Abstract
The aim of the chapter is to explain a paraliturgical devotion to the saints, with special regard to their particular patronages, as preserved in the printed Czech-language Catholic comprehensive prayer books for laymen edited in the second half of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century. The main interest in pursuing this aim is to describe the phenomenon of pre-modern folk or popular religion (here concretely early modern folk or popular Catholicism), especially the particular cults (predominantly the cults of patron saints) and specifically in the example of the culture of the early modern Czech ethnic group.
At the beginning of the chapter, the theoretical basis for the research is presented and the type of comprehensive prayer book is defined. Subsequently, the editions of prayers books belonging to this category are listed and described (the author, foreign-language exemplar, number of editions etc.).
This textual corpus is then used for the analysis and interpretation concentrating on the patron saints and their patronages, including the frequency of their inclusion, and a typology of saintly patronages is proposed. In this "pantheon", the saints from the early Christian times dominate, medieval and early modern saints appear there only if they were endowed with an important patronage.
The patrons and their patronages can be divided into six thematic groups: patrons dealing with health issues, pest, social life of an individual, existential anxiety and death and afterlife, and patrons of the land. The common feature of these patronages is their practical orientation to the problems of the everyday life of an individual or a community, especially those which cannot be coped with by human powers alone, which explains their lasting popularity within the folk religion.