Anti- Judaic polemics in the Polish sixteenth- century printed books

Abstract

The author analyzes the features and main directions of the discussion, within the framework of which the Jewish question arose in Polish printed texts throughout the 16th century. Both spiritual and secular authors of this period used religious logic, argumentation and motivation in the narratives of the studied works, which testifies not to the “anti-Jewish” or “anti-Semitic” (ethnogenetic) nature of the polemics, but to its anti-Judaic property. The image of the Jew is important for Polish literature of the Early Modern Period, and the Jewish question occupied a significant place, in particular, in the printed embodiment of this literature (the works of S. F. Klonowicz, M. Rej, P. Skarga, M. Bielski, etc.). However, printed texts that directly appealed to the Jewish readership with proselytizing purposes are quite few in number: the majority of anti-Judaic works published in the 16th century in the territory of the Polish Kingdom were not polemicized with Jews, but with opponents of another Christian confession (pamphlets of Catholics against Protestants, Lutherans and Calvinists against anti-Trinitarians, and so on; the exception is the discussion of M. Czechowicz with Jakub of Bełżyce). Such texts include the works of B. Herbest, J. Górski, W. Neothebel, Grzegorz Pawel of Brzeziny and others. Thus, the main expression of the Jewish question in the Polish press of the 16th century was the intra-Christian polemic, within which the appeal to Judaism either directly arose from the issue under discussion (such as the question of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments), or was used as a rhetorical device in criticizing the opponent.