Sight, Knowledge, Variety, and Correction: Kasijan Sakovyč’s Perspektywa and Related Book Titles

1 What’s in a word? The meaning of perspektywa

Let us start by trying to understand the meaning of perspektywa in the period when Kasijan Sakovyč wrote his work.

The word perspektywa^[5] is not attested in the Słownik staropolski (SStp). It appears in the Słownik polszczyzny XVI wieku (Dictionary of 16^th century Polish language) only referring to a scientific discipline (SP XVI: s. v. ‘perspektywa’). It is present in the Thesaurus Polonolatinograecus by Grzegorz Knapiusz, both in the 1621 and 1643 editions. The definition refers to a science (‘nauka’) or to an image resulting from the application of this science’s principles (Cnap 1621: 706; Cnap 1643: 679–670). Linde’s dictionary records the word with various meanings: it indicates an artistic technique and the resulting image; an opening enabling one to look inside something, e. g. in a wall or a hedge; an opportunity for the future; as well as -also in the variant perspektywka– a telescope (Linde s. v. ‘perspektywa. 1.’, ‘perspektywa. 2, perspektywka’). The German terms used by Linde as equivalents for the latter meaning are das Perspectiv, das Fernglasinstrument. Notably, the three quotations included in the definition to illustrate the word usage with the meaning of ‘telescope’ are all taken from eighteenth-century works.^[6] Jadwiga Waniakowa (2003: 118) reports that the word was used for the telescope by Jan Bohomolec in his work devoted to comets^[7] published in 1770. The Elektroniczny słownik języka polskiego XVII i XVIII wieku (Electronic Dictionary of the Polish Language of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; ESP XVII-XVIII, s. v. ‘perspektywa’) records this word and indicates the meaning ‘telescope’ at the first place, followed by the meaning ‘view’ (‘widok’).

In the Słownik wyrazów obcych (Dictionary of Foreign Words; SWO: s. v. ‘perspektywa’) we find the information that the word would come from the French ‘perspective’, which in turn derives from the Late-Latin ‘perspectiva’, indicating a science. Bańkowski’s Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego (Etymological Dictionary of the Polish Language; SEJP: s. v. ‘perspektywa’) records 1582 as the earlier appearance and states that the term originates from the Latin expression perspectīva (ars) designating optics. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the word was used (according to Bańkowski, excessively) to indicate a view, a hope, and an intention, following the meanings of the French vocable perspective.

In French, the words perspectif (with the meaning ‘refraction’) and perspective (with the same meaning and, since 1561, also as an art term) are moulded on the Medieval Latin perspectivus. The designation of a particular artistic technique would be modelled on the Italian prospettiva. A figurate meaning started to develop in the seventeenth century (Bloch: s. v. ‘perspectif’, ‘perspective’). It is worth noting that the meaning ‘telescope’ is missing from this gloss. It is missing also in other historical and etymological dictionaries of French we consulted (i. e. DEHLF, DMF, DHLF).

If we take a look at the neighbouring German context, in the Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch we find the term Perspektive, which refers to a way of representing objects and people, also in art (DV, s. v. ‘Perspektive’); we also find Perspektiv as a borrowing from medieval Latin perspectivum, in the sense of telescope (DV, s. v. ‘Perspektiv’). The latter was also used as an alternative form for the meanings of Perspektive.

The Middle Latin perspectiva – from which the forms in the various vulgar tongues originate – already had a long career in titles of works. Of course, the most famous cases were part V of Opus Maius, composed by the Englishman Roger Bacon presumably in the early 1260 s (Lindberg 1971: 71), and Perspectiva communis, written in the 1270 s by Bacon’s countryman John Peckham (Lindberg 1971: 77).^[8] Just to mention a case related specifically to the Polish context, we shall remember the Silesian scholar Witelo (1227–1290), whose celebrated treatise on optics – which, incidentally, drew upon Alhazen’s work – was actively copied and then printed for the first time in 1535 in Nürnberg under the title Vitellionis Mathematici Doctissimi Περὶ ὀπτικῆς, id est de natura, ratione , et proiectione radiorum visus, luminum, colorum atque formarum, quam vulgo Perspectivam vocant libri X (Wróblewski & Bielski 1986: 125–126). The Latin perspectiva became a commonly used title (or part of a title) for scholarly works on optics.

With time, the word expanded its range of meanings, in Latin as well as in the vulgar tongues. The new artistic device invented in Italy in the mid fifteenth century was termed just ‘perspective’ (actually, prospettiva in Tuscan vulgar, perspectiva in Latin). After all, the linear perspective was all about seeing and entailed knowledge in geometry, thus intermingling with optics, for which the term perspectiva was already in use. The invention of the linear perspective was a milestone for European art, because it not only influenced aesthetics, but it also caused a change in cognitive paradigms (Lepenies 2018: 591). Many treatises devoted to it appeared both in Latin and vulgar.^[9] The new trends in painting also reached the Ruthenian lands, from where Sakovyč came, often thanks to the inspiration provided by printed material^[10] (Gronek 2003: 177–178). In the east of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the propensity for realism merged with loyalty to tradition, resulting in very interesting outcomes even in icons (Ovsijčuk 1985: 122, 148; Gronek 2012: 317).^[11]

Another momentous event contributed to the term perspectiva and its vulgar derived forms acquiring a new meaning: the invention of the telescope at the beginning of the seventeenth century in the United Provinces of the Netherlands and its improvement and popularisation for astronomic observations by Galileo Galilei. After that, the study of lenses became a typical part of scholar works on optics (Van Helden 1977: 12), thus fostering the spreading of the technical terms related to them.

