ABSTRACT
The division into high ‘learned’ culture and folk mass culture was as sharp in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries as in the Middle Ages. Women played a greater and more diversified role in folk culture because their access to learned culture was restricted. Folk culture is, however, such a vast and inadequately researched topic, especially in Poland, that we shall have to leave it out in our reflections, for it would have to include women’s role in handing down the folk knowledge of magic (allied with witchcraft), as well as their activities in popular medicine and in the structures of old rural customs. All these issues are still waiting to be researched; they require large-scale work in archives, which exceeds the capacity of a single person. Therefore we will focus on ‘learned’ culture, frequently identified with culture in general.
