Reinventing Saint Francis: Józef Wittlin, Anti-Semitism and the Idea of Modern Sainthood
cytuj
pobierz pliki
RIS BIB ENDNOTEChoose format
RIS BIB ENDNOTEReinventing Saint Francis: Józef Wittlin, Anti-Semitism and the Idea of Modern Sainthood
Publication date: 18.12.2018
Konteksty Kultury, 2018, Special Issue (2018), pp. 41 - 60
https://doi.org/10.4467/23531991KK.18.023.9725Authors
Reinventing Saint Francis: Józef Wittlin, Anti-Semitism and the Idea of Modern Sainthood
This article discusses Józef Wittlin’s literary exploration of the idea of modern sainthood. It argues that Wittlin’s search for a new model of saintly life that would respond to the modern age was informed by the ongoing theological debates about the meaning and value of traditional hagiography. The article demonstrates that Wittlin’s reflections were inspired by Paul Sabatier’s influential study Vie de saint François d’Assise (Life of Saint Francis of Assisi), and informed by the immediate socio-political context (the Polish-Ukrainian War of 1918–1919 and the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe). Ultimately, Wittlin’s writings reinvent Saint Francis as a modern-day saint who shows a radical empathy with the persecuted and the marginalised, above all the Jews. Responding to growing anti-Semitism that was endorsed by a number of nationalist and Roman Catholic groups, Wittlin reimagines Saint Francis as a social activist who gives active attention to the suffering of the vilified “other” who has been rejected by mainstream society.
First published in Konteksty Kultury 2018, vol. 16, no. 3 (originally in English).
Bauman Z., Modernity and the Holocaust, New York: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Catholicism Contending with Modernity: Roman Catholic Modernism and Anti-Modernism in Historical Context, ed. D. Jodock, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Chesterton G.K., Saint Francis of Assisi, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923.
Crane R.F., Passion of Israel: Jacques Maritain, Catholic Conscience, and the Holocaust, Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2010.
Cudak R., “‘Otom przed Tobą, Abraham’: Lektura wiersza Józefa Wittlina ‘Trwoga przed śmiercią’” [“I, Abraham, Stand before You”: A Reading of the Poem “Fear of Death” by Józef Wittlin] [in:] Studia o twórczości Józefa Wittlina [Studies on the Writings of Józef Wittlin], ed. I. Opacki, Katowice: Uniwersytet Śląski, 1990.
Davies N., God’s Playground A History of Poland: Volume II: 1795 to the Present, Oxford–New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Delehaye H., The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography, trans. V.M. Crawford, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907.
Delehaye H., Work of the Bollandists through Three Centuries, 1615–1915, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1922.
Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation and Commentary, ed. H.J. Schroeder, St Louis: Herder, 1937.
Doran S., The Culture of Yellow, or, the Visual Politics of Late Modernity, London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
Eliot T.S., After Strange Gods, London: Faber & Faber, 1934.
Faure G., Pèlerinages d’Italie: au pays de Saint François d’Assise et de Sainte Catherine de Sienne, Paris: Perrin, 1920.
Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. R.J. Armstrong, J.A.W. Hellmann, W. J. Short, trans. R.J. Armstrong and others, 3 vols, New York: New York City Press, 1999–2001.
Friedman Ph., “The Jewish Badge and the Yellow Star in the Nazi Era,” Historia Judaica 1955, 17.
Gwynn A., “The Bollandists: Past and Present,” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 1946, vol. 35, no. 137.
Hagen W.W., “The Moral Economy of Popular Violence: The Pogrom in Lwów, November 1918” [in:] Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland, ed. R. Blobaum, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005.
Jacques Maritain and the Jews, ed. R. Royal, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994.
Jenkins P., The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade, New York: HarperOne, 2014.
Josephus, “Against Apion, or on the Antiquity of the Jews” [in:] Josephus, The Life. Against Apion, with an English translation H.St.J. Thackeray, Loeb Classical Library, 186, London: William Heinemann, 1961.
Kisch G., “The Yellow Badge in History,” Historia Judaica 1957, 19.
Kosakowska E., “The War as a Myth: The Analysis of a Development of the Religious Imagery in Joseph Wittlin’s The Salt of the Earth” [in:] Between Lvov, New York, and Ulysses’ Ithaca: Józef Wittlin: Poet, Essayist, Novelist, ed. A. Frajlich, Toruń: Nicholas Copernicus University, 2001.
Kossert A., “Founding Father of Modern Poland and Nationalistic Antisemite: Roman Dmowski” [in:] In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe, ed. R. Haynes, M. Rady, London: I.B. Tauris, 2011.
