MARIAVITES. — A pseudo-mystical sect founded in 1906 in Poland by the excommunicated priest Jan Kowalski and the visionary Felicia Kozlowska (1862–1922). Received into the Union of Utrecht, by which their doctrine of faith was influenced, based on Quietism and otherwise identical with that of “Old Catholicism,” the M. profess a special cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whence their name (Mariae vitam unitari), and also practise a particular devotion to the Eucharist. Only recently have they rejected the sacrament of Penance.
Numbering approximately 200,000 in 1911, they were reduced to less than half that number in 1925, after the Old Catholic Episcopal Conference broke off relations with them, as a result of their excesses of fanaticism concerning the two founders and the introduction of the so-called “mystical marriages” between Mariavite priests and nuns. At present they number little more than 50,000, with one archbishop, three bishops, thirty priests, and five hundred nuns. The M. live according to the Franciscan Rule: the priests observe the first, the nuns the second, and the ordinary faithful the third.