Magic, though dismissed by modern science, has throughout ages been more influential than we tend to admit. Only recently some attempts have been made to return magic to it’s rightful place in the history of philosophy. Giordano Bruno, commonly known as natural philosopher burnt at stake for his Copernican beliefs, apart from his cosmological writings is also an author of a number of treatises about magic. The article is intended as introduction to the subject of Brunian magic. It provides the summary of the treatise 'On magic', including descriptions of different kinds of magic, the way in which Bruno understands magic and what are bonds and how to create them. The article is followed by a fragment of the first polish translation of the treatise 'On magic'.
Needless to say, medical topics have always aroused a great interest among various artists. What is more, a great number of art works has been preserved, which undoubtedly contributes to the enrichment of our knowledge about doctors working in the previous centuries. Moreover, in the Renaissance, one could easily notice the thriving development of paintings, presenting ordinary scenes from everyday life, which was started mainly by the Dutch. Furthermore, among frequent topics undertaken by famous artists we can diff erentiate the ones that presented surgeries and autopsies. In the given article we will discuss the paintings presenting the anatomy lessons by Pietersz, Pickenoy, van Mierveld, Rembrandt, and van Neck, since the analysis of given works provides a great source of information about the doctors living in these times.
PL
Od wielu stuleci malarze interesowali się tematyką medyczną. Do naszych czasów zachowało się wiele dzieł sztuki, które wzbogacają naszą wiedzę o lekarzach z minionych wieków. W epoce renesansu rozpoczął się bujny rozkwit malarstwa rodzajowego, który zapoczątkowali Holendrzy. Do częstych tematów malarskich sławnych mistrzów należały m.in. sceny rodzajowe przedstawiające zabiegi chirurgiczne czy sekcje. W pracy zostały omówione obrazy przedstawiające lekcje anatomii Pietersza, Pickenoya, van Miervelda, Rembrandta, van Necka. Analizując te dzieła wiele możemy się dowiedzieć o żyjących wówczas lekarzach.
The third part of the critical edition of Jan Kochanowski’s corpus in Latin, published by Zofia Głombiowska in 2013, contains an editorial commentary. This volume is the last part of a large and impressive work which was necessary for the academic knowledge of Polish Renaissance literature.
The aim of the article is to represent the importance of kabala in European Renaissance, point out the possible ways of Saint John of the Cross’s contact with the Jewish culture and analyse the elements of his Spiritual Canticle’s poetry which can be interpreted as conscious or unconscious literary devices inspired by kabala.
In the Renaissance the beauty of a garden was for people a source of energy, it nurtured their inherent love of plant life, enchanted them and gave them a sense of pure aesthetic contentment. This fascination with nature and the values nurtured by the emerging culture of the garden also had broader reasons than just the desire for subjective experience. They can be sought in the belief that the style of an epoch is reflected not only in all the forms of pure art, but also in the sphere of applied art. The aesthetic criteria which determined the early-Renaissance conception of the garden were at least twofold: first, the then-emerging culture of the garden co-formed the identity of the entire era as one of the few enclaves of a rising trend away from the classical tradition. The culture of the garden contested the adulation of the Antique that was common at the time and ruled supremely in art.
In seiner Schrift Valerius Terminus schreibt Francis Bacon, dass Adam die Dinge mittelst ihrer wahrhaften Namen habe beherrschen können. Dieser Gedanke wird oft als magisches Motiv bezeichnet und die vorliegende Studie befasst sich damit, ob die Idee der Beherrschung der Dinge durch die Namen in der Renaissance-Magie vorkam und ob Bacons philosophisches Projekt der grossen Erneuerung der Wissenschaften von dieser Magie beeinflusst wurde. Der erste Teil der Studie befasst sich mit der natürlichen Magie (Porta, Ficino, Campanella), der zweite behandelt die kabbalistische und neoplatonische Magie (Mirandola, Agrippa von Nettesheim). Im dritten Teil werden Bacons Ansichten über Magie wiedergegeben. Die Analyse dieser Ansichten belegt, dass sich Bacons philosophisches Projekt von der Renaissance-Magie in mehreren Hinsichten deutlich unterscheidet. Im letzen Teil versucht der Verfasser nachzuweisen, dass die Erwähnung der Macht der Wörter nicht als Folge eines Einflusses der Magie auf Bacon interpretiert werden darf. Vielmehr handelt es sich um den Ausdruck einer idealen Form der menschlichen Macht über die Natur, die der Mensch nach seinem Sündenfall jedoch nie vollkommen erreichen kann. Bacon stimmt mit der damaligen protestantischen Auffassung überein, dass die Folgen des Sündenfalls wettgemacht werden könnten und dass der Mensch zu seiner paradiesischen Souverenität und Macht durch „unreine“ Mittel wie Arbeit, Technik, und forchungswissenschaftliche institutionelle Verwaltung zurückfinden könne.
