Czy faktycznie Piotr Skarga był prorokiem „upadku Polski i niedoli porozbiorowej”?
Was Piotr Skarga Actually a Prophet of “the Fall of Poland and Post-Partition Misery”?

Summary/Abstract: Ignacy Chrzanowski in his “Historia literatury niepodległej Polski (965–1795) (History of the Literature of the Independent Poland <965–1795>)” wrote, “in the entire Old Polish literature there is nothing that has so much power and fear as that [in Sermon three] in the prophecy of the fall of Poland and post-partition misery.” Skarga’s prophecy was twofold: if you remain sinful in your infidelity to Church, ergo to the Republic of Poland, you parish; if you return to Church obedience and thus conditioned improvement of the Republic, you shall be saved. In the 1790s the Republic of Poland and the Church were intermingled in the way Skarga expected. Yet, in the year 1795 the Third Partition took place. The fact can be explained in two ways. The first, pious, is that in the worldly unexplored God’s justice, the Republic’s sins prevailed over virtues, and so Skarga’s prophecy proved legitimate. The second, critical, reveals that one cannot speak about the prophecy’s fulfilling since The Republic was divided by three Christian powers in spite of being till the end tied to the Church. The answer to the title question remains internally contradictory. Skarga was not and at the same time was a prophet as his prophecy “of the fall of Poland and post-partition misery” came true against the premises he adopted (the partitioner was not the pagan Turkey, but Christian countries) and at the same time in harmony with them since the reforms proposed by the Polish Enlightenment activists aimed to totally subordinate the Church to the Republic.

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