O morowym kontekście i dwóch dawnych czytelnikach XVI-wiecznego wydania dialogu Polikarpa
On the Pestilential Context and Two Ancient Readers of a 16th C. Edition of Polikarp’s Dialogue

Summary/Abstract: The paper reveals that the immediate cause of including “Dialog mistrza Polikarpa ze Śmiercią” (“Master Polikarp’s Dialogue with Death”) in 1542 in the print “Śmierci z mistrzem dwojakie gadania” (“Death’s Two Dialogues with the Master”) was a plague epidemic that then spread over the Greater Poland region and reached Cracow the following year. The epidemic was the most severe of all that attacked Poland in the 15th and 16th c. The Cracow printers issued at that time numerous mortuary prints and within this framework they also reminded of the mediaeval dialogue. The author of the paper also pays attention to two readers of this volume: Mikołaj Rej, who, influenced by it, composed his “Kupiec” (“Merchant”, 1549), and Paweł Simplicjan, that in his “Manele duchowne” (“Spiritual Matters”, 1601) in extenso quoted a piece of a skull from “Śmierci z mistrzem dwojakie gadania”. Simplicjan’s publication is here linked with a 1542 edition which also incorporates the same image of Death.

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