Carmen patrium Bogurodzica – czas powstania, kontekst historyczny i inspiracje

Abstract

Carmen patrium Bogurodzica – Time of Origin, Historical Context and Inspirations Bogurodzica is indubitably one of the most controversial and longest discussed monuments of Polish-language mediaeval literature. The article intends to once again establish the time of the song’s origin and the factors, which influenced the latter. An analysis of the socio-political situation at the end of the thirteenth century made it possible to indicate that those factors entailed in all probability the necessity to protect the Polish language, the Church, and a more profound integration of Polish society at a time of nationality clashes, incessant external conflicts, and a feudal fragmentation of the state into provinces. Those circumstances could have given rise to a need for universal religious support, expressed by the text of Bogurodzica . The song consolidated the universal cult of the Mary, Mother of God, and John the Baptist and thus could strengthen the integrity of the nation in the course of national conflicts (and a tangible threat posed by German-speaking incomers); finally, in the Bohemian mode, it constituted a sui generis national anthem. These are the reasons for a hypothesis claiming that Bogurodzica could have originated within the Gniezno milieu at the turn of the thirteenth century, and was inspired by Archbishop Jakub Świnka, against the backdrop of his activity as a defender of the Polish language and the unification ideology developed at the time. Although the potential sources include discernible elements borrowed from Latin and, indirectly, Byzantine culture the prominent sources must have been Bohemian (and, indirectly, Old Slavonic) writings. The stimulus in question was, as has been indicated, predominantly the song: Hospodine pomiluj ny , whose ideological function within Bohemian state life could have been noted by the Polish authors of Bogurodzica .