The paper examines the Renaissance philosophy of love, grasped as a “metaphysics of love.” Alongside its metaphysical interpretation, the phenomenon of Renaissance philosophy of love was subject to two other kinds of analysis: it was viewed either through the prism of its spiritual form, or as a fashionable social game which demanded that “every courtier recognise knowledge about how many and what varieties of love there are as necessary for his trade.” The author of the Renaissance theory of love was the philosopher Marsilio Ficino, an “alter Plato;” so it is his views on love which are examined in this paper.
In 1555–1558, the villa Hvězda (Star) in Prague was designed and built by Archduke Ferdinand, vice-regent of the kingdom of Bohemia and the son of Ferdinand I, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor from 1558. The architecture of the villa is highly unusual, because it is designed on a hexagonal ground plan. Nevertheless, it was modeled on Italian villas “all’antica”. It is a centrally-planned building with rooms grouped around a central “atrium”, all connected so that they form a kind of ambulatory.
The article presents a series of five cultural renaissances which took place in the Western World from the 3rd century BC to the 15th–16th centuries AD. One feature which all these renaissances had in common was a type of technological turn which either triggered or helped to spread renewed interest in literature. The end of the 20th century and especially the beginning of the 21st century has been witness to a major technological revolution. Some signs of literary and philological renewal can also be observed, especially in the field of classical studies. All this has led some scholars to believe that we are currently heading for the sixth Renaissance.
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The urban space in the Republic of Venice (circa 800–1797) seems to have had a more malleable and variable quality than other towns situated on dry land: its physical space was not merely an ‘infrastructure’, the precondition for the existence of social space, but rather something that was actively produced and reconstructed by society itself. This is one reason why the authors decided to use the Republic of Venice to study the relationship between the social and physical space and chart the ways in which social inequalities at the dawn of the modern era were reflected in the organisation of the urban space. They present Venice as ‘two cities in one’: Venice the city built and portrayed from the perspective of the privileged classes, i.e. the viewpoint of those who had themselves transported through the city on gondolas; and Venice the city of the pedestrian traffic of the lower classes, excluded from political life. The authors set out to attain a better understanding of the deep social and political inequalities that existed in Venice on the one hand and of how it endured a thousand years of internal political stability without experiencing a single attempt at revolt, revolution or social uprising on the other. They therefore focus not just on forms of stratification, segregation and exclusion, but also on how Venetian society integrated its marginalised members and how it accorded them social and cultural relevance and recognition.
In the Renaissance there was a kind of linguistic-pictorial osmosis, in which mythological configurations derived from antique literature, the poetic metaphoric of Neoplatonism, semi-fantastic and semi-realistic visions and a visible penchant for decorative rhetoric intertwined with elements of rational thought, the cult of nature, traditional reference to higher authority and practical as well as theoretical acceptance of pictorial symbolic. This language was employed to explore philosophical, ethical, and even natural categories related to issues like the beginnings of the world and nature, death, transience, vanity (vanitas),3 temperance, virtue (virtu), harmony, vita activa and contemplativa— categories in which the people of the era strove to describe youth, maturity, old age and death. In this specific language writing about a truth, idea or moral principle primarily involved presenting it as a picture, a concrete, sensually embraceable form, thing or person. Thus, if it was necessary, logos followed imago, which was genetically precedent and most important in the cognitive sense.
