The article is a contribution to the more than one-hundred-year-long discussion on the date of death of Simeon bar Sabba’e, the metropolitan bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, and the beginning of the persecution of Christians in Persia during the reign of Shapur II. The author emphasises that the main source on Simeon’s martyrdom is a hagiographical work, which, as such, can be interpreted strictly on the basis of the principles relevant to the genre. Taking into consideration some of the hypotheses formulated so far, the author holds the view that it is not possible to determine the precise date of Simeon’s death. It could only be assumed that it must have occurred somewhere between February 344 and July 345, most likely late in 344.

John, the eighth archbishop of Soltaniensis, that is Persian Sultania, is one of the most mysterious figures in the Mongol-European relations at the turn of 14th and 15th centuries. He devoted his life not only to God but also to diplomacy, travelling and writing, and the mystery surrounding his life has been increased by numerous errors in academic attempts to identify him. Undoubtedly, he enjoyed an exceptional position in Timur’s court and was called the Mongol ruler’s “special friend.” He was the initiator of the mission to the European rulers, which began in 1402, as he planned to evangelize the Chagatai Khanate with the support of the West. He hoped that on his mission he would manage to recruit volunteers to support his missionary activities in the East. Trade and the colonies established by Western merchants along the trade routes in the East were a pretext and a natural incentive for missionary activities, and that is why they were discussed in correspondence between Timur and European rulers. However, the outcome of John’s mission was not significant – the results were merely superficial and he did not manage to change the negative perception of Timur in Europe.
 

The first year of the Bohdan Khmelnytsky Uprising was marked by the great success of the Cossack and Tatar forces near Zhovti Vody, Korsun and Pyliavtsi. The Cossack and Tatar alliance influenced the further progress of the war. Bohdan Khmelnytsky was the first leader in Ukraine who not only understood but also applied the battlefield effectiveness of the combination of good Cossack infantry and light Tatar cavalry. Therefore, 1648 was the beginning of the great depression of old Polish military art. This article analyzes the operational-strategic idea of the Cossack leader during the Zhovti Vody campaign. Also the military planning on the Polish side is discussed, as all these factors were the reason for the first Cossack and Tatar victory. They predestined the fate of the 1648 campaign.

As a starting point for my considerations, I used an unknown image of the foundational couple, painted al fresco in 1772 by Gabriel Sławiński in the porch of the former Orthodox church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Klesztów near Chełm. In light of the sources, the founder of the church and its furnishings was the then pantler and standard-bearer of Chełm, Łukasz Węgleński, who was portrayed together with the hitherto mysterious spouse, presumably coming from the Rulikowski family. Reconstructing Łukasz’s life, I studied the biographies of his father, Franciszek, and cousin, Wojciech Józef Longin. I analysed their two portraits preserved in Tarnów and Chełm, heretofore identified mistakenly or dated too generally. When following the connections between the three members of the Węgleński family, I accentuated the character of their religiousness as symptomatic of the religious borderland of the Commonwealth of Poland in the 18th century on the one hand, and on the other hand, their relations with Wacław Rzewuski, including the time of the coronation of the Chełm icon of Mother of God (1765).
 

The article presents the genealogy and material status of the Olszar family from Sibica (today’s outskirts of Český Těšín) starting with the progenitor of the family – Jan (died after 1654). The Olszar family from Sibica was a Protestant family but in the first half of the 18th century they converted to Catholicism even though families in their village remained faithful to Lutheranism. The interesting thing is that the conversion came after the Treaty of Altranstädt (1706), which had significantly improved the situation of Lutherans in Cieszyn Silesia. Because of their material status (owners of settlement land), the Olszars belonged to the rural elite throughout the discussed period. They also had a seat in the local self-government. Jan (1835–1921), a farmer from Kalembice near Cieszyn, Polish national activist and member of Macierz Szkolna Księstwa Cieszyńskiego (cultural and educational organization in the Duchy of Cieszyn), came from this line. On the basis of the Olszar family it can be stated that in the examined period, no great nationwide reform led to the exchange of elites on the local level in Cieszyn Silesia.
 

The article discusses some of the aspects of the broadly understood social life of peasantry in western Lesser Poland at the turn of the 18th century, which was a period of dynamic geopolitical and social changes brought about by, among others, the Partitions of Poland, as well as social and legal reforms introduced at the time. Special attention was given to the following issues: relations within the peasant community, peasants’ participation in the village self-government and their attitude towards the clergy, as well as the matter of the social awareness, religiousness and customs and traditions of peasants. Of course, the study does not fully explore the problems, but it points at issues that need to be further examined within systematic research.
 