This was also the case for Polish, in which perspektywa further expanded its semantic potentialities on behalf of the newly invented tool. Expectedly, the meaning of ‘telescope’ for the Polish word perspektywa is attested starting precisely from this period. To understand its usages in Polish sources, we can refer to the electronic corpus of Polish texts of the 17^th and 18^th centuries (KORBA) contains 164 occurrences of the substantive perspektywa.^[12] The noun indicates a view, an enfilade, the view offered by an avenue, also in gardens, the road or path itself, and has also the abstract sense of possibility in the future. Less of a half of the outputs mean ‘telescope’. The occurrences indicating a telescope are distributed in the whole timespan in which the term perspektywa is present, starting from 1644. Our analysis of the titles of works, however, shows that the word was used in this sense much earlier (see below).

2 From the form to the substance, or the career of a new designé

We deem it necessary to dwell for a moment on the popularity of the telescope, then called perspektywa, in Polish literature of that epoque because this phenomenon helps to explain the relevance of possible associations with the designated tool when the investigated word appeared in titles.

Although – as we have seen – the word perspektywa had already existed long before the seventeenth century, it was in that period that it gained a new popularity, owing to the enthusiasm for the telescope after Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) had improved it and used it to observe the sky at night (Donahue 2006: 584). His Sidereus nuncius (1610) showed the importance of exploring the space properly, using appropriate devices, if significant results were to be obtained. The telescope became a must-have for astronomers all over Europe.

The popularity of this cult-object went beyond the domain of mathematics and astronomy and made its appearance also in works devoted to other subjects, where it became the trigger for the creation of new metaphors. The most illustrious case is Emanuele Tesauro’s Il cannocchiale aristotelico (The Aristotelian Telescope, Turin 1654, printed seven times during the author’s lifetime, composed in Italian and translated into Latin and Spanish; Cutrì 2023: 15), an imposing treatise of rhetoric. The telescope appears not only in words in the title but also as a picture in the illustration preceding the title-page.^[13] It becomes a macrometaphor pervading the whole treatise. Aristoteles’s rhetoric is “a clearest TELESCOPE [emphasis by Tesauro] to examine every perfection and imperfection of Eloquence”^[14] (Tesauro 1670: 2–3), which enables the readers to discern the good rhetorical devices from the bad ones. At the end of the book, Tesauro begs the reader to be clement and to forgive his shortcomings, referring again to the title’s optical instrument: “this Treatise of mine [...] discovers by the Aristotelian Telescope the Spots of the Enterprises, and everything is a Spot: therefore, if you wished to create an Impresa about this book, you could paint an Open Book, which teaches people what they ignore [emphasis by Tesauro].”^[15] (Tesauro 1670: 740). These are only two of the numerous occurrences of the telescope-metaphor in this treatise, which represents an emblematic case of its usage in a work starting from the title.

In the English context, to which the fundamental monography by Herbert Grabes is devoted (Grabes 1982), there are books with titles containing expressions like speculum perspicuum uranicum or simply speculum which pertain to the genre of almanacs; Grabes assumes that this may be motivated by a link to the telescope. The author stresses the importance of the diffusion of the telescope for the titles containing the word speculum:

Evidence that the sense of ‘telescope’ plays an important part in the phrasing of Speculum titles around the middle of the seventeenth century is provided, first, by the frequency with which the title Speculum perspicuum uranicum appears [...] and, second, by the fact that in the title-metaphor Prospective-glasse (telescope) is to be found a type of writings customarily bearing the mirror-title: for example, in the Prospectiue glasse to looke into Heauen [...], the Prospectiue glasse of warre [...], and the Prospective-glasse for gamesters [...].”(Grabes 1982: 62 and the mentioned references to the Appendix).

As for the success of the telescope, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was no exception: one of Galilei’s pupils was a Pole, Krzysztof Zbaraski. A copy of Sidereus nuncius was among the belongings of Jan Brożek (1585–1652), a prominent scholar and professor at Cracow University (Raubo 2017: 216–217).^[16] The Belgian astronomer Charles Malapert (1580–1630), who would publish his treatise Austriaca sidera heliocyclia in Douai in 1633, worked at the Jesuit college in Kalisz. In the 1640 s, Jan Heweliusz (Johannes Hevelius, 1611–1687) in Danzig started observing the moon. He presented the results of his observations in the work Selenographia (Danzig, 1647) and continued his activity for the rest of his life (Włodarczyk 2007: 323–325).

The popularity of telescopes did not remain confined to the astronomical environment: these tools became interesting as objects per se, and they made their appearance in the collections of curiosities of noblemen and well-endowed people (Raubo 2017: 213). Their success is patent also in written productions: in Poland, telescopes cross the borders of astronomical treatises to enter various forms of compendia, compilations of notions about several matters, as well as literary works that do not aim at spreading knowledge but propose philosophical and religious meditations. We know also some comedies where the telescope-motive was used to entertain the public (Raubo 2017: 221–244).^[17]

Jacek Kowzan (2014) points out another way to trace the popularisation of the telescope among the community of writers and readers in Poland, as all over Europe: emblem books. These books make a larger public acquainted with this invention and its functioning and enhance its metaphorisation, which is to say they transform it from a mere tool with a practical application to a carrier of metaphorical meanings. Kowzan’s article is devoted to Zbigniew Morsztyn’s Emblem 96, where the telescope (‘perspektywa’) plays a fundamental role in conveying aretological and eschatological messages. As Kowzan puts it,

the prudent human being, in order to see the things that are important, even though they are distant in space and time, needs a metaphorical prolongment of the senses, a sort of ‘hyperbole of the eyes’. And it is in this fragment of Morsztyn’s work that the part of the virtue of prudence which is responsible for the foreseeing of distant things, that is providence, charges the optical tool represented in the engraving accompanying Emblem 96 with a quasi-aretological sense [...]. (2014: 338)

This corresponds to Thomas Aquinas’s conception of the prudent man as a person who is able to look in the distance and to foresee what will probably happen (Kowzan 2014: 338). The telescope becomes a useful image to remind people of the Last Things and to urge them to change their lives.

