Religiosity in the Ethos of Polish Brethren in Light of Funeral and Wedding Speeches from the Seventeenth Century

To this day, the speeches of the Polish Brethren remain a material that is only slightly exploited in terms of research, and hence reflecting on the recorded traces of Socinian piety will be an attempt to draw the attention of researchers of various specialties to this type of sources. Oratory was an important and characteristic part of noble culture in the seventeenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, associated with extensive customs, expressing significant features of mentality and immersed in the topicality of social life. The speech created in the Socinian environment has a special source value. First of all, funeral and wedding orations constitute a rich body of texts documenting the events in the life of the Polish Brethren community, the cultivation of noble customs in it, and at the same time giving them their own distinct features. The aim of the chapter is to read speeches delivered at funerals and weddings, often by important representatives of the congregation (such as Andrzej Moskorzowski, Piotr Morzkowski, and Andrzej Wiszowaty) and ask about the place and ways of expressing the religious attitude in them. Capturing their characteristic features is possible only by referring to the noble ethos created in the Polish oratory culture of the time. At the same time, some preserved speeches make it possible to show the individual features of the piety of specific individuals and those provided by eyewitnesses and also to an audience consisting of those who knew, understood, and often respected the heroes.