Duchowieństwo katolickie w Królestwie Polskim wobec wybranych uroczystości państwowych w latach 1894-1914

Abstract

The relationship of people, especially the Catholic clergy in the Polish Kingdom, to state celebrations was for the authorities a specific barometer of servile moods. The years of 1894-1896 saw momentous events connected with the czar’s family, among other things, death of Alexander III, enthronement and coronation of Nicholas II, and birth of the great princess Olga. Now the years of 1913-1914 saw two jubilees. The first was linked with the three hundredth anniversary of the Romanov ruling (1913) and the second in 1914 was linked with the 50th-anniversary of the peasant reform in the Polish Kingdom. In relation with the celebrations and anniversaries the clergy was obliged to read the czar’s manifestos and conduct special church services. The very fact of conducting a solemn service or decorating houses with flags was usually an expression of formal law-abiding, a fact that had nothing to do with real feelings. In the years of 1894-1896 it was almost common among the clergy to protest against the manifestos read out in the Russian language. The image of the Polish society that emerges from the sources was mostly of police provenience is fairly one-sided (because of the character of the source). It is very telling that on the occasion of the jubilees of the years 1913-1914 the difference is stressed in the behaviour of the simple Polish people and peasants and the Polish intelligentsia and the Catholic clergy. Enthusiasm and gratitude of the former was set in opposition to indifference and enmity of the latter. It is extremely essential that the motives of behaviour are discussed as law-abiding or dissenting. It is extremely important to read out the various contexts. One of them is the national context, e.g. behaviour of the Lithuanian or Jewish people may be interpreted as attitudes not so much pro-Russian but anti-Polish. All this calls for further studies.