The telescope can also offer an insight into the divine dimension, since it cancels out the spatial and temporal distance and deletes the separation between the worldly and the heavenly (Spica 2001: 107, with reference to an emblem by the monk Casimir Füesslin, published in 1696).

As Kowzan correctly notes, Morsztyn’s text does not fully correspond to the image^[18] it is associated with in Emblem 96 because there is no allusion to the telescope being used improperly. In the image, though, the figure representing the human soul keeping the tool incorrectly, in reverse, which makes objects appear smaller than they are and hinders a correct perception and understanding; as a result, the Last Things (i. e. Hell and Paradise) cannot be seen properly. The Soul cannot thus receive any moral hints on the pious and irreproachable way of life (Kowzan 2014: 342–343).

Astronomy was not neglected in the Ruthenian lands among the learned people. As shown in the poem devoted to it contained in the panegyric cycle Jevcharisterion albo Vdjačnost’ [ΕΥΧΑΡΙΣΤΗΡΙΟΝ or a Thankgiving] (Kyïv, 1632), it was appreciated not only for utilitarian reasons but also as a knowledge which led the human being closer to God (Paslavs’kyj 2016: 284–286).^[19]

A full evaluation of the telescope’s fortune in the literature of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and an inventory of its metaphorical usages are beyond the scope of this paper, therefore we cannot but refer the reader to the cited works. Our point here is that this tool entered the dominion of literature and acquired not only a new meaning as a denotation of a particular astronomic tool but also several new metaphorical values.

In the written production of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth we find works with the word perspektywa in the title. Unlike the Italian cannocchiale, this term was polysemic, as we have illustrated above. As such, we must carefully examine all the known titles containing it to establish which sense of the word was recalled in each instance.

3 Reading the headlines: the cases of zwierciadło and wizerunk

Before we examine the titles containing the word perspektywa, we must consider the terms it had some affinity with. In seventeenth-century Polish language, there were other words related to the sense of sight that appeared in the headlines of works belonging to different genres. The most widely used were wizerunek, also in the form wizerunk (‘image’), and zwierciadło (‘mirror, looking-glass’). The functioning of these words in Old Polish titles was investigated by Anna Kochan (2002) and Michał Kuran (2018). Kochan (2002: 167) identifies three categories of works with the Latin word speculum or the Polish zwierciadło written by Old Polish authors: collections of examples and/or anecdotes, compendia, or summa (i. e. works with an encyclopaedic character), and paraenetical treatises. For the first two categories, the element of the polysemic speculum/zwierciadło which came to the forefront was the idea of an overview (“przegląd”, in Kochan’s wording; Kochan 2002: 167), while in paraenetical treatises the semantic trait which prevailed was the ability to show something, to present a model. This title becomes particularly popular in the second half of the sixteenth century; its success proved to be durable, since it lasted for about one hundred years (Kochan 2002: 166).

Kuran, relying also on Kochan’s study, points out that in titles wizerunek and zwierciadło had similar meanings and sometimes were even used together (Kuran 2018: 17), but claims that they were not interchangeable or chosen haphazardly by authors (Kuran 2018: 14, 18). He identifies some categories of works entitled wizerunek and tries to investigate why authors preferred it to zwierciadło. He argues that the main difference lies in the degree of concreteness of the representation offered by a given work. A zwierciadło usually aims for universality, to express a general truth, whereas the wizerunek is based on a concrete, specific model to convey its moralising message (Kuran 2018: 28). As said, a zwierciadło often has an encyclopaedic character; it aims at completeness. The reader can infer the message from the multitude of examples or anecdotes given, or can obtain an extensive knowledge of a matter by reading a compendium. A wizerunek presents a specific person or describes a concrete situation: the path of the reader’s reasoning must move from the particular to the universal (Kuran 2018: 29). Kuran (2018: 28) considers it to be “a further step in the evolution of the literary categories after speculum/zwierciadło” and points out that the usage of wizerunek in titles lasted until the mid-nineteenth century, when speculum/zwierciadło was no longer functioning (Kuran 2018: 28).

In the following paragraphs we will observe how a new term emerges in the headlines in the seventeenth century: perspektywa (also in its Latin form perspectiva).

4 Perspektywa in titles

In our work we wished to verify whether the usage of perspektywa by Kasijan Sakovyč was a strictly individual, original, and unprecedented choice or if the author could already rely upon some pre-existing titles. Therefore, we consulted the online catalogues of the National Library of Poland in Warsaw, of the Jagiellonian Library, as well as of other libraries and repositories. Of course, we went through Estreicher’s bibliographical work and NK (the volumes devoted to Old Polish Literature, 1–3). We cannot be certain beyond any reasonable doubt that we found all the existing titles of this type, but even so, we believe we have sufficient material to contextualise Kasijan Sakovyč’s choice.

Although, as it will be shown, titles containing the word perspektywa (in any variant) are not so many, the very fact that they appear is interesting, in our opinion.

