The Parish Church of St Nicolaus at Byczyna in Silesia (German Pitschen) presents a most interesting, yet till now unknown example of a hall church from around 1300. It proves that the Silesian founders, as well as builders themselves, sought at the end of the 13th century for an suitable, attractive form of a representative town church. All up-to-date researchers treated the Byczyna church as an integral structure dating back to the end of the 14th century. It is most surprising, as it is more than evi- dent that we deal here with a much older building, which was only much rebuilt to the present shape at the end of the 14 th century. With no doubt, the church in question forms one of the most interesting architectural creations of around 1300 in Silesia. Its builder proved their knowledge of many important buildings in Austria and Moravia, especially of the Cathedral al Olomouc/Olmütz, which was near completion at that time. The short hall nave of the Byczyna church counts to the main trend of the parish churches in Silesia from the 2nd half of the 13th century. In turn, the single west tower was erected prob- ably according to the wish of its alleged founder, Henry the Third, duke of Głogów/Glogau. It reminded of the west tower of the Collegiate Church at Głogów, while the unique mason decoration in the Byczyna choir, which encompassed sculpted baldachins and vaulting shafts, was an allusion to the chancel of the aforementioned church at Głogów. The size and opulent articulation of the eastern part of the analysed building stressed the function of the church as a seat of an archpriest. Unfortu- nately the Byczyna choir, which was a unique structure in the Silesian architecture of around 1300, was later strongly rebuilt and lost its previous shape.

The paper deals with the problem of defi nite article in the Gothic Bible. More specifically, it concentrates on the differences and similarities of use between the target language, i.e. Gothic, and the source language, i.e. Greek, with special attention being paid to the case of the article – nominative, genitive, dative or accusative. It is part of a larger endeavor aiming at the analysis of the whole Gothic Bible in this respect. This time the Gospel of John is taken into consideration, following an earlier study which concentrated on the Gospel of Matthew. In the paper it will not only be observed how frequently Gothic omits the definite article in places where Greek uses it in the Gospel of John, but also in what way the cases of the definite article vary in both languages due to their grammatical specificities.

The paper compares the employment of the definite article in the Gothic version of the Gospel of Luke and in its Greek counterpart which served as the basis for the Gothic translation. Although the Gothic text is usually said to be a word-for-word reflection of the Greek text, we demonstrate that just like in the case of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of John, which were of concern in our previous studies, there are enormous differences between the two languages especially in the domain of the definite article, not only in terms of amount but also in terms of the cases used – nominative, genitive, dative or accusative.

The horror fiction of the Romantic Age differs considerably from its contemporary descendants. While generally associated with scary entertainment (‘playing with fear’), the Romantic Gothic often enough crossed the line to explore the depths of genuine epistemological, existential or political fears. This would not have been possible without developing its own poetics which drew its strength from a variety of sources. One of them was the speculative philosophy of history in its pessimistic and optimistic variants. They both fed the sense of horror and its literary transpositions. Moreover, they formed a positive feedback loop: anxiety over the course of history led to the use of the devices and registers of the poetics of horror, which in turn led to the amplification of the effects of the historical vision on the reader.

Jan Walter of Chojnice (*about 1445, †1512), initially a vicar, and then a parson of St. Peter and Paul’s Church, as well as a secretary of Gdansk City Council, is one of the best known figures associated with the old book culture in Gdansk. The article describes one of the aspects of his bibliophilia: book covers marked with supralibros. It first discusses works by local bookbinders made for Walter, and then analyses a supralibros in the form of a miniature oval featuring the mark of a bibliophile (the head of a Negro) against the background of the European and local tradition of marking books in late Middle Ages. As a result, it is demonstrated that six from among the Gdansk citizen’s books we currently know, which contain the mark, were provided with it secondarily. This is mainly indicated by the non-typical locations of the supralibros – each one is in a way “squeezed in” between the regularly spaced elements of the blind embossing adornment of the covers.

This paper presents two rare 16th-century panel-stamped bindings from the collections of the Kórnik Library. The first one, decorated with an impression of a panel depicting the personification of the Christian virtue of Hope (Spes), protects the printed book published in 1545. The binding was made by a Netherlandish bookbinder working in Leuven, called Master IP, identified with Jacob Pandelaert (d. ab. 1563). The second binding presents a Gothic motif of animals-in-foliage and protects a printed book published in 1550. The authorship of the panel (the so-called de profundis) is attributed to a bookbinder working in the town of ’s-Hertogenbosch (fr. Bois-le-Duc), Geraert van der Hatart (d. ab. 1540/1541). Both these bindings testify to the fact that the holdings of the Kórnik Library include gems of the West-European bookbinding craft.