I tre soggiorni a Padova di Stanisław Niegoszewski (1565–post 1600)
Stanisław Niegoszewski’s Three Sojourns in Padua (1565–post-1600)

Summary/Abstract: Stanisław Niegoszewski (1565–post-1600) was a prime example of a Renaissance man: he was a student at the universities of Krakow and Padua; a poet-improviser; an alchemist; a courtier of King Sigismund Vasa III; a diplomat; a devout follower of the Counter-Reformation; and a businessman. He divided his life between Poland and Italy, and his biography is known to us so fragmentarily that some scholars reconstruct his life based on instinct, assumptions, personal preference, or unfounded hypotheses. Henryk Barycz, the eminent scholar and author of entries in the Polish Biographical Dictionary, had divided the deeds and works of one Stanisław Niegoszewski into two different persons: “Stanisław Niegoszewski (Niegoszowski), coat of arms of Jastrzębiec (circa 1560–5 – circa 1588–90),” a student at the universities of Krakow and Padua and a poet-improviser, and “Stanisław Niegoszewski (Niegoszowski), coat of arms of Jastrzębiec (circa 1565–70 – after 1607),” an alchemist, courtier of King Sigismund Vasa III, diplomat, devout follower of the Counter- Reformation, and poet as well. Although Władysław Magnuszewski proved wrong Barycz’s theory about the existence of two Niegoszewskis nearly a half-century ago, the outdated theory is repeated by new generations of scholars again and again. This paper attempts to prove that all three sojourns in Padua of a certain Niegoszewski—as a student in 1582–1583, as an alchemist in 1585, and as a royal diplomat in 1594—belong to the same person. Based on new sources found in Italian archives and libraries in 2013, the biography of a single Stanisław Niegoszewski could be reconstructed with much more detail than before.

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