The first book with a perspektywa-title we have been able to find is an anti-Turkish pamphlet, published in Poznań by an anonymous author in 1622: Perspectiwa na upatrzenie sposobów wojowania krajów nieprzyjaciół Krztza [sic!] świętego i na watlenia [sic!] snadnego tyrranstwa poganskiego [...], Poznań, 1622 (Perspectiwa na upatrzenie). It is difficult to ascribe this booklet of fifteen folios in total to a precise genre. We are inclined to refer it to the genus deliberativum, since it aims to persuade its readers to create a coalition and wage war against the Ottoman Empire, in the aftermath of the victory in Chotyn (Polish: Chocim) of 1621 (Pylypenko 2010: 255–256). The book begins with a Latin prophecy about the victory of Christians over Muslims and contains a long poem in 13-syllab-verses with rhyme AA, prose texts which contain short descriptions of Tatars and Cossacks, allied of the Ottomans, and two possible plans for defeating the Sublime Porte.

No explanation for the title is given and no allusion to astronomical discoveries or optic tools is made. Visions of the skies and of celestial bodies (e. g. comets) are often mentioned in the poem, but still in the conventions of astrology, rather than of astronomy. Astronomical phenomena are given a prophetic meaning, and they are credited with the power to affect events on the Earth (such as the result of a battle). This could in theory elicit an interpretation as a ‘representation of an object on a flat, bidimensional surface’: the anonymous author would show a clear picture of lands, populations, and objects he had seen in order to transmit knowledge. The motive of showing what is inaccessible and less known is frequent, so the title’s perspektywa could in fact be a telescope, a tool to behold something unknown, to make something visible, as it is suggested by the collocation before “na upatrzenie” (‘in order to behold, to glimpse’).

We could not trace any other works with the word perspektywa in their title before 1642, the year in which Kasijan Sakovyč’s treatise was published. In that year in Vilnius, the Dominican preacher Marcellian Doroszewski published the sermon he pronounced during the funeral of the noblewoman Zofia Słuszka (Sluška) née Zienowiczówna:

Poważna senatorka w trzech bramach przy pogrzebie [...] Zophiej Zienowiczówny Słusczynej, woiewodzinej nowogrodzkiej [...] w perspektywie żałobnej na kazaniu przez X. Marcelliana Doroszewskiego [...] prezentowana w roku 1642 dnia 14 stycznia

[The respectable senator’s wife presented in three gates on the occasion of the funeral of [...] Zofia Słuszka née Zienowiczówna [...] in a mournful portrait based on the sermon by father Marcellian Doroszewski, in the year 1642, on the 14^th of January.] (Doroszewski 1642)

The sermon praises the deceased woman as a model to be followed. The term perspektywa (also in the spelling perspektiwa) occurs in the text seven times in addition to the title. It is used in the sense of picture, painting, also portrait, as in the following case: “Zaiste przystojna takiej Personie perspektiwa” (“A really appropriate portrait for such a person”, Doroszewski 1642: f. D4r). It is thus a trustful image, an apt representation. In our view, in Doroszewski’s use of the word it is synonymous with wizerunk in the sense described by Kuran (2018, see above).

A link between perspektywa and wizerunk results also in the title of a work published some years later. Estreicher records a work with the following title: Perspektywa albo wizerunk wiecznej sławy bohaterów starych zachęcaiąca młódź w stan rycerski ku naśladowaniu dzielności starożytnej, od szlachetnej Pallady z gniazda cnót ich w ojczystym Parnassie ubudowana a przez Piotra z Białej Napolskiego herbu Ślepowron opisana i wydana (View or image of the eternal glory of ancient heroes, that encourages the youth of the knightly status to imitate the old courage, built by the noble Pallas Athena from the nest of their virtues on the native Parnassus and described and published by Piotr Napolski, coat of arms of the Night Heron, from Biała; Cracow, 1645; Estreicher XIV: s. v. ‘Chlebowski, Wawrzyniec’, esp. p. 167). The work is attributed to Wawrzyniec Chlebowski, but Aleksander Brückner considers it just a reedition of Paszkowski’s Wizerunek wiecznej sławy Sauromatów starych (1614) under another title by Piotr Napolski, who appropriated it (Kuran 2014: 79). We could not access Perspektywa albo wizerunek.... According to Estreicher, it was a very short work, consisting of only 13 folios (Estreicher XIV: s. v. ‘Chlebowski, Wawrzyniec’, esp. p. 167).

The interesting fact here is that the term perspektywa is given as an alternative to wizerunk. If the identification of Napolski’s publication with Paszkowski’s one is correct, we are dealing with a parenetic poem based on the contrast between the noblemen of the Commonwealth and their ancestors. The author inserted also some examples of heroic persons from the Roman history (e. g. Mucius Scaevola) as models to be imitated not only by the youth. The general exhortation to the reader is to imitate the virtues of the past generations for the sake of the Res Publica. This work is thus a good representative of the category of wizerunek in Polish literature.

Other works with perspektywa in their title belong to the occasional literature. Nowy Satyr Polski, który się wraca z Bukowiny Wołoskiej. Do którego przydana Perspektywa krótka, po żałosnej klęsce rozproszenia Wojskowego za Konstantynowem (New Polish Satyr, who returns from the Valachian Bucovina. With the addition of a brief Overview, after the despicable defeat with the dispersion of the army beyond Konstantynów/Kostjantyniv) is an anonymous poem inspired by Jan Kochanowski’s Satyr (1564) followed by another poem, written on the occasion of an episode of the Cossack insurrection in 1648. The Polish troops led by Jeremija Vyšnevec’kyj (Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, called Jarema) were defeated by the Cossacks in a battle which took place on 26–28 July 1648 near Kostjantyniv^[20] (Rogowicz 2017: 11). Here the word perspektywa also denotes an optical instrument. The usage of the telescope-metaphor is explicated in the following verses:

To widząc, widźmy co widzieć potrzeba,

Jak w Perspektywie, że te plagi z nieba.

Przez co kto zgrzeszył, przez to też przychodzą.

Słusznie nas szkodzą.

In seeing this, let us see what needs to be seen,

As through a Perspective glass, that these plagues are from the sky.

