Confirmation of the last will of Vilnius goldsmith Vincent Slegel (1519). A contribution to the history of the Vilnius bourgeois elite and its ties with Poznań

In the following paper the author attemps to analyse the confirmation of the testament of the Vilnian burger – craftsman, goldsmith and town councillor – Vincenty Slegel, written in the 1519.

Jadwiga Janina Cywińska, nee Malkiewicz. One of the Vilnius Six

The first published biography of one of the members of the first community of the Order of Mercy, founded by Fr. Michał Sopoćko according to the revelations received through the intercession of Sister Faustyna Kowalska; court clerk in Vilnius and Toruń.

Following the end of second World War, 48 percent area of the Second Polish Republic was incorporated into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. A significant number of Polish citizens remained in the annexed areas and along with them their pastors. As for members of the Society of St. Francis de Sales (Salesians), ten remained in the areas incorporated into the USSR, who helped organize the religious life of the faithful under very difficult circumstances. They maintained contact with the religious congregation in Poland, mostly it was limited to correspondence and short visits on the occasion of family visits to Poland. The source presents notes from the stay in the USSR of Fr. Stanisław Rokita SDB, who in 1973 was the first Salesian superior to visit his congregation remaining in the East.

“Poland” and messianism in the writings of Sister Helena Rafaela Majewska CSA, Vilnius Apostle of Divine Mercy

Helena Rafaela Majewska CSA (1902–1967) infiltrated the habitless congregation of the Sisters of Angels. Mystic; propagator of God’s mercy; penitent and collaborator of Fr. Michał Sopoćko – Vilnius confessor of Sister Faustyna Kowalska; continuator of her message. Majewska left a spiritual Diary from the years 1941–1943, in which a patriotic and messianic theme appears, the author will appear as an element of the message of mercy and the perspective of the fate of Poland revealed to her by God. The texts constitute their important sources, from which come the records of the Way of the Cross of the Polish Nation, where the mystic assigned the events of the subsequent World War II to the emergency station. The analysis of Majewska’s spiritual records is valuable both from the point of view of theological and historical sciences. In the first case, they reveal the obligation of patriotism in the formation and experience of religion in the early 20th century and during the Second Mandatory War. In the second one – revealing the elements of Polish messianism and allowing the use of interpretation of historical events at the time they occurred.