Poland Literature Part II

By | January 21, 2022

According to BAGLIB, the sec. XV instead marks a vigorous cultural progress. Already at the time of Casimir the Great, Poland had entered into closer relations with the West: Polish schoolchildren had attended Italian universities and in 1364 the University of Krakow was founded, which after a short period of hibernation was renewed by Queen Hedwig in 1400. Since then Poland has, throughout the century. XV, a cultural center which, while retaining a strictly medieval character, makes up, at least in part, for the lack, which has always remained highly sensitive, of thriving city centers. Most of the Poles were recruited from among his teachers and pupils. XV stand out in the cultural field: Paweł Włodkowic (Paulus Vladimiri, died in 1435) who in his capacity as rector of the young university took an active part in the council of Constance, defending, in opposition to the Teutonic Order, the thesis of religious tolerance; Jan z Głogowa (Glogoviensis, Silesian of German origin, died 1507), the main Polish representative of scholastic philosophy; Wojciech z Brudzewa (born in 1446, died in 1495), astronomer, master of Copernicus; Jacobus de Paradiso (1380-1464) student and professor of the Krakow studio, well-known theologian, one of the main authors of the famous treatise presented at the Council of Basel by the Jagiellonian University. All far surpasses the secretary of Zbigniew Oleśnicki, Jan Długosz (1415-1480), whose Jan z Głogowa (Glogoviensis, Silesian of German origin, died 1507), the main Polish representative of scholastic philosophy; Wojciech z Brudzewa (born in 1446, died in 1495), astronomer, master of Copernicus; Jacobus de Paradiso (1380-1464) student and professor of the Krakow studio, well-known theologian, one of the main authors of the famous treatise presented at the Council of Basel by the Jagiellonian University. All far surpasses the secretary of Zbigniew Oleśnicki, Jan Długosz (1415-1480), whose Jan z Głogowa (Glogoviensis, Silesian of German origin, died 1507), the main Polish representative of scholastic philosophy; Wojciech z Brudzewa (born in 1446, died in 1495), astronomer, master of Copernicus; Jacobus de Paradiso (1380-1464) student and professor of the Krakow studio, well-known theologian, one of the main authors of the famous treatise presented at the Council of Basel by the Jagiellonian University. All far surpasses the secretary of Zbigniew Oleśnicki, Jan Długosz (1415-1480), whose one of the main authors of the famous treatise presented at the Council of Basel by the Jagiellonian University. All far surpasses the secretary of Zbigniew Oleśnicki, Jan Długosz (1415-1480), whose one of the main authors of the famous treatise presented at the Council of Basel by the Jagiellonian University. All far surpasses the secretary of Zbigniew Oleśnicki, Jan Długosz (1415-1480), whose Historia polonica is the most distinguished literary monument of fifteenth-century Poland. In fact, before the greatness of this work, the poetic attempts not only in Latin (epitaphs, epistles, religious songs), but also Polish (religious poems, including a beautiful hymn to the Holy Spirit; occasional verses; the De morte prologus: Rozmowa Mistrza ze Ś mierci ą, which although depending on the Latin treatise Colloquium inter mortem et magistrum Polycarpum, is the most vivid poetic work of the Polish Middle Ages) and even less can prose be measured against it, than outside the erudite treatises in the Latin language, which has already been mentioned, it cannot be opposed, in the vernacular, by translations of the Bible (the so-calledQueen Sofia Bible), sermons, prayer books and apocrypha. But the medieval spirituality of Długosz is opposed already in the century. XV, also in Poland, the new currents of humanism. The bold Monumentum pro Reipublicae ordinatione by Jan Ostroróg (1436-1501) heralds the political literature of the following century; in Gregorio da Sanok (died 1477) the first type of the humanistic patron appears and with Filippo Buonaccorsi Callimaco, who traced his life (Vita Gregoris Sanocei), also penetrates Poland, and above all at the court of Krakow, a large breath of new cultural life.

And so, with the advent, still limited to a few people, of humanism; with the legacy of a historical work to undoubtedly place alongside the most famous that the Middle Ages gave to the West; with a studio that is a destination for schoolchildren not only from Poland, but also from neighboring countries; with an intellectual vivacity and spiritual curiosity that appears manifest since the early decades of the sixteenth century, with an increasingly intensive approach to Bohemia (from which numerous literary impulses will come), to Germany, Hungary and above all to Italy (in Poland several Italian traders and financiers established and more and more Polish schoolchildren flocked to Italy) – Poland, richer and more powerful,

A complete fusion of the two or three levels on which literature takes place in 16th-century Poland will never come – and indeed in the period of the Counter-Reformation there will again be a greater detachment – since culture, tastes and tastes remain largely distinct., the needs and aspirations of writers and readers: on the one hand the most advanced part of the nobility and the high clergy, on the other the masses of the small nobility, the bourgeoisie and women. The bourgeoisie in particular would certainly have borne other fruits of its abilities also in the cultural field, if its gradual polonization had not more or less coincided with the loss of almost all political rights.

Poland Literature 2