Authors

Discussion

The second half of the seventeenth century is considered a turning point in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Cossack revolt triggered the Muscovite invasion, turning into the Thirteen Years War with Muscovy, and the Swedish Deluge, which precipitated Poland-Lithuania's military and political collapse. In the middle of 1655, escaping the Muscovite occupation, part of the members of the Reformed Church of Kojdanów (a town within the Ruthenian territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), led by their minister Daniel Reder, headed to the unoccupied lands of ethnic Lithuania, nearby Courland and Ducal Prussia. Even though Reder acted as a spiritual tutor of the daughter of the Reformed magnate Janusz II Radziwiłł, in exile he continued to fulfil his primary duties, regularly holding church services during the period between 3 October 1655 and Easter 1661. According to the Communion register of the Church of Kojdanów church services took place in Tauroggen, Szadόw, Mitau, Memel, Doblen, Goldingen, Tilsit, Labiau and Warsaw, and were attended not only by the exiled parishioners of Kojdanów but also by the residents of the mentioned towns. By looking into the experience of exile which the parishioners of Kojdanów shared, the paper will investigate to what extent they tended to congregate within or move beyond their own ethno-confessional group in new locations and what meaning they made of the religious wanderings they were forced to undertake.