Lumen 2018

S TANISLAUS P APCZYNSKI 34 Lvov that he would free the Polish peasants “from the unjust bur- dens and oppression.” 12 During that time there were other people who also pleaded the cause of the oppressed. Christopher Opalinski, who died in 1655, wrote that God was punishing Poland for oppressing the peasants who were considered to be neither one’s neighbor nor even human beings. 13 Similar opinions were voiced by Simon Szymonowicz (†1629), Simon Starowolski (†1656), Wenceslaus Potocki (†1696), and others. 14 Father Papczynski, too, was among those defenders of the peasants. The tragic situation of the country tormented by ongoing wars, internal unrest, and social injustice was compounded by natural dis- asters like bad crops, the destruction of the crops, fruits, and produce by locust or freezing temperatures, the destruction of buildings and livestock by floods. In the years 1650 and 1652, even earthquakes were recorded. But it was the plague that took the heaviest toll. It ravaged Poland and decimated her inhabitants almost throughout the entire 17 th century. In Warsaw 2,375 people and in Gdansk 10,454 people died of the plague in 1624 and 1625. The “black death” ( mors nigra ), which spread from Ukraine after the battle of Beresteczko, through Lvov, Cracow, and, further, through the Vistula River basin, to the north of the country, caused the death of 37,000 people in Cracow alone, while 250 people died every day in the vicinity of the city. The plague took its toll again later in the years 1627-1632, 1637- 1639, 1641-1642, 1652-1654, 1661-1662, 1667, and so on, throughout almost the entire lifetime of the Founder of the Marians, who was particularly concerned for the souls of those who perished in the war or due to the plague. The Polish countryside at that time was depressing — the empty houses with the bodies of the dead, the famished people hiding in the woods. Many would die of hunger. Some incidents of cannibalism were also recorded. The picture of calamity was completed by foreign troops pillaging the country, by robbery, violence, and plundering raids. 15