The book collection from father Stefan Baranowicz, the priest of Knyszyn parish (1711–1729) in the Vilnius diocese

Abstract

The subject of the paper is the book collection of father Stefan Baranowicz, priest for the Knyszyn parish in the year 1712–1729. This book collection is an example of a private clerical library from the staropolskie („old Polish”) period. The main sources for exploring this library are the visitational acts from 1727, currently stored in the Archdiocese Archives in Bialystok. For the purpose of comparison, the book collection of the local parish from the same period has been discussed. The size, subject matter and authorship of the books that comprise both collections. The research concludes that the parish book collection was meant to meet local parish needs, whereas the priest’s private collection was more oriented towards the personal spiritual formation of clerics. In contrast to the parish library, the books collected by father Baranowicz tended towards being more contemporary, and included more works by Polish authors. The content of both collections did not overlap, and we can observe the transfer of books from church collections to private ones and vice versa, which would have been quite common at the time. The study and analysis of the collection of father Baranowicz gives the possibility of further comparative research of clerical book collections in the 1st half of the 18th century.