„Orator – rhetor – rhetorista” w ujęciu Johanna Mochingera. Edycja i przekład trzech rozdziałów poświęconych mówcy, teoretykowi i adeptowi/krytykowi sztuki wymowy w Orator atque rhetorista
Orator—rhetor—rhetorista According to Johann Mochinger. An Edition and Translation of Three Chapters Dedicated to a Public Speaker, Theorist and Student/Critic of the Art of Eloquence in Orator atque rhetorista

Summary/Abstract: Johann Mochinger (1603—1652), professor of rhetoric at the Academic Gymnasium in Gdańsk (1630—1652), was one of the most interesting teachers and theorists of rhetoric in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the fi rst half of the seventeenth century. While during the Thirty Years’ War the Protestant teaching of rhetoric was often involved in religious disputations and controversies, Mochinger, though he was at the same time a preacher at the Lutheran Church of St. Catherine, plainly quoted many Jesuit treatises appreciating them as valuable sources of rhetoric theory both in his printed treatise, Floridorum e dissertationibus rhetoricis super Cicerone sylva (Gdańsk 1640) and Orator atque rhetorista (Gdańsk 1641), and in his manuscript lectures. The aim of the paper is to present three chapters of Orator atque rhetorista by the Mochinger, the most important of his rhetoric works, in the Latin original and my Polish translation. All these chapters, dedicated to the terms related to orator (public speaker), rhetor (theorist/teacher of rhetoric) and rhetorista (advanced student and critic of the art of eloquence), well exemplify Mochinger’s sources: Cicero’s De oratore, Noctes Atticae by Aulus Gellius, Dialogus de oratoribus by Tacitus, Plutarch’s De garrulitate and Vitae decem oratorum attributed to him, as well as commentaries by Petrus Mosellanus, the oration Ad studiosos eloquentiae in Academia Wittebergensi by the Lutheran Adam Theodor Siber, and Theatrum veterum rhetorum by the Jesuit Louis de Cressolles, De eloquentia sacra et humana by another Jesuit, Nicolas Caussin, and Prolusiones academicae by Famiano Strada. However, the new meaning of the word rhetorista and the broad application of it in his work are Mochinger’s original invention. Not only did he devote a significant part of his treatise to define the term and to describe the duties of a rhetorista, but he also willingly used it in his later works, e.g. in Eloquentiae cupidissimos rhetoristas ad acroases oratorias frequenter iterum obeundas, quae (quod optimum maximum Numen iubeat!) auspicato rursus inchoabuntur, posteaquam quidem, solito in Acroaterio Minori Lycei nostri, die Martii I. hora sueta IXa, de librorum Tullianorum quam maxime utiliter evolvendorum ratione multo commodissima, quasi in antecessum … vocoque invitoque… (Gdańsk 1646).

• Details
• Contents