Bartosz Awianowicz

Königsberg and Prussia in Life and Works of Jan Kochanowski

Researchers interested in Jan Kochanowski have paid little attention to the impact of German Humanism – as represented in Königsberg – on both the writing and the life of the poet. The aim of this article is: first, to present literary sources testifying to the poet’s stay in the capital of the Duchy of Prussia and his contacts with Prince Albert von Hohenzollern and humanists from the Albertina University; and second, to discuss Kochanowski’s view of Prussia (both Royal Prussia and the Duchy of Prussia) in his poems, and the possible influences of Georg Sabinus upon the Polish poet’s works.
So far the connections of the Polish poet with Königsberg University (Albertina) and the court of the Prussian prince (actually duke) Albert Hohenzollern have been researched in the majority by Stanisław Kot, to whom we owe the publication of Kochanowski’s letter to the prince and his reply, and Janusz Małłek, who has verified Kot’s intuitional remarks using sources from the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, but only from an historian’s biographical perspective.  
Kochanowski went to Königsberg for the first time in summer or autumn 1551 and stayed until the following spring. He returned for a second visit in spring 1555 and remained at least until mid-1556. The Polish poet’s second stay in the Prussian capital, especially, has been well documented thanks to Kochanowski’s autographed letter written to Prince Albert on April the 6th, 1556, and the prince’s reply dated April the 15th. Moreover, important information is recorded in the Prussian court’s expenditure accounts (Ausgabe-Bücher) from 1555 and 1556. These documents give explicit evidence of the Polish poet’s links with the ducal court. They also give implicit proof of his relations with humanists from the university (Georg Sabinus, the first rector of the Albertina) and the court.
Of all Kochanowski’s works, the most important source for his feelings towards Prussia is his Proporzec albo Hołd pruski. He celebrates there the homage paid in 1569 to Sigismund Augustus by Albert Frederic (1553–1618), the son of Prince Albert, whom Kochanowski introduces as the very model of a good monarch: a virtuous, faithful and wise prince (v. 25–36). Whereas it is Royal Prussia itself that is praised by the poet in his Satyr albo dziki mąż (v. 85-90). Less known is the fact that Kochanowski’s poetry was influenced not only by Italian but also by German humanists: by the authors of handbooks of poetics and rhetoric such as Philipp Melanchthon or Joachim Camerarius, and especially by the poetry and theoretical treatises (e.g. Fabularum Ovidii interpretatio) of Georg Sabinus (1508–1560).
The paper’s author concludes that the period (in total two years) which the young poet spent in the Duchy of Prussia was important for at least three reasons: the experiences gained at the court of Prince Albert definitely helped the poet in his further career as a courtier of Sigismund Augustus; ducal patronage helped Kochanowski in at least one trip to Italy; and the ducal library and acquaintance with Georg Sabinus obviously influenced the poetry (especially Latin poetry) of Jan of Czarnolas.

Orator—rhetor—rhetorista According to Johann Mochinger. An Edition and Translation of Three Chapters Dedicated to a Public Speaker, Theorist and Student/Critic of the Art of Eloquence in Orator atque rhetorista

Johann Mochinger (1603—1652), professor of rhetoric at the Academic Gymnasium in Gdańsk (1630—1652), was one of the most interesting teachers and theorists of rhetoric in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the fi rst half of the seventeenth century. While during the Thirty Years’ War the  Protestant teaching of rhetoric was often involved in religious disputations and controversies, Mochinger, though he was at the same time a preacher at the Lutheran Church of St. Catherine, plainly quoted many Jesuit treatises appreciating them as valuable sources of rhetoric theory both in his printed treatise, Floridorum e dissertationibus rhetoricis super Cicerone sylva (Gdańsk 1640) and Orator atque rhetorista (Gdańsk 1641), and in his manuscript lectures.

The aim of the paper is to present three chapters of Orator atque rhetorista by the Mochinger, the most important of his rhetoric works, in the Latin original and my Polish translation. All these chapters, dedicated to the terms related to orator (public speaker), rhetor (theorist/teacher of rhetoric) and rhetorista (advanced student and critic of the art of eloquence), well exemplify Mochinger’s sources: Cicero’s De oratore, Noctes Atticae by Aulus Gellius, Dialogus de oratoribus by Tacitus, Plutarch’s De garrulitate and Vitae decem oratorum attributed to him, as well as commentaries by Petrus Mosellanus, the oration Ad studiosos eloquentiae in Academia Wittebergensi by the Lutheran Adam Theodor Siber, and Theatrum veterum rhetorum by the Jesuit Louis de Cressolles, De eloquentia sacra et humana by another Jesuit, Nicolas Caussin, and Prolusiones academicae by Famiano Strada. However, the new meaning of the word rhetorista and the broad application of it in his work are Mochinger’s original invention. Not only did he devote a significant part of his treatise to define the term and to describe the duties of a rhetorista, but he also willingly used it in his later works, e.g. in Eloquentiae cupidissimos rhetoristas ad acroases oratorias frequenter iterum obeundas, quae (quod optimum maximum Numen iubeat!) auspicato rursus inchoabuntur, posteaquam quidem, solito in Acroaterio Minori Lycei nostri, die Martii I. hora sueta IXa, de librorum Tullianorum quam maxime utiliter evolvendorum ratione multo commodissima, quasi in antecessum … vocoque invitoque… (Gdańsk 1646).