The Problem of Typographic Design in the Studies on Old Polish Book 

The purpose of this paper is to present the problem of typographic design in the studies on Polish books printed until the 18^th century.
Although some of the ideas of Polish bibliologists have closely corresponded with new directions in French and Anglo-American bibliography, they have never resulted in such books as: Apparition du livre by Febvre-Martin, Gutenberg Galaxy by McLuhan, Printing Press as an Agent of Change by Eisenstein or Histoire de l’édition française. In Polish book studies, the issue of typography was raised essentially to confirm or establish the provenance of a print or to demonstrate the existence of many variants of an edition. In the second decade of the 20^th century, in opposition to the ideas represented e.g. by Jan Ptaśnik, who postulated mainly the examination of historical documents, Kazimierz Piekarski worked out the so-called “typographic method” of book studies, which consisted in the analysis, description and creating the catalogue of printing types and typographic material employed in the examined prints. This method was successfully used in the series Polonia Typographica Saeculi Sedecimi, which Piekarski initialised in 1936. While the idea to evaluate and compare the aesthetic value of production of different printers were present in Polish bibliography, they could not, nevertheless, be realised before the second world war. In the second half of the 20^th century researchers focused, among others questions, on: paper, bookbinding, readers, publicity, musical prints, bookselling, history of libraries and printers, but the issue of typographic design was only discussed as an exception.
Making an attempt to characterise and estimate the visual aspect of Polish books printed before the end of the 18^th century requires difficult study not only in bibliography, but also in the history of literature, culture and art. Works such as: Encyklopedia wiedzy o książce, Słownik pracowników książki polskiej,Drukarze dawnej Polski, a recently published bibliography of books printed by Franciszek Cezary the older, as well as already mentioned Polonia Typographica... and numerous articles (some of them concerning precisely e.g. title-pages or printers’ devices) remain a useful source of knowledge. However, Polish scientific vocabulary in this subject is still deficient and sometimes a researcher could find it indispensable to create a new term him- or herself.
The author of this paper had a similar experience during her studies on the typography of prints published in sixteenth-century Cracow by Florian Ungler and Maciej Wirzbięta. The other problem she had to deal with was the creation of an original database, which allowed her to collect, research and present data in a much simpler, faster and more comfortable way. Comparative studies of selected prints published in Cracow in the first and the second half of the 16^th century have shown a development of local typography and book design during this period, including changes in book architecture, typographic material and page layout. They also indicated the introduction and perfection of multiple helpful elements of a book, like pagination or foliation, indexes, errata, notes etc., as well as an establishment of some patterns of composition for editions de luxe and “series”.
Despite many attempts, including those mentioned in this paper, the issue of typographic design of Polish books printed before the 18^th century remains mostly unknown. Simultaneously, the general interest in modern book design in Poland has greatly increased over the last few years and creating the layout of one’s own book has become more and more popular. It is therefore extremely important to study the art of our predecessors and try to understand what they wanted to teach us in their own language of “black-art”.

The main goal of the paper is to answer the question of what was unique about the use of books in Vilnius between 1522 and 1610.
The reason to take a closer look at the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is the fact that it has always been a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious city. This observation allows the author to assume that the use of books there could have been different than in other European cities of the time.
To find possible answers to the question posed, the author traces the changes in production, distribution and reading of books in the city. The research is based on several sorts of sources, such as printed books, manuscripts and documents from Vilnius archives (mainly the municipal archive, the Catholic chapter, the castle court etc.). He was supported by contemporary studies about early modern Vilnius scriptoria and printing houses (Kawecka-Gryczowa, Topolska, Nikalaieu), bookbinders (Laucevičius), book writing (Ulčinaitė, Narbutienė, Narbutas) and the history of the city (Frick).
At the beginning of the paper the author recalls the main facts about Vilnius in the 16^th century. The city had increasingly grown in importance as a political, economical and cultural centre of the Jagiellonian monarchy.
The central part, divided in four chronologically arranged chapters, focuses on several problems, among them: the beginnings of Cyrillic prints and Skaryna’s printing house, languages and alphabets of books (Latin, Ruthenian, Polish, Lithuanian, German, Hebrew, Yiddish and Arabic), book production, dissemination, storage and reading. The author notices that a significant contributing factor to the spreading book culture in Vilnius was the royal court and chancery. He puts emphasis on the significance of humanistic schools that were established in Vilnius in the 2^nd half of the 16^th century by four different Christian confessions (Calvinist, Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox). The most influential one was the Jesuit Academy of Vilnius. This process was accompanied by the establishment of no less than 11 printing houses. Having said that, the author argues that books printed in Vilnius, imported to the city and held in its libraries reflect a fruitful competition between main religious communities.
At the end, the author reaches the conclusion that the use of books in Vilnius was similar to other European cities of the time, yet the capital of Lithuania still seems to be a good deal more complex a case. He ventures a hypothesis that the book can be deemed as one of the tools or factors by which religious or ethnic identity in Vilnius was defined.

