„Skarb duszny, nad złoto i kamienie drogie kosztowniejszy”
“Skarb duszny, nad złoto i kamienie drogie kosztowniejszy” (“A soul treasure, costlier than gold and precious stones”)

From a Story of a Book

Summary/Abstract: The article is an attempt at reconstructing the Latin source of the Polish devotional print “Skarb duszny, nad złoto i kamienie drogie kosztowniejszy (A Soul Treasure, Costlier than Gold and Precious Stones)” and the history of its translations done by the Orthodox Church followers in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwelth. It was a translation of a work by a Jesuit Franciszek Coster composed about 1576–1577 to serve the Sodality of Our Lady, College Society of Jesus in Cologne, and printed at the turn of 16th and 17th c. under various titles (“Bulla super forma iuramenti professionis fidei,” “Thesaurus piarum,” “Piarum et christianarum Institutionum libri tres,” “Libellus Sodalitatis”), indicating Coster as its author or anonymously. A Soul Treasure [...], launched in Cracow in Andrzej Piotrkowczyk’s publishing house (1582, 1594), was twice translated into so called simple language and printed in Vilnius Orthodox Brotherhood as a kind of biblical-liturgical Orthodox book, either in the second half of the 1630s or at the beginning of 1640s (a fragment urging to frequent confession), and as a separate print “Nauka o tayne svatovo pokayania (A Study of Mysterious Holy Confession)” (Kiev 1671). At the turn of 17th and 18th c. translation of “A Soul Treasure [...]” into simple language widespread in Ukraine also in handwritten transcripts.

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