„Jako parszywa owca innych zarażająca aby wygnana była”. Cudzołóstwo w osiemnastowiecznej wsi małopolskiej – interpretacja kulturowa

This article takes as its subject adultery in eighteenth-century village communities of Lesser Poland, in terms of the relationship between legal and moral norms and social practices, considered as a continuum despite their binary structure. In despite of the normative order, which limited sexual activity to marriage, and considered any other sexual behavior as a violation of this standard, eighteenth-century peasant society tolerated courting, dancing together, and even betrayal, responding only to cases in which the forbidden act was committed repeatedly or in public. The article consists of an investigation of the story of about the life of Catherine and Peter, sentenced to exile for committing adultery, and an interpretation of this narrative based on successive analyses of legal, religious and cultural norms. The paper is designed as a case study. The theoretical framework of the article utilizes the method of ‘thick description’ proposed by Clifford Geertz, and the interpretation proposed by Robert Darnton in his “Great Cat Massacre”. As a result it proposes an explanation of the ‘adultery continuum’ model, and also enables to establish an intercultural dialogue between historical actors and historian, in order to overcome the cultural shock experienced by readers rooted in the framework of contemporary, local culture.