Troeltsch’s Difficult Legacy. Critical Remarks on the Two Models of Protestant Reformation Studies. Part 1: Terms (Ecumenism – Irenicism – Toleration) and Doctrines

On the basis of the seminal paper On the Historical and Dogmatic Methods in Theology authored by Ernst Troeltsch and of critical assessments of his polemicists, mainly Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Bultmann, this article aims to recognise the recent tendencies in theological and philosophical development of the studies devoted to the early modern Protestant thought. The subject matter of the paper, which is not a bibliographical study but a description of current intellectual history, is concerned with the consequences of Troeltsch’s thesis, namely the separation of scientific lore together with its particular and different goals – the theological one concerned with doctrinal questions, and the historical one concerned with rise, development and change. Due to the doctrinal problems discussed in the first part, the contemporary ecumenical movement appears to be the main driving factor for theological recognition of early modern Protestant doctrines. Beside the several unquestionable benefits of the recent intensification of Reformation studies in Poland, there are also several disadvantages or inherent limitations of this branch of Polish scholarship. First of all, the conceptual framework typical for ecumenism poses a threat of anachronic attitude to the specificity of early modern religious realities that were different from contemporary conditions of the ecumenical movement. Secondly, it may overlook the semantic changes undergone by the historical meanings and modes of usage of particular terms, once used for specific intended purposes. Consequently, basic concepts devoid of historical significance  like irenicism, toleration and ecumenism, lacking their Begriffsgeschichte clarifications, are too often used interchangeably, although there are pivotal differences between them. Moreover, the area of​the interest of ecumenism is currently restricted to the historical precedents (irenicism, for instance) of the modern strive for an interconfessional agreement and is limited merely to the questions that divide contemporary Christianity (for example, the Lutheran doctrine of justification). Therefore, numerous other theological problems of Protestant Reformation are ignored.

The second part of this paper will discuss the historical facet of the specificity of Troeltsch’s legacy.

Difficult Legacy. Critical Remarks on the Two Models of Protestant Reformation Studies. Part 2: Histories (Confessionalisation – Reformation – Humanism – Hermeneutics) and Perspectives (Modernisation)

Having the theoretical deliberation in the previous part as a point of departure, this paper discusses the other side of the dichotomy caused by Troeltsch’s thesis on methodological framework designed for theological inquiry. Unlike the first part of the article, which was focused on doctrinal questions, this one is devoted to the historical facet of Reformation studies. The predominant trend in recent Reformation historiography should be attributed to a model created by German historians, namely Confessionalisation. Rather than specific procedures typical for that model, the study describes historiosophical content, especially these parts of it that concentrate on the developmental socio-political tendencies of the early modern period. Consequently representatives of the Confessionalisation model, together with French historians gathered around the Annales school and later joined also by J. Bossy with his pragmatic concept of Christianity Translated, raised the question of whether the conventional notion of Reformation should retain its functional significance in the modern scholarship. Whether or not Reformation, Vorsattelzeit der Moderne, longue durée, Christianity Translated or anything else is in question, recent historiography under the influence of the social sciences, unlike the old-fashioned history of events, is focused on effects. Instead of giving an answer to the question of what, when or where happened in relation to the Reformation phenomenon, historians establish the purpose for which it took place and what its later implications and different ramifications were. Therefore, aspects of the early modern period ignored thus far, like the rise of the myth of Reformation reinforced by communication process, as well as a visual and propaganda revolution, and finally the impact of religious change upon the humanist movement (so called confessionalisation of humanism) have been brought into light. On the other hand, historians like H. Schilling deliberately justified the dichotomy of doctrinal or historical examination of the discussed period. Such a separation was thoroughly repealed only in twentieth-century theological hermeneutics, Lutheran in particular. R. Bultmann’s disciples, first of all the originators of the New Hermeneutic, not only aimed at a complementary description of the universal aspect of sacred matter entangled with particular human experiences, but also contributed tremendously to the explanation of Luther’s hermeneutic, henceforth no longer limited to exegetical procedures. The concluding part of the article is aimed at sketching a new attitude towards the lore obtained both by doctrinal and historical studies on Reformation. Commonly called modernisation of Reformation knowledge, this approach does not make a new tool designed for examination of doctrinal or historical data, but indicates a present that seriouslyconsiders its past. In consequence, and after Gadamer’s concept of Geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung, modernisation as the name of this attitude cannot be characterised by distancing itself from tradition. Its scope consists of being situated within the tradition of Reformation that can provide an example suitable for the understanding of our own selves.

