“Verily, This Is the Sheepfold of that Good Shepherd”: The Idea of the “True” Church in Sixteenth-Century Polish Catechisms

The article discusses how the authors of sixteenth-century Polish Catholic and Evangelical catechisms perceived and analysed the notion of “the Church”. Following the Tridentine programme, the Catholic authors present their Church as unified under the Pope’s authority and the only inheritor of the works of the Apostles. The veracity of its teaching is testified to with God’s unnatural interventions – miracles. Protestant theologians teach about “the visible and outward Church”, which exists whenever the pure Word of God is preached and where sacraments are administered in accordance with the Holy Writ. Alongside the Visible Church, there exists “the invisible and inward Church” that unites all those following Christ, who is the one and only head of the Church

The Reward, Discipline, and Installation of Church Leaders: an Examination of 1 Timothy 5:17-22

This dissertation investigates the practices of reward, discipline, and installation of leaders in the church as portrayed in 1 Timothy 5: 17-22. The text itself is examined, finding that well-governing congregational leaders were to be honoured for their labour and provided with tangible support, that leaders were to be protected from unsubstantiated accusations, that a leader whose misconduct was established was to be disciplined publicly, and that care was to be taken to put only worthy persons into positions of leadership. These practices are compared to those seen in the disputed and undisputed Pauline texts, the remainder of the New Testament, and the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, establishing significant similarities as well as differences, some of these reflecting the development from itinerant to resident leaders in the churches. The practices of cognate groups such as synagogues, the Essenes, and voluntary associations, seen in Jewish and Greco-Roman literature and inscriptions of the contemporary period (ending with the Apostolic Fathers), are investigated for similarities and differences. The study finds that, although there are some similarities to Jewish practices, these groups substantially differed from the instructions of 1 Timothy 5: 17-22 in their practices of reward, discipline and installation of leaders. In the Gracco- Roman context, in particular, leaders in these cognate groups were essentially immune from accusations made by group members and any resulting discipline. Similarly, the idea that leaders were to receive financial support from those below them was foreign to normal practice in these groups and was deemed not 'honourable'. The conclusion reached is that these congregational practices regarding leaders, while conceptually quite similar to principles given regarding itinerant Christian workers in the undisputed Paulines, are quite distinct from practices employed in the cultural milieu of the Pastoral Epistles. Some of these differences appear problematic, given the Pastoral Epistles' concerns about maintaini

Niemieccy kupcy i czarownica w Krakowie w 1642 r.

On 25 October 1642, Adam Fister, a Cracow merchant, reported to the local justice that the Lübeck tradesman Casper Bekman had recurred to magical practices with the help of the witch he visited at the Spital Garden, behind the city walls, near St Florian’s Gate. Next to the Spital, serving as an almshouse, there was a cemetery with the graves discovered in 1837. They were groundlessly connected with the Polish Brethren, and this false interpretation has its continuation today in the name of Arian St., downtown Cracow. In fact, the hospital and the graveyard belonged to the local Lutheran congregation, and the Cracow merchants whose opinions Fister recalled at the court were its members.25 października 1642 r. krakowianin Adam Fister zdał relację miejscowemu wójtowi o magicznych rytuałach odprawianych na prośbę lubeckiego kupca Kaspra Bekmana przez czarownicę w ogrodzie szpitalnym za murami miejskimi, nieopodal Bramy Floriańskiej. Wzmiankowany w źródle szpital-przytułek sąsiadował z cmentarzem, którego groby odkryto w 1837 r. Połączono je wtedy bezpodstawnie z braćmi polskimi, a współczesnym świadectwem tej fałszywej tradycji jest ul. Ariańska. Faktycznie szpital i cmentarz należały do miejscowej gminy luterańskiej, jej członkami byli zaś zapewne wymienieni w źródle krakowscy kupcy

Dochody z dóbr stołowych biskupów krakowskich i arcybiskupów gnieźnieńskich w 1545 r.

