Jagiellonian Epithalamia and New 1 Geographical Knowledge Introduction At the turn from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century in Europe, a number of publications appeared that redefined the concept of the world. These were editions of ancient geographical sources (e. g., Ptolemy, Pliny, Strabo, Tacitus), as well as new geographical trea­ tises, travelogs, historical works, maps, globes, and poetry.2 The authors and publishers of these texts created new European meta­ geographies.3 In these new spatial frameworks, they presented territories which until then had been poorly known or completely unknown, e. g., Northern Europe, the Far East, America, or Rus­ sia. The Polish-Lithuanian Jagiellonian monarchy was one of them. The process of creating the Jagiellonian metageography can be observed in Latin poetry written in the first decades of the six­ teenth century. Among them there are Latin nuptial poems, i. e., epithalamia, written for the wedding of the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Zygmunt I Jagiellon with Barbara Zápo­ lya (1512) and Bona Sforza (1518).4 1 This work was supported by the National Science Centre (Poland) with the grant “The Relationship Between Polish Literature and Cartography in the 16th and the First Half of the 17th Centuries” (“Związki literatury polskiej i kartografii w XVI i I poł. XVII w.”) UMO-2014/15/B/HS2/01104 (K/PBO/000337), DEC-2014/2015/B/HS2/01104. I would like to ex­ press my gratitude to Marion Rutz and Katarzyna Kosior for their valuable remarks and suggestions. I am also grateful to two anonymous reviewers whose comments helped me to improve the argument of the paper. 2 Cf. Thrower 1994, 58 – 76; Conley 1997, 1; Brotton 1998, 180; Wood­ ward 2007, 3 – 8. 3 According to Lewis and Wigen (1997, IX) metageography is “the set of spatial structures through which people order their knowledge of the world: the often unconscious frameworks that organize studies of history, sociol­ ogy, anthropology, economics, political science, or even natural history.” 4 For the history of Polish early modern epithalamia, see: Mroczek 1989, 61, 70 – 72, 80 – 83. The wedding of Bona Sforza and Zygmunt is discussed 208584_Slavische-Philologie-2-2020.indb 339 25.08.20 16:26 340 J. Niedźwiedź The epithalamia written in 1512 and 1518 might not seem the obvious first port of call when examining the ways in which a new geographical image of Central-Eastern Europe was shaped in the sixteenth century. There are better-known texts and artifacts which give us an in-depth understanding of this process. Among them, there is the treatise about two Sarmatias by Matthias of Miechów (Miechowita 1517), maps by Bernard Wapowski (1526), geographical manuals by Laurentius Corvinus (1496) and Jan of Stobnica (1512), epistolography and historiography. However, the epithalamia of 1512 and 1518 prove to be unexpectedly valuable materials and can shed new light on the discussed problem. First, they were published before Wapowski’s maps and before or only a year after Miechowita’s famous Tractatus de duabus Sar­ matiis. Second, these are poetical texts, which means that they speak about space in a different way than scientific works, such as geographical prosaic treatises or maps. In other words, poets can use a different language than authors of non-poetical works. Thirdly, in the first decades of the sixteenth century, neo-Latin poetry played an important role in shaping the image of the Polish Crown, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Muscovy. The epithala­ mia were no less important than other texts dealing with the topic. In the second decade of the sixteenth century, there were only a few printed sources which could inform contemporary readers about the lands of the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lith­ uania. Among them were Europa [Europe] by Enea Silvio Piccolo­ mini (1501), Liber chronicarum [Chronicle] by Hartmann Schedel (1493), and Cosmographia [Cosmography] by Laurentius Corvinus (1496). There were no informative maps of Poland and Lithuania except Ptolemy’s maps and their tentative adaptations by Nicolaus of Cusa, Martin Waldseemüller, and Marco Beneventano. Fourth, the epithalamia of 1512 and 1518 belong to the rather limited number of Latin poems written or published in that period in Cen­ tral Europe which refer to geography. They also form a coherent set of poetical works which comment on the same political events and have the same literary function. Furthermore, the coherence of the epithalamia can be assigned to the fact that their authors had the same humanist background and belonged to the respublica litter­ by Pociecha 1949, 229 – 258 and Bogucka 1989, 63 – 74. Both authors write also about the role of the epithalamia written or published in 1518. 