Volume 64, Issue 4 - Themenheft: Kulturkontakte und Identitäten im frühneuzeitlichen Ostmitteleuropa

Among the various descriptions of „Sarmatia“ which have been printed in the 16th century, the works of Maciej z Miechowa, Marcin Kromer and Alessandro Guagnini possessed the largest distribution: Published between 1517 and 1578, their works – containing information about the geography, history and population of the eastern part of the European continent – were reprinted and translated several times at several places until the middle of the 17th century. With a focus on paratexts and metatextual comments, the present article considers the entangled history of their editions in the 16th and 17th century and deduces receptions of these texts.

The full-time jurist and gifted Neo-Latin poet Petrus Royzius, born in Spain, came to Cracow in 1541/1542 to teach Roman law at the university. He left for Vilnius in 1551 and died in the Lithuanian capital in 1571. Several scholars have collected observations about Lithuania and the Lithuanians that are scattered over Royzius’s more than one thousand verse texts. This article goes further in closely analysing and interpreting well-known texts, such as the macaronic poem about travelling through the Lithuanian province ( In Lituanicam peregrinationem ). It also adds new material that has not yet been considered from this point of view, such as Royzius’s poems in favour of the Union of Lublin in 1569. I further analyse the contextual meaning of the terms Sarmatia / n and Lithuania / n . Although the latter is often replaced or subsumed by the superordinate terms Sarmatia / n or Poland / Polish , it occurs frequently in the corpus of Royzius’s writing. However, Royzius’s texts feature little information about a specific Lithuanian historical or cultural identity. Likewise, there is hardly any information about smaller entities such as Samogitia or Russia ( Ruthenia ). Unlike his contemporary Augustinus Rotundus or later poets like Ioannes Radvanus, Royzius still belongs to a ‘pre-Lublin’ cultural paradigm in which literary representations of regional, non-Polish identity were of little significance.

The paper deals with the Bohemian Reformation literature. Culture of the Bohemian Reformation belongs to a little-known phenomenon in Czech historiography. Art and culture historians have focused mostly on the Hussite period and less on the 16 th and 17 th centuries. An important issue is the reception of German Lutheran religious educational literature in Protestant Circles of the Czech lands. The author focuses primarily on books in which the genre of mediation dominates, and explores the prompt Czech reaction to several German authors (Martin Moller, Johann Gerhard etc.) active between approximately 1580–1620 who found intensive response in the Bohemian Lands. The second important field is the Czech hymnography in the 17 th –18 th centuries. The author finds German inspiration for Czech hymnbooks. He deals with Luther’s songs in the hymnbook Cithara sanctorum by Jiří Třanovský and especially with late baroque Protestant exile hymnbooks influenced by the Pietistic Circle in Halle and Herrnhut ( Harfa nová [‘A New Harp’] by Jan Liberda, Lipský kancionál [‘Hymnbook of Leipzig’] by Georg Sarganek). Owing to the German stimuli, the spectrum of genres, ideological processes and stylistic registers in Czech literature from the 16 th to 18 th centuries is comparatively rich and diversified.

In Sorbian historiography the Lutheran reformation of the early 16 th century is seen as a starting point of Sorbian national history. It is thought that the introduction of Sorbian language into church life led to the development of Sorbian literature, a Sorbian elite and hence to a national identity. Based on research into the history of Sorbian pastoral work in Lübben, the main city of the Margraviate of Lower Lusatia, the present paper argues that the lack of pre-reformation sources about Sorbian church life and accordingly the increase of them after the reformation is primarily due to general mechanisms of source creation and preservation. In view of this, the impact of the reformation on Sorbian history needs to be evaluated with caution.

