Original scientific paper
Glagolitic moral-casuistic provisions of the bishops of Nin – the 17th and 18th centuries
Grozdana Franov-Živković
orcid.org/0000-0003-1787-0849
; The Institute for Historical Sciences of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zadar, Zadar, Croatia
Abstract
The church exercised strong influence on everyday life – through sacraments, sermons, catechism, holy masses, fraternities, as well as through moral-casuistic provisions sent to priests from their bishops. In order to keep order in their areas, as well as respect the Christian way of life, the bishops regularly controlled the priests and the congregation. Before of after making a pastoral visit, they sent moral-casuistic provisions, as well as various enquiries regarding the work of parish priests and the life in parishes. Parish priests were obliged to provide answers to them. These moral-casuistic provisions exercised a strong influence on everyday life, having as their goal the formation and growing of the life of the congregation; they were particularly directed to the so-called popular religiosity, or rather against practicing pagan customs in everyday life. These moral provisions mostly coincide with legal provisions (when compared to the Statute of Zadar). Hence, the sanctions were sometimes equivalent as well. Furthermore, regarding individual problematic issues and major misdemeanours, which church authorities could not handle on their own, secular authorities (proveditor, duke, captain) provided assistance.
Parish priests were further obliged to regularly keep other church records that were occasionally checked (registry books, books of fraternities, books of masses, church tenth registries, various books of debtors, inventory lists, lists of parishioners, etc). The paper analyses nine provisions and a set of documents that witness to the way of life at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century. All documents tackled in the paper were written in italic Glagolitic script and italic Bosnian script (Croatian Cyrillic script).
Two Glagolitic codices on moral theology from the Zadar area have been preserved. They are both in safekeeping at the Archives of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb. One comes from the Brbinje area, and the other from Sali. Next, one moral-theological provision (confessional cases, reserved cases) of the Zadar Diocese, including twenty provisions, a significant number of codes, manuals for confessors, and other codices containing moralistic discussions. A number of moral-casuistic tractates and codes from the Krk area have been preserved.
Keywords
moral-casuistic provisions; italic Glagolitic script; italic Bosnian script (Croatian Cyrillic script); 16th and 17th ct
Hrčak ID:
148915
URI
Publication date:
2.12.2015.
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