Radosław Grześkowiak

Entertainments of Padua’s Polish community: Hieronim Morsztyn’s poetic letters from 1617/18 as a source for the history of customs

This article is devoted to a collection of poetic letters written by Hieronim Morsztyn in Padua in late 1617 and early 1618. Their collegial tone and lack of self-censorship made them a unique source of the everyday life of Padua’s Polish community. Mentions of numerous libations, love affairs with virgos and married women, the use of courtesans and, finally, the pregnancy of one of them, all add up to a colourful picture of the social life of students and travellers visiting Padua and nearby Venice. Even the two letters concerning attendance at a public autopsy, which was carried out at the Pallazo del Bo by anatomy professor Adriaan van den Spieghel between 25 January and 19 February 1618, are focusing on an account of the dissection of male and female genitalia.

This paper is the third part of a triptych that presents the publishing history of three Cracow reissues of 1619, 1620 and 1634 of a collection of Polish proverbs Proverbiorum Polonicorum […] centuriae decem et octo prepared by Salomon Rysiński. This section discusses the editorial work of Stanisław Serafin Jagodyński on the new Cracow edition of Rysiński’s 1620 collection, which, according to the wording of its title, was “corrected in many places”. 

Old Cracow Editions of the First Book of Polish Proverbs.
1. Stanisław Giermański as the Editor of the Edition of Salomon Rysiński’s Przypowieści polskie / Polish Proverbs from 1619

This paper is the first part of a triptych aimed at presenting the publishing history of three Cracow reissues from 1619, 1620 and 1634 of the collection of Polish proverbs Proverbiorum Polonicorum […] centuriae decem et octo prepared by Salomon Rysiński, which was first published in Lubcz on the Neman in 1618. This part is devoted to the fi rst of these renewals, which was published in Cracow in 1619 without  naming the printer. However, the woodcut strips used on the title page of the collection allow us to determine the publishing house in which it was issued. It was the workshop that operated under the aegis of Jakub Sybeneicher’s heirs. It was then managed by Stanisław Giermański, who was probably also the initiator and editor of the reissue.

He introduced a number of signifi cant innovations to his edition. He polonised the Latin title of the original, omitted the author’s dedication, poems recommending Rysiński’s collection, and the numeration of proverbs (turning the centauries of the fi rst print into chapters), and removed some 80 proverbs from the Polish list, almost 30 Latin equivalents of native proverb, which Rysiński provided in the original, assuming that his work would be used by foreign paroemiologists, as well as all source annotations discussing the origins of the Polish and Latin dicta. Moreover, a number of proverbial phrases noted by Rysiński were edited by Giermański, who changed their shape into one that was better known in Cracow. Most of these changes were dictated by mercantile considerations. On the one hand, the volume presented by Giermański was reduced by 1.5 sheets, as compared to the fi rst edition, which made it possible to reduce the printing costs and make the typographer  earn more on the reedition. On the other hand, thanks to the title translated into Polish and the omitted numeration of proverbs, the collection better suited the needs of the local audiences, whose needs Giermański, a book seller, knew better than Rysiński.

Old Cracow Editions of the First Book of Polish Proverbs. 2. The Paremiographic Knowledge of Stanisław Serafin Jagodyński
The paper is the second part of a triptych aimed at presenting the publishing history of three Cracow reissues from 1619, 1620 and 1634 of a collection of Polish proverbs Proverbiorum Polonicorum […] centuriae decem et octo prepared by Salomon Rysiński. This section presents the paremiographic competences of Stanisław Serafin Jagodyński, a brilliant poet from Samogitia, who edited the second Cracow reissue of 1620. This edition of Przypowieści polskie is essential for the publishing history of this title. Unfortunately, none of its copies has survived to this day. Therefore, it is described on the basis of its faithful reprint published in Cracow in 1634.
The merits of Jagodyński as the editor of the reissued collection are described in a Latin dedication dated 20 May 1620 addressed to him by Stanisław Giermański, a typographer (although the style of this preface suggests that it was actually authored by Jagodyński himself). Jagodyński came to the capital of Polish printing from  Vilnius less than a year earlier and became friends with two leading typographers, Franciszek Cezary and Stanisław Giermański. The epigrammatic collections published at that time, first of all Grosz (c. 1619 and 1620) and Dworzanki/Courtiers (1621), prove his keen interest in Polish proverbs.
In his original resume of his collection of proverbs from 1621, Rysiński published a quote from a letter from Jagodyński dated 20 February 1620, in which the poet informed the Vilnius paremiographer about the saleability of the Cracow reissue from 1619 as part of his self-promotion. We may guess there were two practical reasons for establishing this correspondence. First of all, Jagodyński could play the role of a plenipotentiary of Giermański because on the title page of the 1620 reissue the latter revealed his publishing house (kept secret in the unauthorized reprint from the previous year). Secondly, the exchange of letters could relate to additions to the list of proverbs prepared by Rysiński, as evidenced by the same sayings added both by Jagodyński to the Cracow reprint from 1620 and by Rysiński to the extended authorial reissue, which appeared in print a year later in Lubcz nad Niemnem.