Emblem was one of the most characteristic art forms of the Renaissance. Emblem Books were especially popular in the end of the sixteenth century and wielded an unusual influence on literature, especially in combination with younger stemmata. In order to get support from a wealthy patron, poets often wrote poems in which the symbolic interpretation of a coat of arms became a pretext for praise, however it was not always so. This article deals with an interesting example of making use of an emblem (or stemma) as means of persuasion. The emblem in question is also a rare example of the use of persuasion in connection to an urban (and not one of the nobility) coat of arms. Taking into account the historical and religious context, one can read works of Schober more accurately. What is particularly valid is the influence of mayor Henryk Stroband. The ideological content of the poems was subordinated to policy of the city, and, on the other hand, to religious insulation, as a result of the progress of the Counter-Reformation in the Kingdom of Poland, and the concerns it brought about in the predominantly Protestant Torun. By referring to Stroband thought that „felix civitas quae tempore pacis timet bella,” and by use of his interpretation of Torun coat of arms, Schober tried to convince inhabitants to take responsibility for the security of the city, not only in practical terms – by building walls, but also more existential ones – by learning to cooperate. To summarize, these poems are not merely an allegorical interpretation of Torun coat of arms. They reach far beyond the typical interpretation of stemma and also contain instructions for a particular vision of the city, which was to be implemented in Torun at the end of the sixteenth century.
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Despite a number of particular studies, the Renaissance epitaph remains a largely undervalued source. Art historians study it solely as a “work of art,” while historians tend to use it as a source of purely factual data (heraldic, epigraphic, genealogical, prosopographic etc.). However, from the wider, cultural-historical or historicalanthropological perspective, it is necessary for both disciplines to realize the specific value of the epitaph as a sepulchral monument, the goal of which was to construct the identity of the “social body” of the deceased. The specific conceptual character of the epitaph thus offers a possibility to study it as a complex medium (source) reflecting cultural codes of dying, death, remembering and salvation (which is especially interesting in the context of Europe divided by different denominations), but also as a pure phenomenon that took part in forming the death discourse of the period.
This is the second part of the investigations of melancholia. Melancholia is examined here in relation to one of its opposition, namely hope. Reflection on melancholia entails reference to conditions commonly regarded as aggravating: sadness, uncertainty, indecision, self-criticism, despair, disenchantment, fear, desperation or bitterness. This content is common both to melancholia and hope; the difference lies in the kind of behaviour it evokes. Not yet either hope or melancholia, it is already conspicuously developing the characteristics of one of the options. This moment is especially important in the process of artistic creation. The tension that appears between both poles enables the experiencing subject to feel indecision about its choice, and hence to ultimately declare itself on one or the other side.
The article deals with the reception of the ancient humoral theory in Polish works of the Renaissance. The reconstruction of the humoral theory is analyzed from its roots – medical schools of Knidos and Kos, through activities of Hippocrates, and especially with the use of Galen’s “concept of tetrads”. Furthermore, following ideas are discussed: the isolation of four bodily fluids: blood, yellow bile, black bile and mucus with its qualities (dryness, moistness, coldness and warmth), the four elements, four seasons and four stages of life, up to the quattuor humores theory as “the theory of macrocosm – microcosm”. The presentation of the foundation of theories is to show the relations and interrelations between the flow of bodily fluids and the affects, additionally ‘contamination’ of moods is pointed out as a probable source of hysterias, with Vitello’s concept of visual sensation as caused by madness. Polemic reference to the humoral theory suggested by Paracelsus is also depicted, it outlines innovative and complex character of his work within the main premises of Renaissance medicine. An essential context of the article is the display of humanistic inclinations of Renaissance people of medicine, whose written works became the source-based work for Wojciech Oczko (among other things his staging of “The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys” by Jan Kochanowski), Józef Struś (with the special emphasis on his poetic works) or Wojciech Nowopolski (concentrating, among other things, on his translations of Erasmus of Rotterdam and Greek literature lectures) and medical fascinations of Renaissance writers, for example, Daniel Naborowski.
