Polish Culture in the Renaissance E-Book

Facca, Danilo (a cura di)

• Herausgeber: Firenze University Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

During the most recent conference of the Renaissance Society of America, two sessions were devoted entirely to the Renaissance in Poland. In fifty-nine editions of what is considered the most prestigious international appointment for experts of Renaissance culture, this is the first time that characteristic features of sixteenth-century Poland were the subject of analysis and debate. The interest generated at the conference and the academic value of the contributions convinced the organisers of the panels to ask the speakers to develop and revise their contributions to conform with the conventions of the academic article. The result is a selection of essays that pursue specific pathways in exploring the cultural factors that affected the Renaissance in Poland: influences and originality in Polish literary and artistic production, orthodoxy and dissidence, the circulation of thought and reflection on the Res Publica in the spheres of both politics and philosophy. Adopting a distinctly interdisciplinary approach, the aim of this publication is to focus certain aspects of the Polish Renaissance and the cultural identity of sixteenth-century Poland in relation to the European context.Danilo Facca is a professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and a specialist in Renaissance thought. He is inter alia the author of a monograph on Bartholomaeus Keckermann and of several articles on Aristotle’s Metaphysics in the 16th century.Valentina Lepri is currently an adjunct professor in the Artes Liberales faculty of Warsaw University. She has a PhD from the National Institute for Renaissance Studies in Florence, and has been a research fellow in Germany, in Poland and at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.

Leseprobe

Biblioteca di Studi Slavistici

– 21 –

Comitato Scientifico

Giovanna Brogi Bercoff (Direttore), Stefano Bianchini, Marcello Garzaniti (Presidente AIS), Persida Lazarević, Giovanna Moracci, Monica Perotto

Comitato di redazione

Alberto Alberti, Luca Bernardini, Giovanna Brogi Bercoff, Maria Chiara Ferro, Marcello Garzaniti, Nicoletta Marcialis, Giovanna Moracci, Marcello Piacentini, Donatella Possamai, Giovanna Siedina, Andrea Trovesi

Titoli pubblicati

1. Nicoletta Marcialis, Introduzione alla lingua paleoslava, 2005

2. Ettore Gherbezza, Dei delitti e delle pene nella traduzione di Michail M. Ščerbatov, 2007

3. Gabriele Mazzitelli, Slavica biblioteconomica, 2007

4. Maria Grazia Bartolini, Giovanna Brogi Bercoff (a cura di), Kiev e Leopoli: il “testo” culturale, 2007

5. Maria Bidovec, Raccontare la Slovenia. Narratività ed echi della cultura popolare in Die Ehre Dess Hertzogthums Crain di J.W. Valvasor, 2008

6. Maria Cristina Bragone, Alfavitar radi učenija malych detej. Un abbecedario nella Russia del Seicento, 2008

7. Alberto Alberti, Stefano Garzonio, Nicoletta Marcialis, Bianca Sulpasso (a cura di), Contributi italiani al XIV Congresso Internazionale degli Slavisti (Ohrid, 10- 16 settembre 2008), 2008

8. Maria Di Salvo, Giovanna Moracci, Giovanna Siedina (a cura di), Nel mondo degli Slavi. Incontri e dialoghi tra culture. Studi in onore di Giovanna Brogi Bercoff, 2008

9. Francesca Romoli, Predicatori nelle terre slavo-orientali (XI-XIII sec.). Retorica e strategie comunicative, 2009

10. Maria Zalambani, Censura, istituzioni e politica letteraria in URSS (1964-1985), 2009

11. Maria Chiara Ferro, Santità e agiografia al femminile. Forme letterarie, tipologie e modelli nel mondo slavo orientale (X-XVII sec.), 2010

12. Evel Gasparini, Il matriarcato slavo. Antropologia culturale dei Protoslavi, 2010

13. 14. Maria Grazia Bartolini, “Introspice mare pectoris tui”. Ascendenze neoplatoniche nella produzione dialogica di H.S. Skovoroda (1722-1794), 2010

14. 13. Alberto Alberti, Ivan Aleksandăr (1331-1371). Splendore e tramonto del secondo impero bulgaro, 2010