Recenzja: Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects

First published in print in October 2010 by Allen Lane imprint of Penguin Books, pp. 640

Edition used for the review Kindle Edition, 2011

Recenzja: Jack Goody, Renesans. Czy tylko jeden?,

tłum. Ireneusz Kania, Czytelnik, Warszawa 2012, ss. 412

The subject of this edition is a forgotten 17th-century Polonicum: a Latin panegyric in hexameter by Antonio Querenghi entitled Ad urbem Romam in adventu Serenissimi Vladislai, Poloniae Principis (To the city of Rome on the occasion of the arrival of His Most Serene Highness Vladislaus, the Prince of Poland). The work, published in 1625 in Rome, was noted in bibliographies of S. Ciampi and K. Estreicher as anonymous. This is because the only copy known of the first edition until recently, preserved in the holdings of Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, was deprived of the title page. The discovery of a second, complete copy in the collection of Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome allowed us to identify the author, namely the Padovan humanist Antonio Querenghi (1546-1633), who from 1605 served as the pope’s personal secretary (cubicularius), prelate and referendary of both signatures. The closest relation Querengi developed with Maffeo Barberini (Urban VIII), the “pope-Cicero” and patron of poets and artists, at whose side he stayed until his own death. On 19 January 1625 he graced with his panegyric the Roman visit of Prince Vladislaus Vasa, the later King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Vladislaus IV.
The prince arrived in Rome on 20 December 1624, after an eight-month journey around Europe. Vladislaus, who tried to travel incognito, was received with all the honour due to the successor to the Swedish throne with the title of electi Magni Ducis Moschoviae (the elected Grand Duke of Muscovy). In the minds of the inhabitants of Europe, his person was also inextricably associated with the double triumph over the “schismatic” Muscovy, and above all with fending off Turks at the battle of Chocim (2 September–9 October 1621). Vladislaus spent the fortnight from 20 December 1624 to 2 January 1625 in the papal capital and took part in the celebration of the Jubilee. On 17 January he arrived there again after a short trip to Naples and left the city after only three days. Yet it was the latter short stay in Rome that the grandest reception in honour of the Polish Prince was held. On Sunday, 19 January, after a private audience with Pope Urban, at which only the closest curial dignitaries (with Querenghi probably among them) and officials from Vladislaus’ retinue were present, a sumptuous dinner was given with a concert afterwards. In the panegyric written for this occasion, Querenghi praises Vladislaus’ triumphs over “Muscovy twice defeated” (he meant armed attempts of the prince to the tsarist throne in the years 1610-1619) and over “the Thracian (i.e. Turkish) enemy”, the army of sultan Osman II. The ideological pivot of the poem is the pope’s planned general military expedition against Turkey: Urban VIII anoints the Polish Prince as the commander in chief of the upcoming crusade and a defender of Christianity. Vladislaus appears to be a new Hercules choosing the difficult path of Virtue, filled with renunciations and leading to eternal fame. In the panegyric apostrophe, the poet appeals to the Christian prince to follow the example of the mythical hero by taming the “godless monsters” (monstra impia) and taking upon his shoulders the weight of the world resting theretofore on the shoulders of the Italian Atlas – Pope Urban. Ad urbem Romam constitutes an excellent example of Querenghi’s stylistic manner shaped in the neo-Platonist spirit of hermetism, which made the poet create labyrinthine and enigmatic texts for the exclusive use of a narrow circle of exegetes. This manner resulted in a discrepancy, starkly visible through the refined hexameters, between two irreconcilable textual (and thus essentially linguistic) facts, one arising from historic discourse and the other generated within conventionally antiquisating, petrified, panegyric hyperbole. Namely, between Vladislaus who, abashed, retreated from Muscow and spent the battle of Chocim sick in his own tent, and the new Hercules who puts to rout the schismatic-pagan monsters threatening the Western civilisation.

Carmen ad Urbem Romam in adventu Serenissimi Vladislai Poloniae Principis (1625)

Tłumaczenie i opracowanie Grzegorz Fraczak