In the wake of Plutarch. Antique tradition in Neo-Latin heraldic work

Abstract

This chapter attempts a survey of the reception of Plutarch's works in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century. The survey material is the Latin armorial created by the Dominican Szymon Okolski Orbis Polonus and published in three volumes in Cracow between 1641 and 1645. Apart from genealogical and historical information, contains texts which are of rhetorical character. Okolski tries to show in these texts the relationship between the coat of arms, its heraldic legend and the virtues of Polish nobility. This analysis show the presence of the anecdotes associated with the antiquity in Latin utility texts published in Cracow. Apophthegmata were a good source of popular moral teaching and of material in argumentation. Although the biblical and liturgical motifs still are, to a limited extent, a part of contemporary consciousness, the antique anecdotes and apophthegmata are only known to a limited group of specialists. Keywords:antique; apophthegmata; biblical; Cracow; Latin; Okolski; Orbis Polonus; Plutarch's