In the 1840s Hôtel Lambert started to operate in the Balkan Peninsula – they wanted to use the animosities between the Great Powers in the region to create international conditions to regain independence for Poland. One of the territories of their activity was Bulgaria, where they cooperated with the activists of the Church Movement: Neofit Bozveli and Ilarion Makariopolski. The specific character of the activity of  Hôtel Lambert in Bulgaria lay in the close relations with the Catholic Missionaries, with whom Polish agents were trying to realize their main purpose: to reach the union of the Church and to weaken the influences of Orthodox Russia in the Balkans. The main agent of Czartoryski in Constantinople, Michał Czajkowski, led to the escape of Neofit and Ilarion from the Athos in 1844 and organized the action of sending petitions about Bulgarian national rights to the sultan. The Polish involvement yielded important results for the development of the Bulgarian national movement.

In this article, the author tried to present the figures of priests, participants of national uprisings on the Polish lands in the nineteenth century, who took up pastoral work in French parishes or joined religious orders and other religious institutions in France. The majority of Polish clergymen came to France after the November Uprising, the Spring of Nations and the January Uprising. During my research I found almost 100 Polish priests who had joined the Catholic Church in France. The Polish Mission in Paris, which was founded in the nineteenth century by the Resurrectionists, was not the subject of my research. It was not considered to be a parish and was not part of the structure of the local church in France. Most of the Polish priests carried out their pastoral work in parishes of Paris or those surrounding the capital, such as: Notre-Dame-de-Victoires, Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, La Madeleine, Notre-Dame-des-Blancs Manteaux, Saint-Augustin, Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, Saint-Denys du Saint-Sacrement, Saint-Louis-d’Antin, Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, Saint-Paul et Saint-Louis, Saint-Joseph, Saint-Martin and in Batignolles (Notre-Dame des Batignolles), Belleville, Clamart, Gentilly, Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen, Saint-Cloud. Poles could also be found among the chaplains on Parisian cemeteries: Montmartre, Père-Lachaise, d’Ivry, de Pantin, du Nord and others. Émigré priests worked outside Paris as well, in parishes of Amiens, Anvers, Avignon, Aurillac, Le Mans, Lourdes, Marseille, and Strasbourg.
 

The First World War brought with it enormous ideological, political and social problems. In Russia, as in Italy, the repercussions of the war were soon felt and the two countries, which were struggling with monarchical regimes embodying different principles and ideological stances, saw the birth of oppositional movements within them. In Russia, these movements came into power thanks to a Bolshevik coup, while in Italy Mussolini founded the “Beams of Combat,” a real militia ready to ride the popular discontent on the “mutilated victory,” that is to say, dissatisfaction with the territories promised by the Treaty of London and not granted to Italy at the end of the war. The relations between the two countries were interrupted for several years and were resumed only when they both realized that the economic advantages that could result from resuming the relations would be far more beneficial than continuing the ideological confrontation. However, mutual distrust never stopped and rendered the bilateral relations increasingly tenuous until they were definitely severed in the early years of the Second World War.
 

On November 28, 1918, Chief of State Józef Piłsudski signed a decree prepared by the government of Jędrzej Moraczewski granting active and passive voting rights to women. At the same time, throughout the whole interwar period, civil law remained contrary to the principle of gender equality enshrined in the Constitution of March 1921. It resulted from the provisions of the legal codes of pre-war empires and was under requisition until 1939. Moreover, it is worth remembering that in the world of distribution and power relations, connections and distinguishing the “assigned” roles of male and female were more important than equality in parliamentary elections. The author of the article tries to show that there was a huge gap between the law and the actual political practice during the whole period. He examines pre-election calls for voting articles, reports from political meetings as well as articles on suffrage written by men and women. Different political parties had one thing in common – women were treated by their representatives as a beautification of politics, not as equal partners. It appears that not only men believed that they were better prepared for public world offices – the majority of women, even from the upper classes, shared this vision. The example of the south-eastern provinces of the Second Polish Republic shows huge conservatism of the elite’s mentality.

This essay attempts to analyse the ideological pillars of the reconstruction of the Italian state after the Second World War carried out by Democrazia Cristiana, in light of the changes in the Catholic social teaching and the rise of personalist philosophy after 1945. The first part of the text focuses on the way in which the Catholic Church interpreted the concept of democracy and on ways the problem of democracy had been approached since the Rerum novarum encyclical until the end of the Second World War. The second part of the essay consists of an analysis of the manifestos of Democrazia Cristiana and selected speeches of the leader of the party, Alcide De Gasperi. This analysis leads to a conclusion that Alcide De Gasperi in particular and his party in general aimed at constructing a new state and society after the Second World War based on three pillars: the liberal theory of freedom, the republican conception of society and the constitutional settlement as the best political form. Therefore, the Italian constitution envisaged by the party not only was in line with the Church’s teaching, but also drew influence from liberal and republican ideas.