We talk about technology, lexicography, and long-forgotten word senses in Polish with Prof. Włodzimierz Gruszczyński from the PAS Institute of the Polish Language, where work is underway on the Electronic Dictionary of the Polish Language of the 17th and 18th Centuries.
The Thornische Nachrichten von gelehrten Sachen, published in Toruń in 1762–1766, was a learned review journal, the first periodical of this kind in Poland. As one of its editors' priorities was to keep track of current Polish writing, the magazine regularly published reviews of the most notable books of Polish Enlightenment (among its reviewers were Stanisław Konarski, Wacław Rzewuski, Franciszek Bohomolec, Józef Minasowicz).
Early modern medicine knew thousands of medicines and possible treatments that could be found in guidebooks, medical dissertations, herbaria, and dispensaries. The article presents the characteristics of the basic sources of the history of medicine, as well as their specifi city and the range of information they provide. The aim is to show possible source selection method in an attempt to describe a real picture of the therapeutic methods most commonly used by the offi cial medicine in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Jerzy Topolski was one of the most outstanding Polish historians of the late 20th century. He wrote numerous works, including a synthesis of the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Com-monwealth in the 16-18th centuries, which is the object of the analyses presented in this article.
This article is devoted to a diplomatic (formal) analysis of 13 documents, including 12 originals issued by Russian tsars between 1576 and 1707, which are kept at the Kórnik Library. Among them, there are two original letters by Tsar Michael of Russia dating to 1634 and 1645 and four documents by Tsar Alexis of Russia from 1645 and 1668–1669. The collection also includes Peter the Great’s mandate of 1707 given to Russian negotiators for talks with representatives of the Sandomierz confederation, two extremely interesting documents (in the form of scrolls) of border-related negotiations dating to 1634 and 1645, as well as a notebook of 40 pages containing the Russian party’s proposals presented to Polish envoys during negotiations in Moscow at the turn of 1671 and 1672. The article is enriched with an analysis of the content of four well-preserved tsar’s seals applied to the documents in question.
This article attempts to show the importance of newspaper advertisements as a factual source which offers valuable insights into past events. The study of advertisements helps the researcher to complement and verify what has been gleaned from the usual documents, and sometimes can even provide a corrective to conclusions reached by other means. In particular, the advertisements in Lwowskie Tygodniowe Wiadomości [Lwów Weekly News], published 1786–1788 show how much information about property from the monasteries of Galicia, dissolved by Emperor Joseph II in 1782–1788, can be found in the local press. It is a source which not only contains important clues about the history and the scale of the dissolution but also a wealth of minor details that it would be hard find anywhere else.
One of the consequences of the incorporation of Warmia into the Kingdom of Prussia was the growing secularisation of the entire region. The lands belonging to the bishop of Warmia and his canons became the property of the state. The Prussian Partition enabled Protestants to settle in the areas which had previously been domi-nated almost entirely by Catholics. State authorities tried to meet the expectations of Protestants already in the 18th century by employing school headmasters and religion teachers in the towns of Warmia. Frederick the Great issued a decree that allowed holding religious services in local town halls. Some rooms in the castles were also adapted for the purpose. However, along with the increase in population, there was a growing demand for new church buildings, parish houses and schools. Necessar financial support came from the Prussian king Frederick William III, who suggested that the so-called secularisation fund, available after the dissolution of the Neuzelle monastery in Brandenburg, be assigned to this end. Building of new churches was entrusted to the State Construction Commission, led by a distinguished architect, Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
The Triumphs (Triumphi) by Petrarch is a series of six poems honouring the allegorical figures of Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time and Eternity, who vanquish each other in turn. The Italian poem sequence was virtually unknown in Poland (although a Polish translation of The Triumph of Love appeared c. 1630, only few readers would have read it as it was circulated exclusively in a small number of hand-made copies). The illustrations, however, caught the eye of the printers and became immediately popular. They depicted each of the victorious figures riding on triumphal chariot, followed by procession of captives. This article examines the Polish verses inspired by the illustrations rather than the text of the Trionfi i.e. written in the course of the late 17th and 18th century.
The author of the most remarkable poetic response to the pictorial representations of Petrarch's Triumphs was Samuil Gavrilovich Piotrowski-Sitnianowicz (aka Symeon of Polotsk). As a student of the Academy of Wilno, he came across an emblem book with copperplate engravings of the Triumphs designed by Maarten van Heemskerck in 1565. His Polish verses (composed c. 1650–1653) follow loosely the Latin epigrams (subscriptiones) by Hadrianus Junius (Adriaen de Jonghe). Symeon of Polotsk was the first Polish-language author whose verses reflected in extenso the pictorial representation of the Triumphs (before him verses inspired by Petrarch's allegories had been written by Mikołaj Rej, Maciej Stryjkowski and Stanisław Witkowski).
Wespazjan Kochowski's volume of miscellaneous pieces in verse published in 1674 includes an epigrammatic poem The Triumph of Love, inspired by Plate One of the Triumphs. However, Kochowski's description suggests that he must have seen an engraving showing Cupid's victims under his feet. That iconographic variant appears, among other, in the woodcuts of Bernard Salomon (1547) and the copperplates designed by one of van Heemskerck's pupils (mid-16th century) or Matthäus Greuter (1596).
The following two poems were written about a century later. In 1779 Franciszek Dionizy Kniaźnin published in his second volume of Erotyki [Erotic poems] a song called The Triumph of Love. Its scenic arrangement, inspired by the illustrations of Petrarch's first Triumphus, is adapted to present twenty-one pairs of suitors. The description is stylized in conformity with the current Rococo manner and spiced up with touches of parody. A similar treatment of this subject can be found in some 17th-century paintings, for example in the Triumph of Love by Frans Francken the Younger, or an identically titled picture by the Italian Baroque artist Mattia Preti. The other poem, On the picture of the 'Triumph of Death', can be found in Franciszek Karpiński's Zabawki wierszem i przykłady obyczajne [Diversions in Verse and Moral Exemplars] published in 1780. It names eleven preeminent ancient conquerors and rulers, all cut down by Death personified by a scythe-wielding skeleton. Karpiński's description was no doubt inspired by a copperplate engraving produced by Silvestro Pomarede and designed about 1748–1750 by Gianantonio Buti after Bonifacio de' Pitati. In each of the two prints most of the figures on the ground round the chariot are identified by name. It may also be noted that Karpiński rounds of his poem with two stanzas evoking the last plate in the cycle, The Triumph of Eternity.