Julia Alpinula i Lilla Weneda, czyli międzynarodowa kariera pewnej inskrypcji
Julia Alpinula and Lilla Weneda, or the international career of a certain inscription

Author(s): Monika Rekowska-Ruszkowska
Subject(s): Archaeology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Jerzy Kolendo; archaeology; Poland; Europe; University of Warsaw; Polish Academy of Sciences
Summary/Abstract: In his works, Professor Jerzy Kolendo has repeatedly noted the value of research on forgeries over the ages.As he pointed out several times – these studies are valuable and very interesting because the falsifi cations arewitnesses to the history of culture and mentality. The origin and later signifi cance of the fake inscription supposedlyfound in Avenches in Switzerland, ancient Aventicum, are studied in this paper. This inscription, created in the16th century by Paulus Merula from Dordrecht and fi rst published by Gruter in the 17th century, was exposed asa fake already at the beginning of the 19th century. Nevertheless, the person mentioned in the inscription, a certainJulia Alpinula, was considered to be historical. Consequently, she was claimed to be a heroine indispensable forthe construction of national identity in the era of the birth of the Swiss nation’s founding myth. A few decadeslater, the tragic fate of Julia Alpinula inspired Juliusz Słowacki, a Polish poet of the Romanticism, to bring theliterary protagonist to life in Lilla Weneda, a drama about the beginnings of Poland.

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