THE DESIDERATUM OF AN EDITOR OF OLD LITERATURE: A GLOOMY VOICE
The article discusses the most important needs of the scholarly editing of old Polish literature (new model of critical edition, the rules of transcription, new manual editing, the assessment of editions etc.).

An emblematic pompa nuptialis. A collection of "wedding symbols" from the 17th century against a background of love emblems and erudit rhetoric arguments

The vast majority of the article consists of critical editions of two previously unknown Old Polish collections of nuptial emblems. They draw on the symbolism of popular love emblematics from Dutch cycles by Daniel Heisnius, Otto van Veen and Jacob Cats. In 17th-century Poland these cycles were imitated by only two poets, Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski and an anonymous author of inscriptions in a copy of Jacob Cats Silenus Alcibiadis. The texts published in this paper are a miscellaneous collection of subscriptiones, the main purpose of which was a fuction of rhetoric embellishments in wedding speeches.

Oomówienie rozprawy Justyny Kiliańczyk-Zięby Sygnety drukarskie w Rzeczypospolitej XVI wieku. Źródła ikonograficzne i treści ideowe, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Societas Vistulana, 2015, ss. 344)

Unknown Polish subscriptiones to the emblems by Otton van Veen and Herman Hugon. Some remarks on how Western sacred engravings functioned in the Old Polish culture

The Seweryn Udziela Etnographic Musem in Kraków holds an impressive collection of old engravings, among which there are also copperplates by Cornelis Galle. He used selected prints from Amorum emblemata (1608) and Amoris divini emblemata (1615) by Otton van Veen and Pia desideria (1624) by Herman Hugon to form his own emblematic cycle on metaphysical relations between the Soul and Amor Divinus. The drawings from the works of Veen and Hugon were very popular in the 17th century and inspired numerous poets and editors around Europe. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth it was Hugons Pia desideria that aroused particular interest. The cycle was imitated and translated by e.g. Mikołaj Mieleszko SJ, Zbigniew Morsztyn, Aleksander Teodor Lacki and Jan Kościesza Żaba. On three of the Galle’s prints stored in the Kraków museum an anonymous author wrote, unknown until now, epigrams accompanying the icons taken from the cycle by Veen (No. 8 and 21) and by Hugon (II 5). This emblematic micro-cycle was, with all probability, written down at the end of the 17th or at the beginning of the 18th century by a nun or a monk in one of the Little Poland convents or monasteries. Possibly the origins of the cycle may be linked with the Carmelite nuns’ convent in Cracow. And whether it is the actual place where the cycle was created or not, it is a good point to begin studies on the employment of emblematic practices in Catholic convents and monasteries in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between the 16th and the 18th centuries. Imported copperplates and woodcuts were a typical piece of the equipment of a cell. They were hung on the cell walls or simply were collected in sets of prints and often exchanged as gifts among nuns or monks, e.g. on the occasion of New Years Eve (an example of such a gift from 1724 is given in this paper). It was a common practice to put notes of diverse character on the reverse side of such prints, e.g. autobiographic details, short prayers or excerpts from sacred texts and religious literature. Still, the main purpose of the emblems was their application in everyday meditations and other forms of personal prayers. The three subscriptiones in the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow are also prayers of this kind, combining word and image