15. Paola Pinelli (a cura di), Firenze e Dubrovnik all’epoca di Marino Darsa (1508- 1567). Atti della giornata di studi – Firenze, 31 gennaio 2009, 2010

16. Francesco Caccamo, Pavel Helan, Massimo Tria (a cura di), Primavera di Praga, risveglio europeo, 2011

17. Maria Di Salvo, Italia, Russia e mondo slavo. Studi filologici e letterari, 2011

18. Massimo Tria, Karel Teige fra Cecoslovacchia, URSS ed Europa. Avanguardia, utopia e lotta politica, 2012

19. Marcello Garzaniti, Alberto Alberti, Monica Perotto, Bianca Sulpasso (a cura di), Contributi italiani al XV Congresso Internazionale degli Slavisti (Minsk, 20-27 agosto 2013), 2013

20. Persida Lazarević Di Giacomo, Sanja Roić (a cura di), Cronotopi slavi. Studi in onore di Marija Mitrovic, 2013

Polish culture in the Renaissance

Studies in the arts, humanism and political thought

edited by

Danilo Facca

Valentina Lepri

Firenze University Press

2013

Polish Culture in the Renaissance : Studies in the arts, humanism and political thought / a cura di Danilo Facca, Valentina Lepri. - Firenze : Firenze University Press, 2013.

(Biblioteca di Studi slavistici ; 21)

http://digital.casalini.it/9788866554905

ISBN 978-88-6655-489-9 (print)

ISBN 978-88-6655-490-5 (online PDF)

ISBN 978-88-6655-512-4 (online epub)

Front cover: drawing by Antoni Facca, freely derived from Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia, 1544

***

Peer Review Process

All publications are submitted to an external refereeing process under the responsibility of the FUP Editorial Board and the Scientific Committees of the individual series. The works published in the FUP catalogue are evaluated and approved by the Editorial Board of the publishing house. For a more detailed description of the refereeing process we refer to the official documents published in the online catalogue of the FUP (http://www.fupress.com).

Firenze University Press Editorial Board

G. Nigro (Co-ordinator), M.T. Bartoli, M. Boddi, R. Casalbuoni, C. Ciappei, R. Del Punta, A. Dolfi, V. Fargion, S. Ferrone, M. Garzaniti, P. Guarnieri, A. Mariani, M. Marini, A. Novelli, M. Verga, A. Zorzi.

© 2013 Firenze University Press

Università degli Studi di Firenze

Firenze University Press

Borgo Albizi, 28, 50122 Firenze, Italy

http://www.fupress.com/

Printed in Italy

Table of contents

Introduction

Danilo Facca and Valentina Lepri

Poland’s Artistic Development through its Exchange with Western Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Robin Craren

Popularizing Erasmus’s Lingua: The Case of Its Polish Translation (1542)

Maria Kozłowska

Polish Religious Toleration and Its Opponents: The Catholic Church and the Warsaw Confederation of 1573

Charles Keenan

Discovering Eastern Europe: Cartography and Translation in Maciej Miechowita’s Tractatus de Duabus Sarmatiis (1517)

Katharina N. Piechocki

Borderlands and Political Theories: Krzysztof Warszewicki Reader of Machiavelli

Valentina Lepri

Platonic and Neo-Platonic Inspiration behind the Debate on the State in Dworzanin polski by Łukasz Górnicki and De Optimo Senatore by Wawrzyniec Goślicki

Marta Wojtkowska-Maksymik

Poland observed by Aristotle. Some remarks on the political Aristotelianism of Bartholomaeus Keckermann and Sebastian Petrycy

Danilo Facca

Polish sources in the volume

List of figures

Notes on contributors

τίς γῆ; τί γένος;

(Prometeus, 561)

Introduction

Danilo Facca and Valentina Lepri

In the course of the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, which was held in San Diego, the attention of those attending was attracted by two panels dealing with the Renaissance in Poland1. This was a novelty in the history of the prestigious Conference and, we might even be permitted to suggest, one that was surprisingly late in view of two factors. On the one hand, the undeniable importance of the Renaissance in Poland, well known to scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who are fully cognisant of the fact that the culture of this country must be placed on a par with those of the leading players on the European stage in the period that marked the passage from the Middle Ages to the modern world. On the other hand, there is the extraordinary scope and significance of the Polish tradition of historical studies on the Renaissance: a sector of research which is not only fundamental to the historic knowledge of this country, but also boasts studies and publications of outstanding quality that frequently succeed in garnering just recognition even on the international academic scene.

