On the Mare, the Water & the Warming of the Souls

Michał z Janowca (Michaele de Janoviec) a monk at the monastery in Trzemeszno (Tremesno) wrote the following in his Polish sermons:

“And we strongly warn you not to walk around “with a mare” [i.e.,] with “kobylica” and if they should come to you from other parishes, do not give them quarter [in your parish/village] under penalty of excommunication. And we prohibit most firmly that no one should dare walk [to get?] “dyngus” because so many people are soaked [drowned?]. And [as to] Holy Wednesday they may be admonished, not to burn [“candles” called] “gromadki“, in accordance with the pagan custom [and] in commemoration of souls of their loved ones. And as to those who lie, who say that the souls go to such fire and there [they] warm themselves, [we may say] truly, no one leaves [such heresy], who has once gone there.”

(Item monemus vos firmissime ut non ambuletis per equam po kobylicy, Sz kobylicza et si de alijs parochijs ad vos veniunt, nolite eis quartenses dare et hoc sub anathemate iubemus. Item depectationem po dynguszom prohibemus firmissime ut nullus audeat ambulare quia ita multi submerguntur. Item feria quarta magna admoneantur, ne crement focos grumathky ardentes secundum ritum paganorum in commemorationem animarum suarum cariorum. Item qui mentiuntur, qui dicunt quod anime ad illum ignem veniant et se illic calefaciant. Nullus namque egreditur, qui semel ibi intraverunt).

Sermones Polonici a fratre Michaele de Janoviec scripti (towards the end of the XVth century). The language of this version comes from Aleksander Brückner, Ueber die älteren Texte des Polnischen in Archiv für slavische Philologie, Volume 10, p. 385.

What can we say? Old habits die hard!

Kobylica