Aemulatores Erasmi? “The Council of Women” in Polish Literature of the 16th Century

Abstract

This paper presents how the Polish renaissance authors creatively transformed and adapted one of Erasmus’ dialogues, Senatulus sive Gynaikosynedrion, to the native context. Erasmus exploited a popular motif of a meeting of women who debate on different issues. The work is based on one of Aristophanes’ comedies, as well as an episode from a biography of the Roman emperor, Elagabalus. Senatulus was very popular and was translated into a number of vernacular languages all over Europe. Erasmus, with his characteristic sense of humour and criticism, pointed to some of the vices of women, but this did not constitute his ultimate aim. He used the seemingly paradoxical formula of a women’s council to draw attention to the social and political problems of the time. Early-modern Polish texts that used the theme in question can be read in the context of Polish parliamentarism, but their literary inspiration should also to be taken into consideration. The first part of this paper focuses on problematic aspects of Senatulus and its somewhat provocative and ambiguous character, which probably attracted other authors to this particular text. Then two Polish dialogues that are linked to Erasmus’s work are examined. These are the anonymous Senatulus to jest sjem niewieści (Senatulus, or the council of women) from 1543 and Sjem niewieści (The council of women) written by Marcin Bielski in 1566/1567. Even a preliminary comparison of these two works with Erasmus’ colloquium indicates that the Polish texts are, in a sense, sequels to the Latin original and further develop its basic idea. References to Erasmus’ work are present here on different levels. Similarity lays not only in the title and topics discussed by the characters, but also in the linguistic structure of the text. In both cases, the concept of the female parliament was used by the writers as a pretext to draw attention to the political, social, and economic problems Poland faced at that time and to suggest solutions.