Małgorzata Ciszewska
Terminus, Tom 24, zeszyt 1 (62) 2022, 2022, s. 25 - 54
https://doi.org/10.4467/20843844TE.22.003.15232Military Spendings, Alms, the Splendour of Birth: Topoi and Arguments of Praise in Jakub Sobieski’s Funeral Speeches vs His Contemporary Preaching Tradition
The article deals with three arguments selected from a nobleman’s funeral praise of the 1st half of the 17th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: bearing the military cost in defence of the homeland, endowing the building of churches, supporting monasteries and charitable institutions, and being well-born (praise e genere). The arguments are drawn from Jakub Sobieski’s (one of the best and the most famous Polish noble orators of his time) speeches delivered during funeral ceremonies of seven noblemen and noblewomen and sixteen funeral sermons dedicated to these decedents. Both sermons and noblemen’s funeral speeches (typical of old-Polish culture, yet different from the humanistic orations known and popular in the rest of Renaissance Europe) may seem to belong to the same genre of public orations, consequently, many scholars do not differentiate between them. In fact, their purpose, composition, and amplification of many topoi are very dissimilar.
Being closely related to the Old Polish role model of a nobleman, the three arguments of praise could be expected to be widely applied and amplified in any genre of funeral speech, as they glorified the deceased in the eyes of noblemen. However, in Sobieski’s orations these arguments are either omitted or mentioned only marginally, while in sermons they are developed extensively.
This paper offers a preliminary study of this problem, presenting a comparison of amplifying the three arguments of praise in two different genres of funeral orations delivered in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.