ABSTRACT
In the sixteenth to seventeenth century the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth faced a confrontation between the Catholics and Uniates on the one side and the Orthodox and Protestants on the other. While for some it was necessary to convert the followers of other confessions to their faith, for the others it was necessary to preserve their religious, political, and social rights. In disputes, literary polemics and armed conflicts, miraculous images and icons played an important role. Miracles associated with them were understood as an evidence of a confession’s verity; therefore, each confession developed the cults of miraculous images/icons or sought to undermine such cults. The images and icons were thought to have supernatural origin: legends stated they appeared on trees, came swimming by rivers, were painted by angels, and so on. The events related to them, such as healing, salvation in dire circumstances, or conversions inspired by divine intervention, were recorded in the temples and later published as separate books. The believers of one confession might steal the miraculous icons from the temples of their opponents via armed attacks or claim that the miraculous images or icons thwarted attacks. In such ways, wonder-working images and icons were used to verify orthodoxy and argue for superiority.