W artykule przedstawiono i porównano rozwiązania planów miast nowożytnych lokowanych na Dolnym Śląsku po wojnie trzydziestoletniej. Pokazano nieliczne rozwiązania urbanistyczne o formach renesansowych i barokowych. Celem było wyszukanie inspiracji i wzorów oraz wskazanie prawdopodobnych naśladownictw, a także ocena wartości projektów urbanistycznych i ich znaczenia dla utrwalania lub zmian wykorzystywanych koncepcji. Po wojnie trzydziestoletniej obszar Dolnego Śląska miał zorganizowaną i stosunkowo kompletną sieć osadniczą. Jednym z nielicznych powodów zakładania miast była rozwijająca się dziedzina gospodarki – wydobycie rud metali. Drugim były względy prestiżowe. I to w tym wypadku odpowiedni dobór form przestrzennych miał dużo większe znaczenie. Wśród miast górniczych powstały dwa o wyraźnie renesansowym rozplanowaniu – Bolesławów (1581) i Złotniki Lubańskie (1677). Te miasteczka prezentują się typowo dla regionu (Saksonii, Czech, zwłaszcza rejonu Sudetów) i należą do późniejszych realizacji (choć w całej Europie stosowanych jeszcze w XVII, a nawet XVIII w.). Ze względu na swój niewielki rozmiar, podobnie jak inne miasta górnicze regionu, składają się tylko z obszernego rynku z czterema ulicami i otaczających go pierzei zabudowy. W okresie baroku powstały nieliczne nowe miasta zakładane przez dworzan austriackich i nową szlachtę w celu nobilitacji. Najważniejsze inicjatywy urbanistyczne związane są z działalnością członków rodziny książęcej Wirtembergów, którzy urządzając swe nowe rezydencje, dbali o fundację lub rozwój sąsiedniego miasta. Z inicjatywy pierwszego z książąt, Sylwiusza Nimroda, założono Dobroszyce (1663). Eleonora Charlotta, wdowa po Sylwiuszu II Fryderyku, przyczyniła się zaś do powstania barokowej enklawy miejskiej w Twardogórze (ok. 1685). Innym przykładem miasta o układzie barokowym stał się Brzeg Dolny Dyhrnów (1662). Oprócz rozwiązań zachowawczych renesansowych w genezie stosowanych w większości przypadków przy zakładaniu miast górniczych i rzemieślniczych powstały też na Dolnym Śląsku w 2. połowie XVII w. bardzo nowatorskie założenia urbanistyczne. Z zestawień ujawnia się, że projekty zastosowane przy zakładaniu północnośląskich barokowych miast należały do nurtu awangardowego. Powstawały równocześnie lub nawet wcześniej od wielu analogicznych fundacji z sąsiednich terenów.
EN
The article presents and compares the plan solutions of modern towns located in Lower Silesia after the Thirty Years’ War. It shows a few urban designs of Renaissance and Baroque forms. The aim was to find inspiration and models, and to indicate probable imitations, as well as the assessment of the value of urban projects and their relevance to the perpetuation or change of the used concepts. The area of Lower Silesia after the Thirty Years’ War had an organized and fairly complete settlement grid. One of the few reasons of founding new towns was the development of mining of metal ores. The other motive was prestigious considerations. In this case, an appropriate choice of spatial forms was much more important. Among the mining towns two obtained a clearly Renaissance shape – Bolesławów (1581) and Złotniki Lubańskie (1677). These small towns of the Renaissance arrangement are typical for this region (Saxony, Kingdom of Bohemia, especially the Sudetenland) and belong to later implementations (though still used throughout Europe in the 17th century, or even the 18th century). Due to their small size, similarly as other towns of the mining region, they are formed of only a large square market with four streets surrounded by a building frontage. The Austrian courtiers and the new nobles during the Baroque period created a few new towns with the aim of nobilitation. The most important urban initiatives are related to the activities of members of the family of Württemberg-Oels, who organizing their new residences decided to found or to develop a neighboring town. On the initiative of Silvius Nimrod, the first of the duces, Dobroszyce (1663) were founded. Eleonora Charlotta, widow of Silvius II Frederick, contributed to the construction of a new Baroque city enclave in Twardogóra (circa 1685). Brzeg Dolny of Abraham Dyhrn (1662) became another example of Baroque arrangement. Apart from conservative Renaissance solutions in the genesis of applied in most cases of founding mining and craft towns, in the 2nd half of the 17th century there came into being, also in Lower Silesia, very innovatory urban foundations. They were created at the same time or even earlier than many analogous foundation from adjacent areas.
