Książka Mikołaja Sępa Szarzyńskiego. Słów kilka o odkryciu dokonanym w Bibliotece OO. Dominikanów w Krakowie
A book of Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński. A few a words concerning a discovery made at the library of the Order of Preachers in Kraków.

Summary/Abstract: The paper talks about the only known (to this day) autograph of Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński (ca. 1545–1581), one of the most significant Polish poets of the 16th century. This isan ownership note written on the title page of a book. The author describes the volume, going over successive notes and [marginalia], and tries to interpret them in the light of both the facts from and hypotheses about the poet’s biography. The biogram of Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński is bordered with multiple guesses and suppositions. Among others, based on his travel to German universities (he was immatriculated there in 1565), scholars conjecture, that leaving Poland he might have belonged to, or at least sympathized with the Protestants. At the same time it is known that his family firmly stood by Cathilicism - Wit Sęp, the poet’s brother, was a Dominican, and his father has spent the final years of his life in a monastery. It is not known, whether going to [Lipsk] and [Wittemberga], Mikołaj was a Catholic or a Protestant. The date placed on the title page of the book proves that, most probably, in 1567 he possessed a work whose author valiantly argues with the heretics - it is, printed in Cologne in 1563 by Maternus Cholinus, Panoplia evangelica sive De verbo Dei evangelico libri quinque […], by a Dutch bishop William Damasus Lindanus, a Catholicapologist.We do know a later witness of the poet’s confessor - Antonin of Przemyśl, who, in the introduction to his translation of the book Różaniec [...] (“The Rosary...”)by Louis of Granada(Kraków, Drukarnia Łazarzowa, 1583), depicts Mikołaj as “a great and devout servant of the Virgin Mary”. Mikołaj Sęp’s note has been discovered in an old print, currently preserved in the library of the Order of Preachers in Kraków. The author tries to trace the path of the volume from Sęp’s library to that of the Dominicans, showing the connection between Mikołaj and Antonin, the practice of the books owned by brothers being handed over after their death to the library of their convent - in case of Antonin, it was the convent in Lviv. Next, the author shows the fate of the Lviv collections and its move to Kraków in 1946. The author moves to the interpretation of successive notes. The most important in the one by Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński: Nicolaus Ssarzynskÿ Semp possessor. Beside it, the title page bears the date 1567, and inscribed into the title the initials NS and a drawing of a soldier. At the bottom, there is a note by Antonin of Przemyśl, underlining the virtues of his deceased friend, and saying that he has received the book from him. On the endpaper Mikołaj Szarzyński (most probably) wrote a latin poem, under the name of HeinrichBebel, a German humanist who died in 1518. Whether Bebel is indeed the author of the poem could not be established - as the text of the poem bears some similarity to the content of the book, the author suggests considering the possibility of Mikołaj Sęp’s authorship.

• Details
• Contents