Katarzyna Gara

In hac commentatione fabulas Aesopicas in collectionibus rhetoricorum praeexercitamentorum conservatas examinavi. Aesopi fabellas a Nicephoro Basilaca, Nicephoro Chrysoberga Theodoro Hexapterygo, Gregorio Cyprio, Georgio Pachymere, Nicephoro Callisto Xanthopulo et anonymo rhetore compositas esse apparet. E triginta quattuor fabulis investigatione concludi potest Byzantinos rhetores in suis scriptis componendis argumentum imprimis ex antiquis fabulis hausisse, sed aliqando novas materias in suis narratiunculis induxisse. Auctores Graecos medii aevi in suis progymnasmatibus fingendis artem rhetoricam ab Hermogene et Aphtonio descriptam secutos esse demonstrare studui.

Jan Januszowski’s Letters to Marcin Kromer and Tomasz Płaza on Printing Missale Varmiense (1587) in the Lazarus Printing House

Officina Lazari was one of the most prominent printing houses in the 16th-century Cracow. In 1587, it pressed Missale Varmiense, the only post-Tridentine missal produced in early modern Poland-Lithuania. Missale was commissioned by the bishop of Warmia, Marcin Kromer, who was persuaded to work with the Cracow printer after a recommendation from Tomasz Płaza, his long-time assistant. The history of this publishing venture—a multifaceted, dynamic process, spread over a period of about five years—can be reconstructed thanks to surviving archival documents, inter alia letters that Januszowski-the printer sent to bishop Kromer and his factotum Płaza. Composed respectively in 1585 and 1586, these letters give detailed insight into how the production of Missale Varmiense was planned and organised, constituting the kind of evidence very rare for early printed books produced in Poland-Lithuania. The earlier letter is an official Latin supplication sent by the printer to the prelate. The other letter, addressed to the bishop’s assistant, who was also the manager of the publishing process is practically oriented and personal, written at the time when the work of Januszowski and his sponsors was put to a halt by the Cracow cathedral chapter in the spring of 1586.

Unknown Jesuit Theatre Programmes in Vilnian Libraries

The aim of this paper is to present eleven to date unknown Jesuit theatre programmes, summary records of dramas performed in colleges in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th and 18th centuries: [Antiprologue], Artaban (1757), Cineres ad iustam vindictam animati (1702), Conviva bonae mentis (1700), Corona civica, Corona religionis orthodoxae (1682), Daumondus (1690), Divina iustitia scelerum vindex (1718), Exaltatio de portis mortis (1738), Flocillus (1757), Gaudia post luctus (1680). The programmes were discovered in the following Vilnian ­libraries: the Vilnius University Library, the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, and the Wróblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. The analysis is based on a programme study model applied in Dramat staropolski (Wrocław, 1976). In terms of content, the programmes recapitulate plays with motives already known from the bibliography, as well as feature new themes referring to the ancient history and the history of Polish and Lithuanian territories. The paper presents individual characteristics of each of the eleven programmes. The study supplements the research concerning old-Polish theatre and shall facilitate further analyses of source materials.

The paper presents three Greek hymns to Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier, written by the eminent Polish Jesuit and lexicographer Grzegorz Cnapius. The poems were added to the second volume of his dictionary Thesaurus Polono-Latino-Graecus printed in 1626. Their first modern edition, prepared by Janina Czerniatowicz and included in the anthology Corpusculum poesis Polono-Graecae saeculorum XVI–XVII (1531–1648), Wrocław 1991, is based on the second edition of the dictionary from 1644, which contains several errors. The main goal of the paper is, therefore, to produce an edition of the three hymns based on editio princeps of the dictionary’s second volume, published in 1626.
Cnapius composed and delivered the hymns on the celebration of the canonization of the two Jesuits, which took place in Kraków. The hymns are written in hexameter and elegiac distich. The first poem to Ignatius Loyola is an alphabetical acrostic, while the second is a complex acrostic, the initial letters making the name Francis and the last – Xavier. In the third poem Cnapius praises the missionary work of Francis Xavier by comparing him to Alexander the Great, Heracles and Bacchus. The hymns contain many rare Greek words and prove Grzegorz Cnapius’s excellent knowledge of the Greek language.

Auctrix id sibi proposuit, ut opera Graecorum auctorum, quibus usus est Byzantinus rhetor Theophylactus Simocata in suis fictis epistulis ethicis, rusticis et amatoriis componendis ostenderet. Ex ea investigatione concludi potest Theophylactum Simocatam vestigia non solum sophistarum Alciphronis, Claudii Aeliani et Philostrati, qui secundo et tertio saeculo post Christum natum vixerunt, sed etiam Gregorii Nazianzeni pressere. Tricesima quarta et sexagesima prima epistula Simocatae, in quibus duae fabulae Aesopi continentur, demonstrant doctrinam genologicam fabulae Aesopicae, quae in progymnasmatis inveni potest, ei notam fuisse.