The above short analysis of scientific and medical, medicine and didactic treaties of the age of Renaissance allows us to present numerous motifs linked to health and physical fitness, which were in the realm of interest of Polish authors. Not all their statements were original, many notions were taken from ancient scholars. Nevertheless, Polish Renaissance writers undertook the challenge of independent deliberations over the matter of health, formulating- also in a naive way- many faulty theories. These achievements are worth acknowledging. The scholars mentioned in the above article were in many cases forerunners and originators of certain proceedings which undoubtedly in their times were innovative and ground-breaking.
PL
Krótka analiza literatury naukowej, medycznej i traktatów pedagogicznych z epoki renesansu, pozwala na wskazanie licznych wątków związanych ze zdrowiem i sprawnością fizyczną, którym swoją uwagę poświęcali polscy autorzy. Nie wszystkie ich twierdzenia były oryginalne, wiele treści powtarzali za starożytnymi uczonymi. Z drugiej strony podejmowali samodzielne rozważania, formułując – także i naiwnie – różne błędne twierdzenia. Dorobek ten wart jest dostrzeżenia. Wspominani – nie wszyscy przecież – uczeni (teoretycy i praktycy) byli w wielu przypadkach prekursorami tez i pomysłodawcami pewnych działań, które w swoim czasie bez wątpienia staną się nowatorskie.
Artykuł skrótowo przedstawia historię mecenatu literackiego w Polsce od czasów najdawniejszych aż do przełomu politycznego w 1989 r. Omówione zostały zarówno działania mecenasów w kraju, jak i na emigracji, poczynając od XIX wieku. Mecenat literacki zaznaczył się już w średniowieczu, jednak jego najpełniejszy rozkwit przypadł na okres renesansu. Mecenasami byli wtedy zwłaszcza władcy duchowni i świeccy. Wraz z osłabieniem władzy królewskiej w roli mecenasów występowali coraz częściej magnaci – zarówno katoliccy, jak i protestanccy. Po okresie kryzysu mecenat w dziedzinie literatury odrodził się na krótko za panowania Stanisława Augusta Poniatowskiego. W okresie rozbiorów mecenat prywatny pozwolił zaistnieć wielu pisarzom tworzącym na terenach Polski, jak i na emigracji. Ważną rolę paramecenacką zwłaszcza do połowy XIX wieku pełniły salony literackie. Po odzyskaniu przez Polskę niepodległości zmalała znacznie rola mecenasów prywatnych, których zaczęło zastępować państwo. Niezwykle ważną rolę pełnił mecenat w okresie II wojny światowej. Dzięki niemu udało się pomóc wielu pisarzom oraz w dużej mierze zachować dorobek literatury. Okres powojenny stał pod znakiem dominacji państwa jako jedynego dysponenta środków na twórczość literacką. Wydawano i upowszechniano niejednokrotnie dobrą literaturę, ale zarazem rynek literacki był zideologizowany i objęty cenzurą. W tym samym czasie w największych skupiskach polskiej emigracji powstały ośrodki, które promowały pisarzy tworzących poza krajem. Od 1989 r. mecenat literacki stał się często domeną prywatnych instytucji, jednak w nowych warunkach społeczno-ekonomicznych nie wykształciły jeszcze dojrzałe mechanizmy wspierania twórczości literackiej. Mimo szeregu niedomagań Polska posiada tradycje godne wielkich cywilizowanych narodów w zakresie mecenatu literackiego.
