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Centrum Badań Historycznych PAN w Berlinie
The subject of paper will be the issue of sacred space as an area for private prayer. In the late Middle Ages, the development of devotional practices favoured the individualisation of religious experience. Religious movments, the activities of mendicant orders, and the development of the economy of salvation supported the personal concern for a happy eternal life and the multiplication of practices leading to it. Every Christian, even those with no theological knowledge and unaccustomed to difficult spiritual practices, became responsible for their own prayer. The range was extensive, and various areas, objects and items served to arrange and designate a space for the faithful to have personal contact with God. From the church, where there was space for private prayers in addition to the liturgy, to paintings, chapels, devotional objects, and even the sound of a bell. Examples from late-medieval Poland will be used to show the material and symbolic determinants of prayer spaces.