This work attempts to reconstruct the culture that contributed to the philosophical way of thinking. My goal is to extract two important factors: religion carrying individual experience and the importance of certain ideas which are present in that culture. Sources of philosophical thinking can be found in the structure of polis. Only on its basis could the idea of the wise man and citizen as well as religion-oriented individual experience be raised. Greek polis paves the way for a new style of thinking by creating the conditions for its citizens to follow the ideal, regardless of the position they occupy in society. Sustainability, which should be a feature of a good citizen, is also the essence of society. Highly positioned wisdom as moral reflection tinged with religiosity allows thinking according to the laws of logos. Finally, the experience offered by the mystery cults leads to the transformation of their own existence and the emergence of a way of recognition of reality different than before. Undeniably, all the elements related to structure policies with its ideals contribute to the emergence of a new way of thinking in the form of philosophy. One could say that the philosophical objectivity is preceded by the subjectivity and rationality of its roots dating back to irrationality.

The Divine Revelation – and in consequence Christian theology – connects a term ‘holiness’ with the nature of God who in relation to His creature is totally transcendent but in the same time is close to it and in His Son Jesus Christ, in a sense, united with it. Strictly speaking it is possible to talk about holiness under one condition: if one believes in the Holy One – God who is the source of any holiness. Holiness of God was fully revealed in Jesus Christ who through His revelation-salvifc deeds allowed human beings to participate in God’s holiness. Church, however, being holy from her nature (and participating in God’s holiness) has a task to proclaim holiness in the world and to practice it. The essence of holiness is always the same although holiness could be practiced in the Church and the world in many different ways. So understood holiness of Christian life – achieved especially in everyday life or in a way of heroic virtues – has a very important meaning for the credibility of Christianity. Holiness is present not only in a spiritual (‘inside’) life but also has outside refections which is so much important for a contemporary mentality marked by praxis and praxeology. holiness, however, could be recognized only from a perspective of faith.

Despite the tormented national reality, the faith in the future redemption of Poland and the idea of change and purification gave birth in the works of the Polish romantics to the hope of salvation, of the advent of the divine kingdom on Earth. Undoubtedly an idea contributed to the birth of this optimistic vision, that was the conception of a Poland like the “Christ of the nations”, which took hold in the new mystical atmosphere of the early nineteenth century and which was combined with Christian eschatologism, revolutionary aspirations and hopes for the future redemption of history. The apocalyptic and millenarian motifs present in the Divine Comedy undeniably played a part in strengthening the messianic ideas of the romantics: the present from a fertile ground for evil and chaos, through suffering and destruction, became the privileged moment of expiation that prepared the advent of the city of God. The paper aims to analyze some motifs from Dante’s Paradise which inspired some of the most stunning pages of Polish romantic literature.

A common feature of ancient Near Eastern written tradition is the curse formula, i.e. a threat issued against an individual or group of individuals who might commit some infraction, be it the violation of a treaty, an armed rebellion against an overlord, or the removal and/ or destruction of an inscription or other monument. Typically, curse formulae invoke a divine force or forces as the agent(s) that would, if need be, carry out the punishment of anyone guilty of committing any of the aforementioned infractions. Although curse formulae from various ancient civilizations have been the subject of multiple studies over the years, one civilization that has been overlooked is the kingdom of Aksum that dominated northern Ethiopia from around the turn of the Common Era to the seventh century. This article seeks to rectify this situation by systematically presenting and analysing all known curse formulae in Aksumite inscriptions and pointing out analogies with other ancient societies in which curse formulae are attested, as well as, where relevant, ethnographic analogies with modern societies. Aksumite curse formulae are limited to royal inscriptions and are concerned exclusively with the destruction of monuments erected by kings. Their thematic content, however, sheds light on concepts of crime and collective guilt in Aksumite society more broadly.

The greatest difficulty in translating Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy into another language certainly consists in rendering as much as possible the richness of diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic registers and linguistic variants present in the poem. The language used by Dante expresses the various tones of the vernacular, also making use of various idioms, styles and literary genres that are also very different from each other. The different components brought to light both on a phonomorphological and lexical level often settle into linguistic allotropes, voices which, while going back to the same origin and retaining the same meaning, are formally differentiated. The abundance of allotropes is in fact a very important prerogative of the language of the Comedy. The article, focusing in particular on the phenomenon of allotropy in the original Italian, analyzes and compares the solutions provided by nineteenth‑century translators: in particular, Julian Korsak, Antoni Stanisławski, Edward Porębowicz, and the unpublished translation by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski.

In France, as well as in other countries of the French language, the relationship between the Bible and literature mirrors the dilemma facing the European culture, a culture founded on the Greek and Roman civilization, when it was becoming Christianized. The Christians in the French speaking Europe confront the problem of 'double-fidelity': either to the Bible as the Truth, or to the Greek and Roman culture representing Art. Two trends can be observed. Some would try to prove the artistic superiority of the Bible over pagan literature. Others would attempt to show that even in that kind of non-Christian literature it is possible to observe the presence of supernatural truth. The dilemma abates and loses its importance starting with the XVIII century when literature as such emancipates and becomes an autonomous reality of esthetic character.

Unsurprisingly, in the Middle Ages, the Bible constitutes the crucial source of inspiration for French literature. Authors compose paraphrases and long poems based on Biblical motifs. There appear mystery plays, with their performance often spread over a number of days. In the XVI century, both Catholics and Protestants produce a number of translations of the Holy Scriptures. There appear poetic pa- raphrases of psalms, and also extensive epic poems adopting various Biblical threads. In the XVII century, the genre of poetic meditation appears in addition to the genres already mentioned. On the other hand, the kind of drama based on Biblical themes is in retreat; it finds refuge in the academic theater, when it becomes superseded by works of the classicist character. In the beginning of the XVIII cen- tury, some scholars try to demonstrate the religious character of the works of Antiquity.

Together with the rationalism of Enlightenment, there appears a new attitude towards the Bible. In Voltaire, the Bible is an object of attacks and of ridicule. In Rousseau, it is a paradigm for the kind of discourse that is supposed to take its place. In Romanticism, we can observe the influence of the Bible over both Christian and non-Christian writers. In the works of the latter, the poet becomes a mystagogue interpreting the old myths. The Bible influences poetry; it serves as a stylistic and esthetic model, as a source of themes and motifs, and also as a point of reference for poems in the philosophy of history with the pantheistic or else progressist and utopic message, and for non-Christian apocrypha. In Symbolism, the Bible becomes completely despoiled of its religious value. It is being used in entirely atheistic and subjectivist ways. By the end of the XIX century, and in the first half of the XX century, we observe in France some kind of Catholic renaissance. The Bible is present in the prophetic works of Le'on Bloy. It becomes the object of the exegetical work of Claudel, of the poetry of Jouve and P. Emmanuel. In non-Christian writers in loses its function of the book of faith and becomes a book of myths.

This article examines Henryk Sienkiewicz’s proto-racist distinction between the gentry and the commoners in his novel With Fire and Sword (1883–1884). This division, which is believed to be part of the divine world order, credits the commoners with an inferior humanity. It is founded on a set of essentialist beliefs – that social class is inherited, that ‘noble blood’ confers superiority, and that physiognomy bespeaks high birth (you can tell a noblemen or noblewoman by their physical appearance). As the article claims, Sienkiewicz allows no room for a voice questioning those beliefs, let alone exposing their class-bound arbitrariness.