ABSTRACT
Polish monasteries, having experienced suppression during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were not again subject to increased suppression during the Communist era. Most institutions were restored shortly after World War I and again in the 1980s/1990s. As a result, Polish monasteries have not found it necessary to reconstruct their economy entirely, as is the case in the Czech Republic for example; instead, they are aiming towards repositioning that economy within a new political and social context. The monastic economy studied here is especially focused on pastoral activities within or outside the monastery, that is to say, it is concerned with the production of religious goods. Productive economy does not feature prominently in monastic communities. The variety of institutions studied here has allowed us to observe the way different monastic communities have integrated economic factors according to the different stages in their charisma and routinisation. Newly founded monasteries try to minimise the importance of economy as much as possible, whereas others do not discuss the necessity of a rational economy. Nevertheless, as a utopia, a monastery must try to maintain an alternative position and always reinvent its alterity.