Translated from Polish by Kaja Szymańska

The Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Musem in Cracow holds an impressive collection of old engravings, among which there are also copperplates by Cornelis Galle. He used selected prints from Amorum emblemata (1608) and Amoris divini emblemata (1615) by Otton van Veen and Pia desideria (1624) by Herman Hugo to create his own emblematic cycle on metaphysical relations between the Soul and Amor Divinus. The drawings from the works of Veen and Hugo were very popular in the seventeenth century and inspired numerous poets and editors around Europe. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was Hugo’s Pia desideria that aroused particular interest. The cycle was imitated and translated by e.g. Mikołaj Mieleszko SJ, Zbigniew Morsztyn, Aleksander Teodor Lacki, and Jan Kościesza Żaba. On three of Galle’s prints stored in the Cracow museum, an anonymous author wrote epigrams, unknown until now, that accompany the images taken from the cycle by Veen (no. 8 and 21) and by Hugo (II 5). This emblematic microcycle was, with all probability, written down at the end of the seventeenth or at the beginning of the eighteenth century by a nun or a monk in one of the Lesser Polish convents or monasteries. Possibly, the origins of the cycle may be linked with the Carmelite convent in Cracow. And whether it is the actual place where the cycle was created or not, it is a good point to begin studies on the employment of emblematic practices in Catholic convents and monasteries in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Imported copperplates and woodcuts were a typical piece of the equipment of a cell. They were hung on the cell walls or were simply collected in sets of prints and often exchanged as gifts among nuns or monks, e.g. on the occasion of the New Year (an example of such a gift from 1724 is given in this paper). It was a common practice to write notes of diverse character on the reverse side of such prints, e.g. autobiographic details, short prayers or excerpts from sacred texts and religious literature. Still, the main purpose of the emblems was their application in everyday meditations and other forms of personal prayers. The three subscriptiones in the Ethnographic Museum in Cracow are also prayers of this kind, combining word and image.

* Publication of this paper was financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland under the grant 643/P-DUN/2018. Polish version: R. Grześkowiak, J. Niedźwiedź, “Nieznane polskie subskrypcje do emblematów religijnych Ottona van Veen i Hermana Hugona. Przyczynek do funkcjonowania zachodniej grafiki religijnej w kulturze staropolskiej”, Terminus 14 (2012), issue 25, pp. 47–68.

“Złego sługę malarze tak figurowali” (“A bad servant was so depicted”): Sources of the Images of a Good and Bad Servant and of a Good and Bad Wife in Chapter 4 of Mikołaj Rej’s Źwierzyniec (‘The Bestiary’)

The chapter of Mikołaj Rej’s Źwierzyniec (‘The Bestiary’), entitled Jako starych wieków przypadki świeckie ludzie sobie malowali (‘As People Painted Secular Shapes from Old Times’), is a collection of epigrams accompanied by visual illustrations of various human features and vices. As proved in 1893 by Ignacy Chrzanowski, some of the pieces were inspired by Andrea Alciato’s emblems, hence the search for Rej’s sources focused on emblem literature. However, despite the evidence that Rej’s epigrams were intended as comments to illustrations, they still may be rooted in literary texts.

This article deals with the sources of four epigrams, namely, the one depicting a bad servant, a good servant, a good wife and a bad wife. The epigram Sługa dobry (IV 31, ‘The Good Servant’) may have been modeled on the popular treaty Οίκετηςsive De officio famulorum, written in 1535 by Gilbert Cousin, who described an image of a good servant, subsequently painted in French nobles’ chambers. It presented a human silhouette with a pig’s face, donkey’s ears and deer’s legs, which captured the idea of the servant being easy to feed, eager to listen and fast to follow the master’s orders. This image was widely popularized in 16th-century drawings, however none of them is known to have been familiar to Rej before 1562 and used by him as a pattern for his epigram.

Since a pig’s snout is associated with gluttony in Rej’s other texts, in the epigram Sługa dobry it is replaced by a bull’s head. The image of the snout is exploited in Zły sługa (IV 30, ‘The Bad Servant’). Rej equipped the bad servant with a wolf ’s ears – he will pretend to misunderstand orders for his own benefit, a bear’s paws –he steals, and a dog’s tail – he flatters his master.

The two epigrams presenting the images of a good wife and a bad wife, were inspired by verses that were echoed in Rej’s other works, for instance in Postylla (1557, ‘Postil’) and Żywot człowieka poczciwego (1568, ‘Life of a Virtuous Man’). The epigram Żona poczciwa (IV 32, ‘The Virtuous Wife’) alludes to Ps. 128(127):3, whereas Żona wszeteczna (IV 33, ‘The Profligate Wife’) to Prov. 11:22.