SOCIAL PROTECTION IN THE POLISH LANDS IN THE PRE-PARTITION PERIOD. A HISTORICAL AND LEGAL OUTLINE

<ns3:p>The phenomena of poverty, begging, homelessness or social alienation were naturally part of the fate of all societies, including ours. In Poland, the problem of pauperization existed from the beginning of the Poland’s state, and the beginnings of support for the needy should be associated with Poland’s adoption of Christianity. In the pre-partition period, support for the poor, the sick, the disabled or orphans was based on hospitalization. The shelters, then called hospitals, were subject to continuous specialization, extending help to increasingly wider groups of people in need. The progressive reorientation and publicization of Polish social protection (good order commissions, Commission on Hospitals) was interrupted by the period of partitions. The subject of the argument is therefore the evolution of forms of social protection, and the goal is the reconstruction of the protection system, while the very concept of the system should be accepted in a purely conventional sense. The conducted historical and legal analysis is intended to answer the research problem posed concerning: the type of protection forms and their specialization, the evolution of the social protection paradigm (from private charity, through philanthropy to public charity), and thus the periodization of subsequent trends.</ns3:p>