The word "clergy" denotes both the religious-social group of a managerial, cultic and pastoral character in a given religious community (the state of the priests as opposed to the secular and religious state) and - the political-social group (the clerical state as opposed to the knightly, bourgeois and peasant state). When we speak of the clerical state in the second sense, we are referring to the once politically and economically omnipotent feudal state of the medieval clergy, which survived in some places until the 19th century. In modern times, the clergy almost everywhere underwent a process of de-feudalisation and adapted to the new regimes. Mostly they settled among the intelligentsia, forming a separate professional group within the broadly defined 'social service'. It was not uncommon, however, for it to locate itself among the peasantry or the workers, an extreme example being the French experiment with the 'worker priests'. The processes of accommodation took place in different ways and at different speeds. The aim of this study is precisely to show the process of social and cultural adaptation of a large part of the Galician clergy, using the diocese of Tarnów as an example.