CHAPTER EIGHT

CITIZEN, FATHERLAND AND PATRIOTISM IN THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE OF THE POLISHLITHUANIAN COMMONWEALTH

Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz

To assert that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had an incred- ibly diverse ethnic structure is a banality. Contemporaries were them- selves aware of this diversity, noting that the Commonwealth was comprised “of , Lithuanians, Ruthenians, Prussians, Livonians and Samogitians,”1 a list that could be extended further to include Germans, Jews, Armenians and Tatars. It therefore might seem quite a risky endeavor to contemplate the contemporary notion of patrio- tism towards the Commonwealth as a whole, or especially to treat it as a homogenous phenomenon. Aft er all, the very name of the pol- ity mentioned not one, but two composite nations (being known in Polish as the “Republic of the Two Nations”). Moreover, there was undoubtedly a clear and stable awareness of distinct non-Polish iden- tities, especially Lithuanian. Th e Lithuanian nobility, despite its rapid adoption of the and the common privileges it shared with the nobility of the Crown, retained a profound sense of its own “Lithuanianness,” manifested repeatedly and in various ways—such as in the notion of “we, Lithuania” juxtaposed against such notions as the “Polish lords.”2 Yet on the other hand, historical research to date has shown that it is indeed entirely justifi ed to speak of patriotism during the era, a sense of sharing a common fatherland—at least as far as the

1 Piotr Skarga, quoted from Stanisław Obirek, “Koncepcja państwa w kazaniach Piotra Skargi SJ” [Th e conception of state in the of Piotr Skarga], in Lud- wik Grzebień and S. Obirek, eds., Jezuici a kultura polska [Jesuits and Polish culture] (Cracow: WAM 1993), 212. 2 Henryk Wisner, Rzeczpospolita Wazów. Czasy Zygmunta III i Władysława IV (Th e Commonwealth of the Vasa dynasty. Th e times of Sigismund III and Wladislas IV) (Warsaw: Neriton, IH PAN, 2002), 50. 256 anna grzekowiak-krwawicz noble society was concerned.3 It was nearly exclusively the nobility that participated in political life from the sixteenth century nearly until the end of the eighteenth century; it was the nobility that constituted the political nation (quite sizeable, representing some 8% of the overall population); and by waging disputes at and Sejmik gatherings and publishing both topical pamphlets and serious treatises, it was the nobility that produced the political discourse that is the subject of our analysis here. While the words “patriotism” or “patriot” appeared in this discourse only at the outset of the eighteenth century (becoming more frequent in its latter half), the problem of what attitudes and duties individuals (citizens) possessed towards their fatherland had constituted one of the more important elements of political writings from as far back as the sixteenth century. Th e terminology used before then, through the end of the seventeenth century, chiefl y referred to love for one’s fatherland or lovers of the fatherland or citizens faithful to their fatherland, or the Latin prototypes amor patriae and bonus civis patriae, alongside which a host of Latin and Polish terms were in use—for example we can note the word combinations “charitas patriae,”4 “pietas in patriam,”5 “cour- tesy [uprzejmość] to the fatherland,” and descriptions of people who professed such love as being “useful sons of the fatherland” or “citizens wishing the fatherland well.”6 Signifi cantly, although the word “father- land” was also sometimes construed in a narrower sense (as in “our Lithuanian fatherland”), references to love for the fatherland nearly without exception referred to the common fatherland of the “noble nation”—i.e. the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. One author dur- ing the rebellion (or rokosz) in 1606 summed this up

3 See chiefl y the work of Andrzej Walicki, Edward Opaliński, Ewa Bem-Wiśniewska, as well as other historians, especially specialists in sixteenth and seventeenth century history (whose works are cited below). 4 Łukasz Opaliński, “Rozmowa plebana z ziemianiem” [1641], [Th e conversation of the priest and the country gentleman] in idem, Pisma polskie, ed. Ludwik Kamykowski (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Kasy im. Mianowskiego, 1938), 43. 5 Egzorbitancyja powszechna, która Rzeczpospolitą królestwa polskiego niszczy, zgubą grożąc [Th e general abuse which destroys the Republic of the Polish Crown, threatening it with ruin] (Warsaw, 1628), modern ed. Kazimierz J. Turowski (Cracow: Biblioteka Polska, 1858), 28. 6 All these quotations come from the sixteenth century, quoted from Ewa Bem, “Termin “ojczyzna” w literaturze XVI i XVII wieku. Refl eksje o języku” [Th e term “fatherland” in the literature of the 16–17th centuries. Refl ections on the language], Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce 34 (1989): 131–57.