removed from respective handbooks on church oratory, criticised for the contents and form of their sermons, they were forgotten. Nevertheless, the jubilee contribution of Karpowicz and Kaliński was noticed by historians, researches of social thought and the history of education. They elevated the existential and spiritual dimension of the sermons delivered in Vilnius in 1776, emphasising the fact that they constituted the basis for forming a society mature in its religious and civic way. They included a plan of building just social relations and ideas of enlightened Catholicism as the grounds for economic and moral growth in Poland at the time of her political decline. The changing assessment of researchers who analysed the jubilee sermons of Karpowicz and Kaliński resulted from the adopted method of research and issues considered at the time when the assessment was made. This diversity, however, points to the richness of the sermons’ content as well as to the novelty, universality and openness of their authors.