Although the ancient Greeks did not use the concept of tolerance, they were not unfamiliar with the concept of sneer, malicious laugh or mockery. Tolerance, or the lack of it, can be examined on various levels, also on the most important one deriving from the original meaning of the word tolerantia, that is religion. Although the religious system of the ancient Greeks is commonly described as a "tolerant" one, mainly because their faith did not exclude the existence of gods worshipped by other peoples, the Greek gods – understood as a community – committed acts of injustice and discrimination towards each other. Hephaestus proves to be the best example being the closest to a man of all the Olypmic gods. He experienced pain in the world of gods but in a human manner, which would undoubtedly be considered intolerance today. No other god had so many characteristics of an imperfect human being. The ancient imagination made Hephaestus an impaired god – both on the physical and social plane. He was an illegitimate child, he limped and worked by the sweat of his brow doing the job which was not held in high regard by the Greeks. In short words, Hephaestus represented the type held in contempt in Hellenic society. What is interesting, the oldest description of a derisive laugh in European literature belongs to Hephaestus.

In medieval culture the sin was a threat to the unity of the community as it produced the realm of the symbolic and physical defilement, moral and material dirt. Sinner’s negative behavior could not be tolerated and excommunication was the means of repression. Excommunication broke the bond between the Christian and the Church, taking away the intercession of the Church and the spiritual benefits resulting from the participation in the Mass. Up to the 11th century there was an absolute prohibition to maintain any contact with the condemned in the Church. Its fracture was threatened with excommunication and only the bishop could release those who maintained relations with excommunicated out of necessity or ignorance. In the following centuries these instructions were alleviated. Also the secular law recognized the prohibition of contact with excommunicated. In French, Italian and German codes of customary rights dating from 12th and 13th centuries, excommunication occurred simultaneously with secular proscription and exile. Brachium saeculare was to influence those whom the Church failed to improve. The Church demanded the laymen to introduce social barriers by prohibiting contact, infamy, abandonment of fidelity, deprivation of the right to testify in courts, both ecclesiastical and secular, lack of right to protection, the inability to exercise power. The more the Church used the pro levibus culpis excommunication, the less effective the penalty was. The standards of medieval canon law quite clearly defined social, religious and legal position of the excommunicated. There was a specific stigma imposed on them, they were made to feel distrust and resentment. Their exclusion was the means of marginalizing them and of forcing them to return to the bosom of the Church. This form of exclusion created one of the most important structures of religious and social awareness in the Middle Ages.

The article presents, on the example on Giulio Cesare Vanini (1585–1619), the consequences which those who were recognized as atheists faced in the early modern era. And the consequences were: exile, imprisonment, torture or death. In the times of Vanini every case of denying or undermining Christianity, especially Catholicism, was dubious. The worst of them was atheism which by the defenders of faith and the Roman Catholic Church was often regarded as a characteristic of a person who did not respect morality, surrendered to criminal tendencies, was crazy and insane, while atheism itself was treated as a criminal act. Vanini was sentenced to death at the stake due to the accusations of atheism. Their basis laid in the contents of his two works: Amphitheatrum Aeternae Providentiae Divino‑Magicum released in 1615 and De Admirandis Naturae Reginae Deaeque Mortalium Arcanis published a year later. As indicated in the article, the interpretation of the works very often influenced the fact that they could be recognized as scandalous and threatening and that the author was sentenced to death, although the content very often was simply controversial or ambiguous. The article also shows a brief survey of judgments and opinions concerning Vanini which arose from the 17th to the 19th century. From among the participants in the discussion, the views of Pierre Bayle’s deserve particular attention. He attempted to describe atheism without recognizing it as a flaw, guilt, sin or criminal trespass of a human. He believed that atheism was the result of the imperfect and mistaken human reasoning, and that a man leaning toward such ideological beliefs may still live according to moral principles. This was due to his belief that moral values are universal and independent of religion. However, as it is stated in the article, among the atheists there was no shortage of the ungodly, the sacrilegious, traitors, those who morally deprave and scandalise, with Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade (1740–1814) as the most famous of them.

