MARIANS IN 1670-1788 80 originator. Fr. Papczyński confessed: “ […] there were some who looked upon me as a crazy man. Others persecuted me.”74 Secondly, Stanislaus Papczyński, being convinced that the establishment of the Order of the Immaculate Conception was God’s will, considered obtaining its legal erection to be the most crucial. Therefore, he agreed to the strict penitential and eremitic rule imposed by Bishop Święcicki. At that time, this was the only way for the Order to come into existence at all. According to the research of Professor Jerzy Kłoczowski, at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, such orders were no longer popular in the Church. They were considered unnecessary and parasitic, and this was how the Marian Order was also perceived. Thirdly, many negative opinions and hostilities were caused by disputes and conflicts, both in Góra and the Forest, regarding boundary disputes between the Marian Order and the local peasants. To defend their material foundation, the Marian Order was forced to engage in both ecclesiastical and secular legal proceedings, which raised the resentment of some representatives of the local, often impoverished, nobility. The boundaries of the lands, especially the forests and meadows surrounding both monasteries and the rights to their property, were not precisely defined in the endowment documents. For example, a document specifying the boundaries of the property in the Cenacle stated that: “The property line goes [...] next to the river and the fence, in a straight line along the willows, up to the mound [border marker] near the plow land [...] [of someone] called Śledź. From the south [it] goes in a straight line, near the lofty Czerski forest [...] up to the corner of the baker’s fence.”75 In those days, however, it was a common practice to move border markers, cut down marked trees, and infringe on a neighbor’s land. Numerous documents of court hearings testify to this, as does the fact that it happened even more often when the religious orders’ grounds were concerned. This practice did not spare the Marians: their orderly and ameliorated lands were eyed greedily by the local gentry, who usurped property rights. Fr. Papczyński’s first biographer, Fr. Mansueto Leporini, wrote in 1705: “He suffered persecution and many vexations from the common citizens of Góra; he heard many insulting, contemptuous and jeering words. One of them even shoved 74 S. Papczyński, The Foundation of the House of Recollection, in: Selected Writings, 8, p. 905. 75 S. Sydry, O. Stanisław, p. 152.
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