BIBLIOTECA DI STUDI SLAVISTICI – 25 – COMITATO SCIENTIFICO Giovanna Brogi Bercoff (Direttore), Stefano Bianchini, Marcello Garzaniti, Persida Lazarević, Giovanna Moracci, Monica Perotto COMITATO DI REDAZIONE Alberto Alberti, Giovanna Brogi Bercoff, Maria Chiara Ferro, Marcello Garzaniti, Nicoletta Marcialis, Giovanna Moracci, Donatella Possamai, Giovanna Siedina, Andrea Trovesi Latinitas in the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Its Impact on the Development of Identities edited by Giovanna Siedina Firenze University Press 2014 Latinitas in the polish crown and the grand duchy of Lithuania : its impact on the development of identities / edited by Giovanna Siedina - Firenze : Firenze University Press, 2014. (Biblioteca di Studi slavistici ; 25) http://digital.casalini.it/9788866556756 ISBN 978-88-6655-675-6 (online) ISBN 978-88-6655-674-9 (print) La collana Biblioteca di Studi Slavistici è curata dalla redazione di Studi Slavistici, rivista di pro- prietà dell’Associazione Italiana degli Slavisti (<http://fupress.com/riviste/studi-slavistici/17>). Editing e progetto grafico: Alberto Alberti. Questo volume è stato pubblicato con il contributo dell’Università degli Studi di Verona, Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Straniere. In copertina: Rappresentazione della Superbia, tratta dal corso di poetica Via poetarum ad fontes Castalidum, 1724 (Biblioteca Nazionale Ucraina, Kiev, Ucraina). Certificazione scientifica delle Opere Tutti i volumi pubblicati sono soggetti a un processo di referaggio esterno di cui sono responsabili il Consiglio editoriale della FUP e i Consigli scientifici delle singole collane. Le opere pubblicate nel catalogo della FUP sono valutate e approvate dal Consiglio editoriale della casa editrice. Per una descrizione più analitica del processo di referaggio si rimanda ai documenti ufficiali pubblicati sul catalogo on-line della casa editrice (www.fupress.com). Consiglio editoriale Firenze University Press G. Nigro (Coordinatore), M.T. Bartoli, M. Boddi, R. Casalbuoni, C. Ciappei, R. Del Punta, A. Dolfi, V. Fargion, S. Ferrone, M. Garzaniti, P. Guarnieri, A. Mariani, M. Marini, A. Novelli, M. Verga, A. Zorzi. © 2014 Firenze University Press Università degli Studi di Firenze Firenze University Press Borgo Albizi, 28, 50122 Firenze, Italy www.fupress.com Printed in Italy INDICE M. Garzaniti Foreword 7 G. Siedina Latinitas and Identity Formation in the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries). An Introduction 11 Ž. Nekraševič-Karotkaja Latin Epic Poetry and its Evolution as a Factor of Cultural Identity in Central and Eastern Europe in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 21 J. Niedźwiedź How did Virgil Help Forge Lithuanian Identity in the Sixteenth Century? 35 A. Osipian Constructing Noble Ancestors and Ignoble Neighbours. Uses of Cornelius Tacitus’s Germania and Annales in J.B. Zimorowicz’s Leopolis triplex (1650s-1670s) 49 A.W. Mikołajczak Antique and Christian Traditions in the Latin Poetry of Renaissance and Baroque Poland 71 P. Urbański Cultural and National Identity in Jesuit Neo- Latin Poetry in Poland in the Seventeenth Century. The Case of Sarbiewski 81 G. Siedina The Teaching of Lyric Meters and the Reception of Horace in Kyiv-Mohylanian Poetics 99 V. Myronova Chancellery Latin in Fifteenth-Sixteenth Century Ukraine 131 S. Narbutas Latinitas in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Chronology, Specifics and Forms of Reception 145 D. Pociūtė Abraomas Kulvietis. Humanistic Origins of the Early Reformation in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania 161 Latinitas in the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania : Its Impact on the Development of Identities, edited by Giovanna Siedina, ISBN 978-88-6655-675-6 (online), ISBN 978-88-6655-674-9 (print), © 2014 Firenze University Press Foreword For the first time in Italy, from 28 to 30 March 2012, scholars from Po- land and Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine came together to reflect on the Latin legacy in these countries at an international congress entitled: “The impact of Latin heritage on the development of identities in the lands of the Pol- ish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: history, language, literature, modeling patterns of culture and mentality”. For Italy, the country that has always preserved and promoted the legacy of classical antiquity in Europe and throughout the world, hosting this congress was both an honour and a duty. With the generous support of the Institute of Polish Culture, the Universities of Florence and Verona therefore invited specialists from these countries, for a conference also in connection with the International Congress of Slavists (Minsk, August 2013), which featured a panel on “The Latin heritage and its influence on the development