The article discusses the revenues from the landed estates of Cracow bishops and Gniezno archbishops of 1545. The list of revenues was inserted into an inventory of the personal chattel of those dioceses’ pastor Piotr Gamrat, who had died that year without a last will and testament. Hence, the Cracow cathedral chapter decided to write down the inventory because their responsibility was to settle the archbishop’s debts and to cover the costs of his funeral. The 1545 revenues are confronted with the value of the Cracow bishops’ landed property according to its 1529 taxation, and with the manorial incomes that were documented for a part of the Gniezno archbishopric in 1531. This comparison shows a ca. thirty-percent total income growth in the Cracow bishops’ demesne. In one of the three Gniezno archbishops’ manorial estates that were taken into account, a hundred percent growth took place, while in the two others the incomes’ volume remained almost unchanged.Artykuł przedstawia dochody kluczy dóbr stołowych biskupów krakowskich i arcybiskupów gnieźnieńskich spisane w 1545 r. Źródło to jest częścią inwentarza mobiliów pasterza tych diecezji, arcybiskupa Piotra Gamrata, który zmarł we wspomnianym roku, nie pozostawiwszy testamentu. Inwentarz sporządziła więc krakowska kapituła katedralna, jako że do niej należało spłacenie długów zmarłego oraz sfinansowanie kosztów jego pogrzebu. Dochody te skonfrontowano z wartością domeny biskupów krakowskich oszacowaną w 1529 r. oraz z dochodami dóbr arcybiskupów gnieźnieńskich zapisanymi w 1531 r. Wynika z tego, że szacunkowy dochód domeny biskupów krakowskich wzrósł między 1529 a 1545 r. o około trzydzieści procent. W jednym z trzech kluczy arcybiskupstwa gnieźnieńskiego dochody wzrosły o około sto procent, zaś dla pozostałych odnotowano tylko niewielkie różnice

Multiway Array Decomposition Analysis of EEGs in Alzheimer’s Disease

Methods for the extraction of features from physiological datasets are growing needs as clinical investigations of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in large and heterogeneous population increase. General tools allowing diagnostic regardless of recording sites, such as different hospitals, are essential and if combined to inexpensive non-invasive methods could critically improve mass screening of subjects with AD. In this study, we applied three state of the art multiway array decomposition (MAD) methods to extract features from electroencephalograms (EEGs) of AD patients obtained from multiple sites. In comparison to MAD, spectral-spatial average filter (SSFs) of control and AD subjects were used as well as a common blind source separation method, algorithm for multiple unknown signal extraction (AMUSE). We trained a feed-forward multilayer perceptron (MLP) to validate and optimize AD classification from two independent databases. Using a third EEG dataset, we demonstrated that features extracted from MAD outperformed features obtained from SSFs AMUSE in terms of root mean squared error (RMSE) and reaching up to 100% of accuracy in test condition. We propose that MAD maybe a useful tool to extract features for AD diagnosis offering great generalization across multi-site databases and opening doors to the discovery of new characterization of the disease

“Verily, This Is the Sheepfold of that Good Shepherd”: The Idea of the “True” Church in Sixteenth-Century Polish Catechisms

The article discusses how the authors of sixteenth-century Polish Catholic and Evangelical catechisms perceived and analysed the notion of “the Church”. Following the Tridentine programme, the Catholic authors present their Church as unified under the Pope’s authority and the only inheritor of the works of the Apostles. The veracity of its teaching is testified to with God’s unnatural interventions – miracles. Protestant theologians teach about “the visible and outward Church”, which exists whenever the pure Word of God is preached and where sacraments are administered in accordance with the Holy Writ. Alongside the Visible Church, there exists “the invisible and inward Church” that unites all those following Christ, who is the one and only head of the Church

Krakowski drukarz Stanisław Murmelius i jego księgozbiór (1571)

Drukarz Stanisław Murmelius, którego aktywność poświadczona jest od lat czterdziestych do siedemdziesiątych XVI w., związany był głównie z Krakowem, choć okresowo kierował typografiami w innych miastach Rzeczypospolitej, m.in. w Brześciu w latach 1558–1565. Na publikowany tu jego księgozbiór, zinwentaryzowany w Krakowie w 1571 r., składają się w większości dzieła autorów różnych nurtów luteranizmu (43,66%) oraz teologów z kręgu ewangelicko-reformowanego (22,53%), na ogół występujące w tym źródle w więcej niż jednym egzemplarzu. Inwentarz sporządzony został z nakazu krakowskiego wójta, a książki miały być przekazane lubelskiemu kupcowi Jakubowi Konopnicy jako rozliczenie długu.Printer Stanisław Murmelius, who was active from the 1540s to the 1570s, developed his professional career mainly in Cracow. Nevertheless, at times, he managed typographies in other cities of the Commonwealth, including that at Brest (Brześć) in 1558–1565. His book collection that is presented here, and which was registered in Cracow in 1571, is made up of texts by authors of various Lutheran denominations (43.66 per cent), and theologians of the Evangelical Reformed Church (22.53 per cent), present usually in more than one copy. The inventory was prepared on the order of the Cracow justice, and the books were to be handed over to the Lublin merchant Jakub Konopnica as discharge of a debt