Stanisław Staszic’s philosophical and political thought remains one of the greatest inellectual achievements of the Polish Age of Enlightenment. One of the most important issues is the question of power and handing it to individuals. In the time of reforms in the Polish Republic Staszic claimed that only strong central power was able to deliver the country from destruction and defeat the anarchy of the democracy of the nobility. He was however forced to tone down his opinions to be more agreeable towards the noblemen. After the patitions of Poland he considered Prussia a model of a well‑governed country. But it was not until after the Congress of Vienna, in his main finished work entitled Humankind, that he fully presented his thoughts upon the power. He described the evolution of this system from feudalism and absolutism to constitutional monarchy. Despotism, which was a chance for the Polish Republic in 18th century, ceased to be such a chance after 1815. The future lay in constitutional monarchy with strong but limited power of the monarch. And the Kingdom of Poland’s union with the Russian Empire was to be the beginning of the system and the tsar and king Alexander the First a model of the ruler.

Until the 19th century woman’s role in the family and in the society was clearly defined – she was to be a housekeeper, a mother and a wife to her husband. As a result, her education and upbringing aimed at preparing her to perform these roles. However, in the 19th century women decided to break the stereotype and more often and more willingly, took up steps which allowed them to gain a specific profession, thus becoming independent (especially financially) from their husbands. The suffragists of the times were particularly interested in medicine and doctor or nurse professions, which not only aroused discontent among men (not just doctors) but was also perceived scandalous. It was proved by numerous press discussions on this topic, discriminating system of higher education recruitment, as well as peculiar professional ostracism of „female‑mediciners” or „female‑medicos” as they were maliciously called. With time, thanks to determination of the feminist heroines including Poutret de Manchamps, Louise Otto, or Emily Wüstenfels universities in France and in German countries slowly began to open their doors to women. It also happened in Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, Scandinavia and the United States (the example of two sisters Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell). Women in had the greatest number of obstacles overcome, which is testified by the fate of Jessie Meriton White and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first English female doctor. In countries where access to medical faculties was open only to men, women candidates went abroad to acquire education and then came back (though not always) to their homeland. Such was the story of the Russian Nadezhda Prokofiewna Suslov, recognized as the first doctor with a PhD title in Europe, who received doctor of medicine degree in Zurich in 1867. At the beginning of the twentieth century Polish women acted alike, e.g. Maria Elizabeth Zakrzewska or Melania Lipińska and many others. It is worth noting that in their fight for equality of rights, women had to accept some compromise. And so, in order not to compete with men, they were educated as specialists in women’s and children’s diseases, responding to more and more visible demand in the society. In addition, with help from patrons and sponsors, they founded schools for girls, thus putting into practice male postulate of single‑sex education.

The position of Catholics in the UK has evolved since the days of the Reformation. Criminal law directed against them was abolished in the 18th century, but they gained full political rights as late as 1829. The lack of trust for the Catholics, typical for the modern and nineteenth‑century England, originated from international configuration, and was supported by conviction of the idolatrous nature of their worship, moral corruption of the clergymen, and a sense of civilisation superiority over the Irish, who were the Catholic majority on the British Isles. Fear for the Pope’s aspirations who in popular belief was aiming to gain control over the country through secret network of Jesuit activities, found its vent in a fierce social reaction expressed on the pages of prominent London‑based daily newspaper „The Times”, which occurred due to the restoration of diocesan organization and hierarchy of the Catholic Church in England in November 1850.
The outbreak of hostility towards the Catholics was associated not only with a sense of hostility towards the growing number of the followers of this Church or dislike and contempt towards the Irish. Problems of the Church of England and the concerns related to its internal breach were also an important issue. Press discussion was full of highly offensive expressions, inaccuracies, misrepresentations and propaganda. Anti‑Catholic hysteria, which prevailed in „The Times” at the turn of 1850 and 1851, calmed down after the Parliament’s resolution „Act for Preventing the Assumption of Certain Ecclesiastical in Respect of Places in the United Kingdom”. Religious prejudice has not occurred in England since, which does not mean that it disappeared altogether. Stereotypes of the Catholics being backward Papists, essentially alien to the Anglo‑Saxons, remained present in „The Times” throughout the nineteenth century.

The article is an attempt at outlining the history of Gdansk student associations in the times of the Free City Danzig in 1920–1939. It presents the incidents between German and Polish students that took place at the Higher School of Technology in Gdansk‑Wrzeszcz. The Polish students tried to stand up to harassment and they did so to different effect. The German student associations did not tolerate the Polish associations. One could say they lived „next to each other”. They did not acknowledge one another. Insults were an everyday matter. The Germans denied the Poles the honorary satisfaction in the form of an apology or a duel. The conflicts were settled by stick and fist. The situation at the college was a mirror image of the argument between Poland and Germany. This state of affairs lasted until the Polish students were finalny expelled from the college in 1939. In the article the author tries to account for the political situation which was the background of the conflict and also to point out its impact on the conditions students had at the college.

