Andrzej Towiański (1799-1878) remains a neglected research topic despite being a central figure in Polish Messianism: the nineteenth-century cultural movement advocating the recognition of Polish nationality and the restoration of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Towiański led the Cause of God, a non-institutionalised religious movement promoting a social renewal based on Christian virtues. Existing scholarship focused on Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), Poland’s national poet and Towiański’s disciple, neglecting broader research on the movement. Using a historical-critical methodology based on unpublished archival sources and a micro-historical approach to the study of social groups, the project analyses: 1) Towiański’s political thought, which anticipated contemporary issues such as self-determination of people, pacifism, freedom of confession, women’s emancipation, and animal rights; 2) the diffusion of Towianism from Lithuania to Central-Eastern Europe and Western Europe; 3) the tensions between the Towianists, nationalist movements, and the Roman Catholic Church; 4) The relevance of Towiański’s ideas in contemporary Poland.
By examining this under-researched movement, this project challenges nineteenth-century dominant narratives, broadening understanding of the actors involved in the processes of European national independence and highlighting the contribution of Polish-Lithuanian non-hegemonic political-religious ideas to European social and intellectual history.