Empty Night: Kashubian “Home Liturgy” in the Context of Death

• Main Author: Jan Perszon
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-02-01
• Series: Religions
• Subjects: Kashubia; death; folk; religiosity
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/12/2/136

Based on ethnographic field research and thanatological literature, this article analyzes the continuing, but rapidly disappearing, Kashubian custom of bidding farewell to a deceased member of the local community known as “empty night”. Its essence is the night prayer vigil in the house of the deceased, performed by neighbors and relatives. The prayer consists mainly of singing religious songs on “the last things”—in particular about purgatory, human fragility, God’s mercy, and the Passion of Christ. The efforts of the orants are motivated by the concern for the salvation of the soul of the deceased, that is, the shortening and relieving the purgatorial punishment. The centuries-old tradition of “empty night” has been rapidly disappearing over the past 50 years as a result of both economic and social transformations, the gradual erosion of living faith, and the abandonment of the priority of salvation by younger Kashubians. The progressive medicalization of life and change of the approach to death play a crucial role in weakening the tradition of the ancestors. Thus the traditional “empty night” becomes a relic of “tamed death,” giving way to its tabooization and the illusion of “technological immortality”.