BRACTWA CHARYTATYWNO-OPIEKUŃCZE W PRZEDROZBIOROWEJ POLSCE
Charitable and Protective Brotherhoods in Prepartition Poland

Summary/Abstract: The synthetic article presents the charitable activities of church brotherhoods in the Middle Ages and modern times. It can be said that basically all of them undertook this form of activity to some extent. However, due to the scope and intensity of such activities, three groups can be distinguished. The first are brotherhoods, with a universal, nationwide reach, which, at the time of their creation and in the intention of their creators, had as their main, or even only, goal comprehensive charitable work addressed to all people requiring support, coming either in hospitals, private homes or anywhere else. These include hospital brotherhoods, brotherhoods of the poor and brotherhoods of mercy. The second group also includes charitable confraternities, but quantitatively less popular, limited to certain areas, focusing on selected aspects of charitable activities (e.g. supporting the dying), providing care only to certain groups of people in need, sometimes serving single hospitals. In this case, it concerns, among others: about the following brotherhoods: priestly, good death, German, funeral, prison, St. Martin, St. Roch, St. Benon, Saint Lazarus. And finally, the third group of brotherhoods are devotional brotherhoods aimed at completely different goals, in which charitable activity, usually sideline, little exposed, sometimes even marginal, was always present. In many brotherhoods, it was limited to the obligation to organize burials, participate in funeral ceremonies of confreres and pray for their souls.

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