The way we committed sins, that way they’ll be punished

They rightly do harm to us. (Nowy Satyr polski: f. B3v)

The following stanzas contain some references to sight: “Obaczmyż grzechy, patrząc na karanie” (Let us look at the sins, gazing at the punishment”); “Naprzód gdy widziem ohydę w Kościele” (“First, when we see the abomination in the Church”, Nowy Satyr polski: f. B3v). The poem describes the devastation caused by Chmel’nyc’kyj’s insurrection and reproaches the noblemen, who abandoned the virtues of their ancestors, became lazy, unwilling to wage war for the sake of their motherland or spend money to cover military expenses.^[21] Such destruction is interpreted as a punishment for the sins committed by the nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the final exhortation (Nowy Satyr polski: f. C2r) the author calls for a restoration of the “sacred Polish customs and traditions” (“Przywróćmy święte Polskie obyczaje”), and invites readers to resign from internal quarrels, to unite, and to be pious so God will stop punishing the Commonwealth.

In the same period another work with the term perspektywa in its title appears: it is a collection of poems belonging to different literary genres composed on the occasion of the death of a noblewoman. The title occupies the whole title page. Here we quote it in an abbreviated form:

Archetyp albo Perspektywa żałosnego rozwodu, który śmierć nieużyta, nie respektując ani na małżonka, ani na wielkiej nadzieje syna jedynego ani na Wielmożne Parentelle w domu [...] Jana [...] Wielopolskiego [...] z [...] Zofią [...] malzonką Jego Mości ukochaną [...] Jana Kochanowskiego Chorążego Koronnego [...] córką [...] dnia 26 roku 1649 sprawiła, od Adriana [...] Wieszczyckiego Brata i Szwagra nie farbami, ale łzami wystawiona.

[Archetype or View of the grievous separation, which relentless Death, regardless of the consort, of the only son, child of great hopes, and of the high-honourable kinship in the family [...] of Jan [...] Wielopolski [...] with [...] Zofia [...] beloved wife of His Excellence [...] daughter of Jan Kochanowski, standard-bearer of the Crown, caused on the 26^th day of 1649, published by Adrian Wieszczycki, brother and brother-in-law, not with ink, but with tears.] (Wieszczycki 1650: f. Ar)

The work is a sort of sample book for composing eulogies. The author praises his deceased sister Zofia using a whole inventory of poetic genres to honour a dead. The poems are preceded by a Greek denomination of the genre used (e. g. “Achrostiches”; Wieszczycki 1650: f. A2r) and are all devoted to Zofia, but they can easily be used as models and adapted for other deceased. Wieszczycki pays an homage to his sister, for sure, but he does not miss the opportunity to show off his poetic skills.

Another perspektywa-title is connected to Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski (1616–1667),^[22] who became internationally renowned because he rebelled against King Jan Kazimierz in the 1660 s. In 1666 he published some works in which he complained about his condemnation and proclaimed his innocence, and declared his commitment to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. They were published together under the following title:

Jawnej niewinności Manifest, Bogu, Światu, Ojczyźnie przez Jaśnie Wielmożnego Jego Mći Pana P. Jerzego Sebastiana [...] Lubomirskiego [...] podany z przydaniem Perspektiwy na Process [...]. ^[23]

[Manifest of patent innocence offered to God, the World, and the Fatherland by His Excellence Sir Jerzy Sebastian [...] Lubomirski, with the addition of a View of the Trial]. (Lubomirski 1666: f. 1r)

Lubomirski explains the purpose of reading his Perspektiwa:

Co z tej Perspektywy każdy snadno rozsądzi, jeśli to obwinienie i takowy Actus ma w sobie co sprawiedliwości, prawdy & Realitatis. Prawni mogliby na to odpisać, ale metus nie dopuści. Ja, choć nie prawny pro modulo virium & pro defensione Innocentiæ, rzecz jako się działa, Boga na świadectwo biorąc, opisałem, ad evitanda eiusmodi scandala.

From this Overview everybody will easily judge whether this accusation and this Actus contains justice, truth, and Realitas. Jurists could reply to this, but metus does not allow them to do it. As for me, even though I am not a jurist, pro modulo virium & pro defensione Innocentiæ, I described the whole thing as it happened, taking God as a witness, ad evitanda eiusmodi scandala. (Lubomirski 1666: 24)

The author shows everything. He provides a full account, including documents, of his actions and, above all, of the reasons behind them, and publishes a sort of self-defence in an attempt to clear his name after being tried, condemned, and defeated. No allusion to the new meaning of the term perspektywa is made.

The word perspektywa is used also by Marcin Bogumił Grymosz (1633–1708),^[24] a Jesuit who authored a collection of meditations for ten-days spiritual exercises (Grymosz 1689): Duchowna do szukania Pana Boga Perspektywa albo Reflexie na dziesięć dni Kollekcji Osobliwie Rozłożone (Spiritual perspective for searching God or Meditations specially divided in 10 days of spiritual exercises).

Here we rendered perspektywa as the English ‘perspective’, but we are aware that this translation does not perfectly correspond to the Polish. The fact is that it is not easy to determine the sense of the investigated term in this title. There is no preface to help, and the word never appears in the book, except for the title. The idea of translating perspektywa as ‘telescope’ is tempting and not unfounded: after all, what would be more suitable than a telescope – and indeed a spiritual one – to investigate the heavenly skies searching for God?^[25]

The last title with the word perspektywa we have found in the Baroque period^[26] refers to Wacław Potocki’s Poczet herbów szlachty Korony Polskiej i Wielkiego Xiestwa Litewskiego, gniazdo i perspektywa staroświeckiej cnoty [...], tudziesz Starożytność domów [...], krótko, zwięzłęm opisuje wierszem... (List of the coats of arms of the noblemen of the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, nest and image of the ancient virtue [...], and in the same place I describe briefly and in short the antiquity of the families [...]). It is a collection of reproductions of the coat of arms of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, followed by heraldic poems and other poetic works dedicated to illustrious members of the families using it. In this case perspektywa has the same sense as speculum/zwierciadło when the latter indicates an encyclopaedical work aiming to provide a wide overview of the knowledge in a given field.