After World War I Ukrainian minority within the borders of the Second Polish Republic amounted to five million. The Poles were mainly concerned about rebuilding of the Polish state after gaining independence and the Ukrainians could not come to terms with the fact that they were subdued by a foreign power and did not have a state of their own. Both Poles and Ukrainians found themselves in a difficult situation living in the same territory. They could either continue to argue or they could try to find a way to reach a compromise satisfying for both sides of the conflict. Stanisławów Greek Catholic bishop Hryhory Khomyshyn was one of those who encouraged establishing good realtionships and broad tolerance. He based his actions on the rules of Catholic Chuch trying to bring the followers of the two rites – Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic – closer together. Bearing in mind the atrocities of World War I and the mutual antagonism Bishop Khomyshyn called for focusing on positivist work based on faith and religion rather than conflicts. He believed that Greek Catholic clergy and the Uniate Church should play a vital role in this process. His main goal was to bring about the reconciliation between the Poles and the Ukrainians and to protect them against the tragic results of spreading nationalism.

The author of the article concentrated on the times when cigarettes began to become popular at the turn of 19th and 20th centuries. There were no bans on advertisements of cigarettes and no anti-smoking acts. Based on various sources the author comes to a conclusion that smoking cigarettes by the clergy was not considered a heavy offence against morality. It was seen as something inappropriate and shameful for a clergyman to do, but mainly when they did it in public. So one could in theory talk about declared intolerance for smoking in public and tolerance for smoking in private space. In practice smoking more and more often met in those two spaces as a sign of social changes which also affected the clergy.

Chełm land needs rethinking. One should not be indifferent to the transformations it is now undergoing. The one I have thought a lot about and been provoked to think about myself by for quite a few years now is „the different one” – the Orthodox. It turns out that the one from the past is very close to me (through my ancestors) and when the visting inhabitant of the Chełm Land, Chołmszczak, prays on „my land” is „at home” as well. I look at Chełm Land through the changes it experienced. They affected mainly those who actually lived there. I am trying to find an answer to the question: How did they feel about the changes? Did they have any special feelings about them at all? Or did they experience them in a completely different way from the one we can now imagine? To start with I tried to define the social community I find most interesting and which seems to play the key role in understanding the Chełm Land (Shoes). I asked myself whether whatever was shaken in the past still exists today and I talk about it in the „Nicholas in front of the Orthodox Church” paragraph. I broaden the problem indicated here in the next paragraph called „A cemetery and a well” to provoke thought on the physical picture of Chełm Land. I then present an introduction (The Inn) to an investigation of the so called common people’s perception of those changes. I also write about a case of taking advantage of a decree from 1875 by a person apparently not afflicted by the tsar’s policy on the Uniates (Mother of God in a well). I also wanted to take a look at those who remained Orthodox after 1905 (The resistant ones) and to demonstrate the religious tensions which rural communities experienced after 1905 (A fight). To be able to understand The Chełm Land one should observe the reactivation of the Orthodox Church and the piety with the another turning point in mind, namely the year 1938 (Cheers Iwane!). One could begin to reflect on the population movement in Chełm Land with the text entitled „Heaven”. I presented relations between Poles who lived there and those who moved there after World War II (Mamałajec) with the examples of Podhorce and Konopne (Hrubieszów county). In a short self introduction (Me) I would like to show the multiplicity of stories, people’s experiences, interpretations and the complexity of the identity issue. I would like to emphasise at the same time that I am one of the Chełm Land people and my comments and opinions are not any final conclusions. The Chełm Land is still alive and lively. The reactivation of the Orthodox diocese in the Lublin–Chełm region (restoration of liturgical and monastic life, the revitalisation of historic monuments) is yet another turning point for me.

The article is a synthetic attempt to summerize information about the film Intolerance made by David Wark Griffith in 1916. The author’s portrait was sketched and the circumstances of the creation of one of his most important films were described. The text was based on Polish subject literature and the selected materials from the foreign literature. All four episodes of Intolerance were described in detail in the article.