Życie i dzieło o. Floriana Jaroszewicza reformata (1694-1771)

Abstract

Florian Jaroszewicz was born in Chełm on 16 August 1694. As a sixteen year old boy he entered the order of the Reformati of the Polonia Minor province. He held important positions in the province's government during several terms of office; this enabled him to collect material for his future work as a writer. In 1746 he became the first custodian of the Ruthenian custody of the Reformati, which was created in that year from part of the Polonia Minor province. The new custody was raised to the rank of a province by the general chapter of Mantua in 1763, and Father Florian became its vice-provincial. In the next few years he was the province's archivist and chronographer. He died in Chełm in 1771. Father Jaroszewicz's first written work was Monumenta Provinciae Reformatae Minoris Poloniae, unpublished to this day, which is a valuable collection of data on the history of the order in Poland. He also wrote Principiae theologiae asceticae for the use of the seminarists and Stary argument światowej mądrości, a treatise on purity and virginity. However, Father Jaroszewicz's most valuable work is Matka świętych Polska albo żywoty świętych, błogosławionych, wielebnych, świętobliwych, pobożnych Polaków i Polek [...], published in Cracow in 1767. It comprises the lives or short memorials of 427 saints and pious Poles in a reasoned calendrical arrangement. The number of entries exceeds the number of calendar days as some days contain two or more lives; this usually involves saintly Franciscans. As regards the rank of his subjects, Father Florian used two ways of indicating it. One was to prefix the name with a title (saint, 15 times; blessed, 71; holy, 172; venerable, 125; there are forty-four names without any prefix). The other was to vary the length of the entries. Our analysis of the contents of the book shows that people who died in the years 1555-1650 had the largest number of entries devoted to them (149); the next largest group were people who died in the next hundred years (123). The estate most numerously represented are the male religious, most of them from the period 1551-1750. The largest group among them are the Franciscans, especially the reformed Franciscans (76). The following other social categories can also be distinguished: rulers (and members of ruling families), clergy (bishops, diocesan priests and professors of the Cracow Academy). Lay persons are a small group (74 entries). Father Florian intended Matka świętych as a means of popularizing the Franciscan model of sanctity and style of life. The book is a leading work of Polish 18th century hagiography. It continued to be widely read throughout the country, especially in religious houses, for the next hundred years. There were two editions in the 19th century. It has been established that Father Jaroszewicz drew on a bibliography of some 180 items, foreign as well as Polish. He also used many archival sources, his own notes and oral evidence of his contemporaries. In many cases he also quotes the oral tradition of the social milieu he writes about. All that testifies to the writer's great concern about the selection of material, its clear presentation and its use by the reader for his own spiritual benefit.