"As a mangy sheep infecting others shall be exiled" : adultery in eighteenth-century Lesser Poland village : the cultural interpretation

The subject of the article is adultery in an eighteenth-century village of Lesser Poland, in terms of relationships between legal and moral norms and social practices, considered as the continuum despite the binary structure. Albeit the normative order limited sexual activity only to the marriage and considered any other sexual behavior as a violation of this standard, the eighteenth-century peasant’s society tolerated courting, dancing, and even betrayal, responding only in the case of multiple and public repetition the forbidden act. Article consists of the story about the life of Catherine and Peter, sentenced to exile for committing adultery and interpretation of this narration based on the successively analyzed legal, religious and cultural norms. Paper is design as a case study. The theoretical framework of the article refers to the method of a thick description, proposed by Clifford Geertz, and of interpretation proposed by Robert Darnton in his "Great Cat Massacre". As a result it proposes explanation of the "adultery continuum" model, and also, enables to establish an intercultural dialogue between historical actors and a historian, in order to overcome the cultural shock experienced by readers rooted in the frames of contemporary, local culture.