We have not been able to trace further works with the Polish perspektywa for the Baroque period, nor for the Enlightenment. We should however take into account also works written in Latin, since this language was also used in the Commonwealth. As said, the word perspectiva had a well-established tradition in Latin titles dealing with disciplines we would currently call optics and geometry. The usage of perspective in Italian art gave birth to the distinction between perspectiva communis (optics) and perspectiva artificialis (techniques used to obtain certain optical effects). In this case, the meaning of perspectiva is not problematic at all.

However, in 1652 in Gdańsk we find a work which contains the word perspectiva in its title but is not related to the science of vision: Perspectiva politica Regno Poloniæ elaborata. Per quam, quid, et qualiter, Regibus et Regno prospiciendum sit: de longe tanquam de proximo facile cognosces (Political perspective elaborated for the Kingdom of Poland, by which you can easily get to know from near and afar what is to be seen about the kings and their reign, and how; Koryciński 1652). The work was written by Andrzej Koryciński for his nephew and published after his death. It is written partly in verses and partly in prose and praises Polish aurea libertas, defends the Polish practice to elect monarchs, points out the importance of laws in order to prevent arbitrariness and abuses. So, the character of this book is paraenetic and publicistic at the same time.

Its author refers to it with the word dioptra in the last lines (Koryciński 1652: 150). A dioptra is an ancient measuring instrument,^[27] and the word dioptra was used as a part of the title in various works, predominantly ones of Greek origin: in 1604 in Ingolstadt, the Jesuit and famous humanist Jacobus Pontanus (1542–1626) published a Latin translation of various spiritual works written in Greek, starting from some dialogues written by the monk Philip Monotropos (‘the Solitary’): Dioptra id est Regula sive Amussis rei Christianis quator libris per Dialogum explicate (Dioptra that is Ruler or Level of the Christian things). In 1637 in Edinburgh, John Adamson published his Dioptra gloriæ Divinæ seu Enarratio Psalmi XIX. & in eundem meditationes (Dioptra of God’s Glory or Narration of the Psalm 19 with meditations upon it). In this case, the word dioptra had already started functioning autonomously to indicate a book that provides a lengthy explanation. Philip Monotropos was also known to Orthodox Slavs, as his Dioptra had been translated into Church Slavonic in mid-fourteenth century in Bulgaria or on Mount Athos (Prochorov 1988: 192). In the Commonwealth in 1612, the monk Vitalij from Dubno published a collection of sermons at the typography of the Orthodox Brotherhood of Vilnius, located in Vievis.^[28] It was not a print version of the older manuscript Slavic text, notwithstanding the common denomination. If we consider that all the above-mentioned dioptras were either lengthy explanations with didactic purposes or collections of meditations or explications, we cannot but infer that they were functionally equivalent to the Latin speculum and Polish zwierciadło in titling. For a transitive property, the Latin perspectiva contained in the title Perspectiva politica Regno Poloniæ elaborate was also a variant for speculum.

The analysis of the occurrences of perspektywa and perspectiva in titles shows that, for works traditionally denominated by zwierciadło and wizerunek, a new rival appears in the seventeenth century. The term perspektywa turned out to be in a certain way fashionable, since the popularity of the perspectiva artificialis in art grew and a new astronomic tool with that name was encountering great success not only among astronomers, and making its way into books. The word perspektywa shares with zwierciadło and wizerunek a reference to the sense of sight. We may say that it was a modernised and enhanced version of the mirror (as telescope) and was able to offer a new way of visually representing the world (as art). Its polysemy was an added value for baroque aesthetics since it offered endless occasions to show off one’s creativity and wit, especially in creating metaphors. In titles, as we can see from the overview presented above, the word perspektywa covers both cases belonging to the zwierciadło-category and cases belonging to the wizerunek-category – according to Kuran’s classification (see Kuran 2018). So, what kind of texts did the label perspektywa apply to?

They are texts which offer an overview. These texts illustrate facts or circumstances presumably unknown to readers but which could change their attitude towards a person or influence their choices. This is the case of Perspectiwa na upatrzenie, Kasijan Sakovyč’s Epanorthōsis, Perspektywa albo wizerunk, Nowy Satyr Polski, Lubomirski’s account (Lubomirski 1666), Poczet Herbów Potockiego (Potocki 1696), and also of the Latin Perspectiva politica (Koryciński 1652). These writings are based on the assumption that giving a correct – according to them – representation of facts can influence another’s mind.

Archetyp (Wieszczycki 1650) shows a model to imitate both for one’s life – the pious deceased sister – and for composing poetry. The intent is not to persuade but to praise (as is characteristic for the epideictic genre). Nevertheless, this model also has a didactic function. It is another realisation of the principle ‘teaching by showing’.

The most dubious case is Grymosz’s Duchowna do szukania Pana Boga Perspektywa (Grymosz 1689), which does not offer a model but proposes activities to be undertaken. Here, however, the symbolic meaning of the telescope (if we accept this interpretation of the word perspektywa) prevails. The intriguing literary device equated a concrete tool for the observation of the sky with the book, portraying it as a tool for grasping the divine dimension located in the skies.

