Early 20th Century Miracula Related to St. Anthony’s Wondrous Painting from Sądowa Wisznia in the Light of Archival Sources from the Collection of the Krakow Archive of Our Lady of the Angels’ Province of the Reformed Franciscans

Abstract

The article is an edition of the archival source containing a list of miracles which took place from ca. 1900 to 1913 through the intercession of St. Anthony of Padua in a painting from the Reformed Franciscan monastery in Sądowa Wisznia. The analyzed text is currently kept in the resources of the Archive of Our Lady of the Angels’ Province of the Reformed Franciscans in Krakow. Note that it does not constitute an independent archive unit, but has been instead incorporated in the hand-written Chronicle of the Monastery in Sądowa Wisznia of 1888–1945. The actual source edition – prepared in accordance with the principles set by I. Ihnatowicz, i.e. a complex, double note system – is preceded by a multi-section introduction. It starts with a brief outline of the unique characteristics of the cult of St. Anthony among the Polish Reformed Franciscans, followed by a short history of the monastery in Sądowa Wisznia and the gracious painting, and closes with an analysis of the miracles. The author did not hesitate to point out analogies withthe miracles described in the article and to include reflections on the fragmentary picture of the early 20th-century society of the Eastern Borderlands of Poland based on the sources, in terms of their religiousness and a tendency to put faith in a miraculous power of objects of worship. She also used other sources from the archives (e.g. the mass intention book, the chronicle and the documents of St. Anthony’s Society).