EN
This article briefly presents the history of literary patronage in Poland since the earliest times until the political turn in 1989. The activities of patrons both in the motherland and in exile, beginning from the 19th century, have been discussed here. Literary patronage was present as early as in the Middle Ages; however, its greatest flowering was observed in the times of the Renaissance. Especially ecclesiastical and secular rulers were patrons at that time. With the decline of royal power, the magnates (both Catholic and Protestant) took the role of patron more and more frequently. After a period of crisis, literary patronage was regenerated for a short time during the reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski. During the era of the partitions it was private patronage which made it possible for many authors, writing both on Polish territory and in exile, to become established. Literary salons played an important para-patronage role, especially until the mid-19th century. After the restoration of Poland’s independence the role of private patrons decreased as the state began to replace them. Patronage was extraordinarily important during the Second World War, when it rendered assistance to many writers and made a considerable contribution to the preservation of literary achievements. In the post-war period it was—the state which was dominant as the only provider of support for literary work. Good literature was frequently published and popularised; however, the literary market was ideological control and censorship. At the same time, in the largest Polish exile communities, new centres, promoting authors writing outside Poland, were being created. Since 1989 literary patronage has often been the domain of private institutions; however in the new social and economical circumstances advanced mechanisms for supporting literary output have not yet been developed. Despite many obstacles, Poland’s traditions are on a par with those of great civilised nations as far as literary patronage is concerned.
The article is devoted to the Latin poem De spledidissimo Christi Jesu triumpho carmen by Martin Kromer who was one of the biggest writers of the Polish Renaissance. A theme of the work is time when Jesus Christ became alive again three days after his death. The theme are also miraculous events which took place after his Resurrection. The poet is supplementing records of the Gospel, introducing into his poem the action which isn’t complicated. He is talking about guards who stood by the grave. He is also describing the reaction of the nature which expressed its sadness because of the death of the Saviour. In the context of the report on the Resurrection, the poet is referring to the figures of ancient world belonging both to mythology, as well to history. In his artistic work Kromer isn’t presenting typical Apocrypha, he proposes a different perspective, having only character of the Apocrypha.
Badania archeologiczne nad średniowiecznym i nowożytnym Chełmem prowadzone są od ponad 100 lat, ale szczególnie istotnych informacji pozyskano w ostatniej dekadzie. Pracami wykopaliskowymi objęto teren Góry Katedralnej z grodem książęcym, jak i Stare Miasto z osadnictwem od XIII do XX wieku. W 2009 r. badania objęły Pl. E. Łuczkowskiego przy budynku dawnego ratusza, którego początki sięgają wieku XIV lub pocz. XV. W jednym z wykopów odkryto dwie hakownice żelazne. Była to ręczna broń palna, której lufy zaopatrywano w pionowo skierowany ku dołowi hak. Używano ich do obrony murów miejskich oraz zamkowych. Zarówno kontekst archeologiczny odkrycia, jak i parametry hakownic pozwalają je datować na XVI stulecie, najpewniej jego 1 poł. Jednak z uwagi na swój charakter mogły one pozostawać w użyciu dłużej, aż po XVII w. Odkrycie hakownic z Chełma pozwoliło na ich zestawienie i porównanie z innymi tego rodzaju egzemplarzami z terenu Europy Środkowej.
EN
Archaeological research on mediaeval and modern Chełm has been carried out for more than 100 years, but some particularly important information has been recovered in the last decade. Excavations have been carried out on the Cathedral mound, and likewise on the Old City on the settlement stretching from the 13th to the 20th century. In the year 2009 research was carried out in E. Łuczkowskiego Square, on the building which was the old Town Hall, whose beginnings stretch back to the 14th century or at least the beginning of the 15th. In one of the trenches two iron hackbuts were discovered. They were a type of hand-held firearm, in which the barrel was equipped with a vertical hook running downwards. They were used for the defence of town or castle walls. The archaeological context of the finds, as well as the diagnostic features of the hackbuts, point to a date in the 16th century, most probably in the first half. Considering the use to which these weapons report, however, they could have remained in use longer, until the 17th century. The find of the Chełm hackbuts allow us to compare them with other examples found in Central Europe.
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