In our capacity as organisers of the panels, we are therefore delighted to have contributed to giving Polish Renaissance studies this undoubtedly timely official acknowledgement, and arguably of no slight significance considering the presence at the Conference of an international audience of specialists. The papers presented during the session touched aspects that are important, if not crucial, for an understanding of the historic-intellectual dynamics of 15th-17th century Poland within the broader European context. Consequently we have asked the contributors to revise their contributions, bearing specifically in mind the viewpoint of the “external” reader. Indeed, such readers need to be introduced to an intellectual universe with specific, and even unique, features which are not easy to relate to those we are accustomed to encounter in the history of closer cultures. This means that we are now able to present the papers from the two Polish panels in an enriched form, substantially revised in line with the conventions of the academic article. Clearly, we make no claims here to offer an exhaustive overview of the cultural and intellectual issues of the Rzeczpospolita in the Renaissance. Rather, what has driven us is the conviction that all the contributors have sought, each according to his or her expertise and research perspective, to focus the pivotal issues underlying the historic and cultural development of Poland at this time, avoiding secondary aspects or those spurred by a more or less erudite curiositas. It appears to us that the result is a collection of articles not devoid of a certain organic consistency, despite the variety of topics addressed. These include, for example: the “creative” reception of western cultural patterns through models of literature and patronage; the confrontation with the “other” – the Near and Far East – and the definition of Europe; the adoption of classical philosophical and ideological models to interpret the political struggle of the time; the intellectual crisis ushered in by the Reformation and the political and social conflicts that it triggered. Furthermore, many other issues, while not explicitly addressed, are touched upon, glimpsed in passing or intuited by reading between the lines.

The aim that we set ourselves in presenting these issues at the Conference was to offer a rudimentary compass to readers specialised in the Renaissance of western Europe to help them find their bearings within the sphere of issues characterising the intellectual world of 15th-17th century Poland.

We were essentially guided by the conviction that making better known the Polish perspective on the era of passage to the Modern Age could contribute to a more polyphonic vision of the European Renaissance in its various geographical and thematic expressions. The intention is to correct an “Italo-centric” bias that has become widespread in this field of studies, which tends to consider the Renaissance – however this historical concept is understood – as a phenomenon in which ideas and models irradiated from the peninsula towards the “periphery”. We instead favour a notion of the flowering of “local” forms in all – or almost all – the countries of Europe, that find their expression in the new languages of that historic period.

We are fully aware that a collection of case studies such as this certainly cannot suffice to illustrate such an image of the Renaissance. Nevertheless, our aim is to allow the reader to appreciate the richness and potential inherent in what we have just defined as the Polish perspective. 

The hope is that our work may introduce a fertile season of studies, involving academics from different disciplinary fields both in Europe and in the rest of the world.

Note

1 The Conference was held from 4 to 6 April 2013. The title of the panels was “The Polish Renaissance: Paths, Books, Ideas”.

Poland’s Artistic Development through its Exchange with Western Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Robin Craren

The area we now refer to as modern day Poland existed as a much larger state during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Before the Middle Ages, its domain was situated beyond the borders of the Holy Roman Empire and not easily accessible through the Carpathian Mountains to the south and rivers heading north, making it unattractive to settlers from the Mediterranean countries2. However, when trade and Christianity3 opened up its borders during the Middle Ages, its domain became more vast and far reaching. Poland’s capital, Cracow, along with other major cities in Poland, hastened the economic and political development of the country as a whole, largely due to Cracow’s geographical significance and its place along major trade routes as it was situated in the south along the Vistula River.