In the early modern period, there were around 40 religious confraternities in the agglomeration of Cracow, one of the oldest and most important being the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary at the Dominican Church of the Holy Trinity. It is not known when it was founded, but it was probably already operating in the late Middle Ages. In 1600, this confraternity, existing “ab immemorabilis tempore”, was reformed by Fr. Abraham Bzowski, who on this occasion prepared and published an extensive dissertation, having the character of its “statutes”. From 4 February 1601 the seat of the renewed confraternity was in the Chapel of the Three Kings, at the far end of the northern nave of the church. It contained the Brotherhood’s altar which was transferred, probably after 1688, to the church of St. Giles and placed on the altar’s stone in the apse of the presbytery. The altar contained the holy picture of the Virgin Mary of the Salus Populi Romani type, connected by tradition established in the first half of the 17th century with Pope Clement VIII, who was to grant it indulgences. Bernard Maciejowski, then Bishop of Łuck, later Bishop of Cracow and finally Primate, is considered as the donor of the painting. Every first Sunday in October, the Cracow copy of the Roman image was carried out by the brothers out of the chapel and in a solemn procession around the Main Square. This custom was linked to the victory of the Christian fleet over the Turkish one near Lepanto in 1571, after which Pope Pius V established its liturgical memory (7 October). In Poland, this tradition gained a new dimension after to the successful defence of the Chocim fortress against the Turks in 1621. The devotion to the Rosary was cultivated not only in the Brotherhood’s chapel, but also in the Conventual Church, where the altar of the Holy Rosary stood to the left of the choir entrance. Symmetrically to it, on the right side of the rainbow arcade stood the altar of the Confraternity of the Holy Name of Jesus, founded in 1585 by Fr. Bartłomiej of Przemyśl. Its aim was to eradicate the sinful custom of swearing oaths, and because of the connections with the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary it was called the Archconfraternity of the Rosary of the Most Holy Name of Jesus. The spreading of the rosary prayer by the Order went beyond the Conventual Church. A special role in this work was played by the Gothic Church of St. Giles, which the Dominicans took under their protection in 1588. An important caesura in the history of the Archconfraternity of the Holy Rosary was the move to a new spacious oratory, which was erected on the site of the medieval Chapel of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the far end of the southern nave of the church. One of the reasons for undertaking this new work is considered to be the desire to commemorate the victory of John III Sobieski over the Turks at Vienna on 12 September 1683. The opulent decor and interesting ideological programme have only partially survived, but they can be reconstructed on the basis of preserved written sources, as can be the character of the Brotherhood’s celebrations. Particularly interesting monuments include those connected with the so-called Century of the Rosary, established with the consent of Pope Innocent XII (1694). It was a congregation of 100 brothers and 100 sisters, whose task was to pray continuously for the souls suffering in Purgatory. Among other things, a book of this association has been preserved, which contains illuminations showing the salutary effects of the prayer of the Rosary.

A gigantic amounts of data and information on molecules that constitute the very complex cell machinery have been collected, classified and stored in data banks. Although we posses enormous amount of knowledge about the properties and functions of thousands of molecular entities, we are still far from understanding how they do work in a living cell. It is clear now that these molecules (genes, proteins) are not autonomous, that there is no direct linear relation between genotype and phenotype, and that the majority of functions are carried and executed by concerted molecular activity, and that the majority of diseases are multifactorial. A basic property of the matter in a living cell (both normal and pathologic) is an interaction between variety of macromolecules, mainly proteins, genes (DNA) etc. In a process of self-organization they are able to form an active molecular biologic system – a complex, labile and dynamic network which integrity is secured by non-covalent bounds. In this essay some basic properties of network structure and the universal rules that govern them are described. Network or system biology is promising new research approach in biology and medicine.