Ad Honorem Immaculatae Conceptionis Mariae Oblatio

53 exactly this first formal document given to the Marians. For this reason, its date was accepted as the date of the Congregation’s origin. A certain cog- nitive dissonance is caused by the use of the terminology: on the one hand, it is stated that the decree was the Church’s approval of the Congregation, which means that it was already in existence; and on the other hand, it is asserted that the decree meant the initiation of the Congregation. Taking the legal concepts and the 20 th -Century Church practices as the starting point, it would be necessary to thus interpret the facts presented in the documents. This view, disseminated throughout the Congregation and in- troduced into practice thanks to the Jubilee celebrations, was accepted by the community almost unanimously. j j j Among the above-mentioned four factors, the first factor had the great- est impact on the emergence of the new tradition, i.e. the adoption of the 20 th -Century legal patterns as the interpretative key of the 17 th -Century events. This approach was of pivotal importance for discerning the origins of the Congregation in the episcopal decree. Also of great importance for the emergence of the new tradition was the second factor, that is, the lack of awareness of the text of the Oblatio , because in the period before the dis- covery of the text, its absence made it impossible to properly interpret the Oblatio as the Founder’s first Marian vows; however, the discovery of the text did not affect the previously adopted legal and a-historical interpreta- tion of the events which took place at the beginning of the Congregation. The third factor, i.e. the narrow circle of people involved in the research, had an impact on the adopted method. These people were mostly not his- torians while they concentrated on amassing materials scattered around various archives and arranging them according to the assigned task. Final- ly, the fourth factor, the solemn celebration of the 300 th Anniversary of the Congregation, explains why the new tradition has been universally accept- ed in the Congregation and has become deeply rooted in the minds of the Marians.