We can therefore conclude that the category perspektywa overlapped partly with the category zwierciadło and partly with wizerunek, and encompassed detailed expositions of facts or showed a full range of possibilities for literary expression, as a sort of sample-book. The distinction between the representation of general observations and the representation of single, concrete models (as presented in Kuran 2018: 28) seems not to be relevant for perspektywa-titles.

5 A case study: Kasijan Sakovyč’s Epanorthōsis abo Perspektywa

We conclude now with the work we started from. Kasijan Sakovyč Epanorthōsis abo Perspektywa is an effective demonstration of the multifaceted semantics of the Polish perspektywa in the seventeenth century, both as a designation of a certain category of texts and as a term for a series of concepts related to the sense of sight, with manifold metaphoric associations.

The Greek word ἐπανόρθωσις, which the title starts from, derived from the verb ἐπανορθόω, which meant ‘to correct’ (Sophocles 1900: 492; Liddell 1940: 609). It came to indicate a rhetorical device consisting of the correction or reversal of an immediately preceding statement,^[29] and indeed the whole treatise is composed as a list of ‘mistakes’ in the celebration of rites and rituals committed by the Orthodox and Uniate clergy, with a short refutation of theses by Orthodox authors (such as Stefan Zyzanij,^[30] Zacharija Kopystens’kyj,^[31] or Meletij Smotryc’kyj,^[32] who later became Uniate).

The conjunction abo (‘or, otherwise’) establishes a connection between the Greek word designating the genre of the treatise and the word perspectiwa, thus presenting the latter as an explanation of the Greek term. The syntagma perspectiwa i objaśnienie (‘overview and explanation’), we argue, functions here as a hendiadys. This kind of duplication of a signifié, amplification of a meaning, was frequent in baroque prose, but here it did not only have an ornamental role: ‘perspectiwa’, besides having a foreign origin, was an ambiguous term, it functioned metaphorically, required a further clarification, and objaśnienie, an indigenous Polish word, was therefore added. In fact, neither perspectiwa nor objaśnienie convey the whole meaning of ἐπανόρθωσις, because the latter entailed, as said, not only an explanation, but also a total or partial refutation. To be sure, both perspectiwa and objaśnienie rendered the idea of shedding light^[33] on something and making it (more) visible, thus enabling a more thorough evaluation. This is the premise for a correction, but this inference was left to the reader.

In his work, Father Kasjian does not refer to the title explicitly, nor explains it, nor creates metaphors related to it. Although he sometimes uses words referring to sight to define his own work and the expected outcome in the dedicatory letter and in the preface, that is a correction. So, in his opinion the spiritual and secular authorities should look at the treacherous behaviour of the Ruthenian (“Ruski”) clergy “with the eye of the Catholic [scil.: Roman-Catholic] sight” (“okiem Katholickiego zwroku”; Sakovyč 1642: f. A4r); he tells how he expected gratitude for having shown -that is to say: made visible– the “mistakes” committed by the Ruthenian clergy and how he instead suffered persecution (Sakovyč 1642: ff. B2v-B3v).

If Kasijan Sakovyč used the word perspektywa to mean ‘explanation, illustration’, his polemic opponents grasped all the opportunities offered by its polysemy, starting with the authors of the most eminent response to his treatise, Lithos to jest kamień z procy prawdy Cerkwie świętej prawosławnej ruskiej. Na skruszenie fałecznociemnej Perspektiwy albo raczej paszkwilu... (Kyiv, 1644), allegedly written by Euzebi Pimin, a pseudonym for a collective of authors from Petro Mohyla’s entourage^[34] (Euzebi Pimin 1644). The very title is a clear reference to perspektywa intended as ‘telescope’. It can be translated as follows: “Lithos that is Stone thrown from the catapult of the truth of the Holy Ruthenian Church. To destroy the treacherous and dark Perspective or rather pasquil...”. The telescope is mentioned several times starting from the preface to the reader. Kasijan Sakovyč’s perspective is dark and treacherous (“ciemnofałeczna”), and does not show what is near nor what is distant (Euzebi Pimin 1644: Ar-v/6).^[35] Euzebi Pimin concludes his preface as follows:

A ty, czytelniku pobożny, chciej proszę, nietęskliwą zrzenicą w ten Reskript prawdziwy spojzrzeć, z którego łacno inter partes dijudikować będziesz mógł [...]

And you, pious reader, please look into this veridic Register with a benign eye, and you will easily be able to judge inter partes [...] (Euzebi Pimin 1644: A3v/10).

Kasijan Sakovyč’s treatise is then equated to a bad telescope, one which disguises the eyes, whereas Lithos would offer the truth, as it is a stone that crushes the evil tool.^[36] Again, the sense implied in this process is the sight. The two objects at the centre of the metaphors are set against each other in the epigram ironically entitled “A Praise of the Reader for Kasijan:” “Oberwałeś od Rusi kamień, Kassjanie, / Za ciemną Perspektywę, nie dziwujże na nię” (“You have deprived Rus’ of a stone, Kassjan, / In return for your obscure Perspective, don’t take it out on her”; Euzebi Pimin 1644: A3v/10). The telescope-metaphor offers a good occasion for caustic insults:

Otrzy jeno dobrze zalane złością swe oczy, a zaniechawszy Perspektywy, przez którą patrząc, siebie nie widzisz, pojzrzy w rytuał [...]

Rub your eyes filled with rage, and put apart your Perspective, looking through it you do not see yourself, look into the Ritual Book (Euzebi Pimin 1644: 13/24).

The authors also suggest Kasijan use eyeglasses^[37] instead of this fallacious perspective (Euzebi Pimin 1644: 26/36).