The paper deals with the ‘semantics of representation’ and the ‘pragmatics of consensus’ in the work of Johann Amos Comenius. The term ‘semantics of representation’ refers to the concept that things (all that can be referred to) are represented by thoughts in the mind, and thoughts are represented by words. ‘Pragmatics of consensus’ means that normative rules of communicative behaviour can be formulated which in practice lead to effective negotiation. The semantics of representation was a common sense view on language in Comenius’ time and can be seen as a presupposition in his arguing about learning, teaching, understanding and communicating in all his works, not only in the schoolbook Orbis sensualium pictus , but also in Via lucis or De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica ( Consultatio catholica ) and others. The pragmatics of consensus was developed mostly in latter works, especially in Consultatio catholica . At the beginning of the paper three of Comenius’ pictures (from the early novel Labyrint světa , the schoolbook Orbis pictus and the theoretical work Triertium catholicum ) are compared. The famous drawing of the labyrinth of the world shows a confusing town landscape in a closed circle and symbolizes the chaotic life of man after his fall and the Babylonian language confusion. The didactic emblem for Orbis pictus shows the world in harmony with God’s will. The abstract scheme in Triertium catholicum visualizes the connections between things ( res ), thoughts ( mens ), language ( lingua ) and action ( manus ). They form a stable and universal order in which thoughts, language and action are interconnected in a triadic relation. Especially the drawing of the labyrinth and the scheme in the theoretical work Triertium catholicum build a contrast between chaos and order. But it is shown that the order of the latter one is also the underlying structure of the confused communication in the labyrinth. Therefore, in Comenius’ view the aim and the duty of the philosopher and teacher is to heal the unhealthy reality of communication, which should be done on the base of normative rules of harmonic and effective communication. These rules are developed by Comenius in his famous Consultatio catholica . The paper closes with a short discussion of the actuality and efficiency of Comenius’ suggestions.

To date, social and (trans)cultural ties between Russia, Poland-Lithuania, the Ottoman Empire and Persia from the early modern period to the beginning of the twentieth century have not been the subject of systematic historical study. The historical societies of the above-mentioned regions developed relationships that evolved and interconnected over centuries. The program has a focus on “Transottoman” ties and communication practices which emerged as a consequence of mobility between these dominions and which have not previously become visible in studies of individual regions or bilateral relations. This approach promises to change our understanding of globalised European and Asian histories in a transcontinental context. Instead of constructing “one” new region, our “post-area studies” approach allows us to focus on several different contexts and fields of social interaction with different spatial and social ranges unified by the lens of mobility: Our focus will be on reciprocal processes of migration, knowledge circulation (travelling concepts), travel, trade and mobility of entire societies between Muscovy and then the tsarist empire, Poland-Lithuania, the Ottoman Empire and Persia. This contribution exemplifies the approach by explaing Poland-Lithuania and Transylvania in a Transottoman setting.

Departing from received notions about Vasil’ Tjapinski as an early representative of Belarusian national enlightenment, who in translating parts of the gospel into Ruthenian endeavoured to turn over the established diglossic linguistic order in favor of the vernacular language of the people, this article is meant to principally reassess his cultural role and significance. By subjecting the foreword to his gospel edition to a close reading and aligning our reinterpretation of this key document with the actual make-up and design of his text-critical synoptic edition of the gospel texts, it is hoped to place Tjapinski in a more adequate manner than heretofore within the broader framework of cultural change brought about by the vivid dynamics of innovative protestant religious thought against the backdrop of orthodox traditionalism. We argue that Tjapinski, being socially rather conservative, aimed at the expansion of active bible interpretation beyond the narrow sphere of priests and professional theologians within his own social class of minor gentry ( szlachta ) through adopting methods of critical philology as a highly formalized and therefore reliable truth-finding device. We argue further that, in an effort to win over primarily adherents of orthodoxy, Tjapinski rather than suggesting to have Church Slavonic replaced by the Ruthenian vernacular went out of his way to reestablish Church Slavonic as the true language of the Ruthenian nation (i. e. the Ruthenian szlachta ) by arguing for the authoritativeness and reliability of the original Cyrillomethodian gospel translation, which would put the Church Slavonic gospel translation on a par with its Greek source text. His synoptic gospel edition should be appreciated as an effort at making the Church Slavonic gospel accessible through the medium of a vernacular Ruthenian translation, which accordingly ought to be seen as a gloss on the Church Slavonic original rather than as an independent text in its own right.