of identities in the lands of the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (16th-18th centuries)”, material on which is already available (“Studi Slavistici”, IX, 2012, also on line). We gathered in Florence not only to discuss the Latin legacy, but also to study its role in the formation of the different national identities. Our aim, in fact, was to reconstruct the role played by Latin culture in forming the differ- ent nations making up a complex area that has enjoyed long-standing coexis- tence between diverse ethnicities, religions and languages. For these reasons, in order to understand the sense of the reflections contained in our congres- sional proceedings, we need to dispel certain commonplaces and at the same time offer some considerations on the cultural history of the area. To illustrate the purpose of the meeting I take inspiration from the work of one of the most eminent European intellectuals of the twentieth century, the poet Cz. Miłosz, who, with his Polish and Lithuanian origins and the deep bond with classical culture testified by his literary production, is certainly a fortunate example of the continuity of the Latin heritage in these countries. In his essay Native Realm (Rodzinna Europa, 1959) Miłosz recalled that in his education at the Stefan Batory Lyceum in Vilnius two figures deter- mined his cultural path: on the one hand a priest, marked by the rigour that had distinguished the counter-Reformation, on the other a classics teacher who had stimulated his positive attitude towards human reason and its creative po- tential. At first glance, it might appear to be the traditional opposition between Latinitas in the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania : Its Impact on the Development of Identities, edited by Giovanna Siedina, ISBN 978-88-6655-675-6 (online), ISBN 978-88-6655-674-9 (print), © 2014 Firenze University Press 8 Latinitas in the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania the souls of religious and secular culture that characterized the secularization of Europe. Numerous biographies of intellectuals in East-Central and East- ern Europe confirm that adherence to classical culture was motivated by their need to defend themselves against the dogmatism first of religion, and then of the ideologies that dominated the twentieth century. Miłosz’s reflections, however, went beyond this mere ideological opposi- tion, and captured a fundamental aspect of the cultural history of the area that for centuries had seen different ethnicities and religions live together within the Polish-Lithuanian state. Beyond the ideological opposition, this cultural history is determined by an internal dialectic in which religious reflection can- not exist without classical heritage, and the classical legacy is permanently marked by a sensitivity that is irremediably Christian. Like the pagan god Janus, the two figures are two faces of the same reality caught up in a some- times arduous dialogue which, as in the case of Miłosz, involved the author’s conscience and his search for truth. In general, we are used to considering the cultural history of the area from one point of view only, either religious or literary. The former belongs to the historians of Christianity, the latter to philologists and literary critics. Each perspective neglects what is ‘foreign’ to its own discipline, sometimes with “surgical” operations that tear up the cultural identity of authors and works, and therefore the cultural identity of their nations. This was not the case at our conference since scholars focused neither on classical culture in itself, nor on religious or theological issues; instead, they examined the identity processes of the authors and of the nations to which they belong. In this perspective, we need to focus greater attention on the intrinsic links of the two aspects, trying to reconstruct the cultural history of this part of Europe, so often overlooked or considered marginal. The new trends in the humanities that began to develop in the Polish Crown during the fifteenth century found fertile ground, promoting a renewal of the Latin language and culture that already served as the medium not only of worship and culture, but also, vitally, of communication in a multi-ethnic context. At the same time, the Lithuanian and Polish Jagiellonian dynasty, the most important for centuries in Central and Eastern Europe, sought to create a single state which also included the Kingdom of Hungary and which would bring together even if for a short time Slavic and non Slavic peoples from the Adriatic to the Baltic seas and extend eastwards to act jointly as a bulwark for Christendom. This is not the right place to expand on the extraordinary re- newal of classical culture between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that led not only to this culture