Poeci polscy doby humanizmu wobec Rzymu / Polish Poets of the Age of Humanism and Rome

Abstract

Summary Based on earlier research, and especially Tadeusz Ulewicz’s landmark study Iter Romano- -Italicum Polonorum, or the Intellectual and Cultural Links between Poland and Italy in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1999) this article examines the influence of Rome - in its role as the Holy See and a centre of learning and the arts - on Poland’s culture in the 15th and 16th century as well as on the activities of Polish churchmen, scholars and writers who came to the Eternal City. The aim of the article is to trace the role of the emerging Humanist themes and attitudes on the shape of the cultural exchange in question. It appears that the Roman connection was a major factor in the history of Polish Humanism - its inner development, its transformations, and the ideological and artistic choices made by the successive generations of the Polish elite. In the 15th century the Roman inspirations helped to initiate the Humanist impulse in Poland, while in the 16th century they stimulated greater diversity and a search for one’s own way of development. In the post-Tridentine epoch they became a potent element of the Poland’s new cultural formation. Against the background of these generalizations, the article presents the cultural profiles of four poets, Mikołaj of Hussów, Klemens Janicjusz, Jan Kochanowski, and Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński. They symbolize the four phases of the Polish Humanist tradition, which draw their distinctive identities from looking up to the Roman model