Among the differences inherent only in the Szlachta culture, which, on the one hand, separated it in the XVI-XVIII centuries from the culture of other social strata, and on the other, had a persistent, and mainly negative impact on the further history of Poland, one of the main places is undoubtedly occupied by the customs of the szlachta. It has created a culture that is not only spatially dispersed and individualized, but above all rural. The fact is that the gentry lived in the countryside, in estates scattered over the territory of a huge state, and was not concentrated around the royal court, as was the case, for example, in France. The concept of a certain Polish Versailles, where dozens of minor planets would revolve around the "sun king", receiving their power, brilliance and prestige only from him, was extremely alien and hateful to the gentry masses (this does not mean, of course, that they did not see the benefits that would flow for a young nobleman from the opportunity to "cut his hair" at the same time). magnate's yard). In the seventeenth century, however, the szlachta did not follow the example of those representatives of the Polish Renaissance who also built their residences in cities. The gentry almost ostentatiously emphasized their dislike of large cities, which they saw as, in modern parlance,"an accumulation of evil." This hostility also applied to the capital, Warsaw, in particular, because it was seen as a hotbed of political intrigues dangerous for the gentry's freedom. On the other hand, life in the countryside seemed to the gentry to conform to the traditions of republican Rome, to which they so readily turned, and where, as is well known, even dictators went straight from the plow to defend their threatened homeland. Such a life also gave her moral advantages over other strata of the population, "for vices and heresies are easily spread in cities, and knightly valor gives way to effeminacy." 1The ideal of a nobleman-landowner was associat ... Читать далее