A response to Epanorthōsis came from a Uniate clergyman, too. Pachomij Vojna-Orans’kyj (Polish: Pachomiusz Woyna-Orański, ?–1653),^[38] then the bishop of Pins’k and Turaŭ,^[39] wrote a treatise with the title Zwierciadło albo Zaslona [...] naprzeciw uszczypliwiej Perspektywie [...] (Mirror or Defense [...] against the acrimonious Perspective [...]; Vilnius, 1645). This work is emblematic of the various meanings of the word perspektywa that were perceived by a seventeenth-century intellectual. The bishop divides his short treatise into three chapters (besides the introductory one): Perspectiva deceptiva, Perspectiva agens in distans, and Perspectiva dolosa. Each of them starts with a metaphor based on a meaning of the term perspectiva. The first chapter (Perspectiva deceptiva) takes inspiration from the use of perspective in painting to make things appear different from reality, to deceive the spectator’s eyes. Kasijan Sakovyč’s Perspectiwa is treacherous, especially because it presents the alleged errors as common to the Orthodox and the Uniates (Woyna-Orański 1645: A4r-Br). In the other chapters the ‘perspektywa’ is a telescope. In Perspectiva agens in distans the author writes that a telescope can see only to a certain distance and that no telescope can reach the depths of the human souls. So, how can Kasijan Sakovyč’s Perspectiwa look into the Uniate Bishops’ souls and tell that they are prone to simony? (Woyna-Orański 1645: E3r-v). In Perspectiva dolosa, father Kasijan’s book is said to be like a faulty telescope that is very dangerous because it can mislead warlords and lead them to wrong decisions on the battlefield. In the same way, the adversary’s treatise is misleading, because it gives a false image of the Uniate clergy (Woyna-Orański 1645: F3r).

Even if Kasijan Sakovyč used the word perspektywa merely as a designation for a wide illustration and did not assign it any particular metaphoric value, his opponents did not miss the opportunity to exploit the term’s polysemy, and indeed Pachomij Vojna-Orans’kyj treated it as a structuring principle for his work. However, they did not refer to all the possible meanings of perspektywa, but only to the dominions of art and technology, while disregarding the older sense of optical science. The authors of Lithos and Zwierciadło albo Zaslona referred to an artistic device and a tool which could either help the eyes perceive a more faithful representation of reality or deceive them: the choice was up to the artist or the tool’s constructor, while the spectator or the observer was supposed to remain passive.

6 Conclusions

In the seventeenth century in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the existing term perspektywa gains new meanings. In the sixteenth century, it had already enlarged its semantics thanks to the new device for painting, sculpture, and architecture elaborated upon in Italy. Later on, the meaning of ‘telescope’ was added and grew in importance owing to the popularity of this tool in astronomic observations after Galileo Galilei had improved it and used it to study the sky. Also in the seventeenth century, the word perspektywa (in various orthographic forms) made its appearance in book-titles with meanings which differed from the initial reference to a certain branch of mathematics. This title word belonged to the same semantic dominion as the older and more widespread terms zwierciadło and wizerunek. As shown by the analysis of the works with this word in the title, its usage overlapped in most cases with the one of zwierciadło and wizerunek. In our perspective, this term emphasised the exhaustiveness or the fullness of an account or description – although it only boasted, but did not realise – and the variety of the proposed materials.

The word perspektywa was polysemic and it is not always easy to determine whether an author wished to emphasise a particular sense of it, which makes it sometimes difficult to translate. The case of Kasijan Sakovyč’s polemic treatise Epanorthōsis abo Perspectiwa, with the relative responses, offers some insight into the perception of this title word. Kasijan’s opponents exploited the rich metaphor-creating potentialities triggered by the recently acquired meanings (technical device in art and telescope), thus showing the multifacetedness of the term.

The usage of a word belonging to the semantic field of sight raises some questions about the gnoseological potential of this human sense. As Stuart Clarks put it,

[a] kind of ocularcentrism was already prevalent in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European culture. [...] Throughout Renaissance Europe the general opinion was that the eyes provided the most direct knowledge of things, based on the most distinctions and the widest range; in functional terms, they were organs of power, liveliness, speed, and accuracy. (Clark 2007: 9–10).

Vision was therefore acknowledged as taking a leading role among the senses, but this did not necessarily entail a belief that it presented reality as it was (Clark 2007: 14). The perspective techniques and anamorphosis in art made it clear that the human eye could easily be deceived not only by particular natural phenomena, but also by human beings possessing the appropriate skills (Clark 2007: 78). Artists mastered this craft and were equipped with the necessary knowledge. They could exploit it to serve the truth, to offer a more accurate representation, as they used to claim (Clark 2007: 84–85), or could purposely distort reality when practicing anamorphosis (Clark 2007: 90). In much the same way, a telescope could be used properly and foster knowledge or improperly and deceive the observer (see above).

The usage of terms like zwierciadło, wizerunk, and perspektywa in titles is to be seen in this frame. Authors choosing these titles relied on the assumption that sight was the best and most trustworthy source of knowledge. Of course, all of them were certain they were showing the truth. As Kasijan Sakovyč’s Epanorthōsis abo Perspectiwa demonstrates, they took for granted that seeing meant knowing, and that once someone got to know something, he or she would act accordingly. This demonstrates a deep-rooted faith in human rational faculties.

The opponents to the ideas expressed in these books, while not questioning the eminent role of sight among the senses, contested its reliability. Pachomij Vojna-Orans’kyj did it drawing from the discussion on perspective art at the time.^[40] The assumption ‘viewing is knowing’ was common to all the participants in the polemics: a distorted vision could not but lead to wrong ideas and, consequently, behaviours.

The use of perspektywa in titles is symptomatic of the centrality of sight in the Polish-Lithuanian Baroque culture, regardless of any confessional divide.