Little A.G., “The Seventh Centenary of St. Francis of Assisi (1226–1926)” [in:] Franciscan Essays II, ed. F.C. Burkitt, H.E. Goad, A.G. Little, Manchester: University Press, 1932.
Maritain J., “À propos de la question juive” [On the Jewish Question], La Vie spirituelle [The Spiritual Life], July 1921, 2 (4).
Opalski M. M., “Wiadomości Literackie: Polemics on the Jewish Question, 1924–1939” [in:] The Jews of Poland between Two World Wars, ed. Y. Gutman and others, Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 1989.
Peters U., Franz von Assisi, Tübingen: Mohr, 1912.
Polonsky A., “‘Why did they hate Tuwim Boy so much?’ Jews and ‘Artificial Jews’ in the Literary Polemics in the Second Polish Republic” [in:] ed. R. Blobaum, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005.
Porter[-Szűcs] B., ‘Anti-Semitism and the Search for a Catholic Modernity’ [in:] Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland, ed. R. Blobaum, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005.
Sabatier P., Vie de saint François d’Assise, Paris: Libraire Fischbacher, 1893 (in English as Life of St. Francis of Assisi, trans. L.S. Houghton, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1894; in German as Das Leben des heiligen Franz von Assisi, trans. M. Lisco, Berlin: De Gruyter, 1895).
Saitschick R., Franziskus von Assisi, München: C.H. Beck, 1917.
Schultenover D.G., A View from Rome: On the Eve of the Modernist Crisis, New York: Fordham University Press, 1993.
Sokolow N., “Henri Bergson’s Old-Warsaw Lineage” [in:] L.S. Dawidowicz, The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Talar C.J.T., “Discourse on Method: Hippolyte Delehaye’s Légendes hagiographiques” [in:] Medieval Saints in Late Nineteenth Century French Culture: Eight Essays, ed. E. Emery, L. Postlewate, Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Talar C.J.T., “Saint of Authority and the Saint of the Spirit: Paul Sabatier’s Vie de saint François d’Assise” [in:] Sanctity and Secularity during the Modernist Period: Six Perspectives on Hagiography Around 1900, ed. L.F. Barmann, C.J.T. Talar, Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1999.
Thomas of Celano, The Life of Saint Francis. U.S. Catholic Historian, 2007, 25(1): Pascendi dominici gregis 1907–2007: Centennial Essays on Responses to the Encyclical on Modernism.
Van der Wall, E., The Enemy Within: Religion, Science, and Modernism, Wassenaar: NIAS, 2007.
Vauchez A., Francis of Assisi: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Saint, trans. M.F. Cusato, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.
Ventresca R. A., “Jacques Maritain and the Jewish Question: Theology, Identity and Politics,” Studies in Christian–Jewish Relations 2007, 2 (2).
Williams B., The Franciscan Revival in the Anglican Communion, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1982.
Wittlin J., [Diaries], 12 vols, unpublished.
Wittlin J., Listy [Letters], ed. T. Januszewski, Warszawa: Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza, 1996.
Wittlin J., Orfeusz w piekle XX wieku [Orpheus in the Inferno of the Twentieth Century], Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2000.
Wittlin J., Pisma pośmiertne i inne eseje [Posthumous Writings and Other Essays], ed. J. Zieliński, Warszawa: Biblioteka Więzi, 1991.
Wittlin J., Poezje [Poems], Warszawa: PIW, 1978.
Wittlin J., Święty Franciszek z Asyżu [Saint Francis of Assisi], Warszawa: Biblioteka Więzi, 1997.
Wittlin J., “W obronie książek niemieckich” [In Defence of German Books], Wiadomości Literackie [Literary News], 7 May 1933.
Zajączkowski R., “Korespondencja między Józefem Wittlinem i Romanem Brandstaetterem” [Correspondence between Józef Wittlin and Roman Brandstaetter], Tematy i Konteksty, 2012, 2(7).
Zajączkowski R., “Wolne usta poety: Ethos słowa Józefa Wittlina” [The Poet’s Free Lips: Józef Wittlin’s Verbal Ethics], Ethos [Ethos] 2012, 97/98.
Information: Konteksty Kultury, 2018, Special Issue (2018), pp. 41 - 60
Article type: Original article
Titles:
Reinventing Saint Francis: Józef Wittlin, Anti-Semitism and the Idea of Modern Sainthood
University of Essex
Published at: 18.12.2018
Article status: Open
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND
Percentage share of authors:
Article corrections:
-Publication languages:
EnglishView count: 1510
Number of downloads: 1103