208584_Slavische-Philologie-2-2020.indb 340 25.08.20 16:26 Jagiellonian Epithalamia and New Geographical Knowledge 341 aria of the time. Most of them also knew each other. In their works, they referred to the same ancient and contemporary texts. Lastly, the authors of the 1512 and 1518 epithalamia were officials repre­ senting important political institutions in Central Europe, particu­ larly chanceries of kings, politicians, or cities. Many of the poets were figures of high standing. Thus, each of them gave in his epi­ thalamium an official political statement. This was not only the voice of an individual poet but rather the voice of an institution. In the epithalamia of 1512 and 1518, there is a multitude of geographical references. The authors write about the location of Poland- Lithuania, introduce many toponyms, hydronyms, and names of ethnic groups. In the second decade of the sixteenth century, the use of all these names and locations was a cut­ ting-edge poetic device. The names also bear an important politi­ cal message. The political elites representing, for example, the Pol­ ish king, the members of the Breslau city council or the Holy Ro­ man Emperor sought—through poetry written by themselves or by their clients—legitimization of power in their countries. At the be­ ginning of the sixteenth century, they had to respond to a new challenge: to create and articulate a new spatial language of the reach of this power. Taking into account all the aforementioned circumstances, it is worth taking a closer look at geography in the epithalamia of 1512 and 1518. In my article, I am going to answer the question of how they create or convey geographic knowledge. I assume that the poets had different political and personal purposes when writing their epithalamia. At the same time, they shared similar attitudes toward geography. They sought to invent or develop a new geo­ graphical language by which the Central-European territories could have been created in poetry. I will show how, using this lan­ guage, they charted a literary equivalent of the tabulae moder­ nae—the new maps, drawn by their contemporary cartographers (Beneventano, Waldseemüller, Wapowski). I argue that the au­ thors of epithalamia took part in inventing a modern image of a part of the world, which is known today known as Central and Eastern Europe.5 5 The concept of Eastern Europe was invented much later, cf. Wolff 1994. 208584_Slavische-Philologie-2-2020.indb 341 25.08.20 16:26 342 J. Niedźwiedź Europe in Laurentius Corvinus’ “Epithalamium” One of the guests at Zygmunt I and Bona Sforza’s wedding, which took place in April 1518 in Cracow, was the humanist Laurentius Corvinus (1465 – 1527). He came as a member of a delegation of the Breslau city council, where he held the position of a secretary.6 It was not his first visit to the capital of Poland. In the late fifteenth century, Corvinus had studied at the University of Cracow (Newald 1957, 372; McDonald 2007, 49 – 71) and published some of his works in the city’s printing houses.7 For the wedding, he wrote a two-part erudite nuptial panegyric (Corvinus 1999; Corvinus 2001), which was published in Cracow probably during the cele­ brations. The early sixteenth century saw more epithalamia published in Poland. For both weddings of Zygmunt I in 1512 and 1518, a num­ ber of poems were composed by Paulus Crosnensis, Ioannes Dan­ tiscus, Andreas Cricius (Andrzej Krzycki), Eobanus Hessus, Lau­ rentius Corvinus, Caspar Ursinus Velius, Caelius Calcagninus (Celio Calcagnini), and Hieronymus Balbus (Girolamo Balbi).8 Most of them were published in Cracow in 1512 and 1518. Only eight 6 At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the city (Latin: Vratislavia, Czech: Vratislav, German: Breslau, Polish: Wrocław) was not a part of the Polish Kingdom. This Silesian city belonged to the Bohemian Crown, which was ruled by the Hungarian-Czech Jagiellons: Vladislaus II and his son Louis II. At that time Breslau had strong economic, cultural, and per­ sonal relationships with Poland. 7 I analyzed two poems by Corvinus in Niedźwiedź 1999. I also refer to some observations relating to Corvinus’ Ad Famam given previously in Niedźwiedź 2001. 8 On these sets of nuptial poetry, see Nowak-Dłużewski 1966, 69 – 86; Brożek 1995, 39 – 62; Ryle 1998, 525 – 532; Niedźwiedź 1999, 23 – 38. It is probable that Dantiscus wrote two epithalamia in 1518. Only one of them was published then. The author presented the unpublished version to Queen Bona only in 1543 (Skolimowska 2013, 352, note 78). In my analy­ sis I omit the hodoeporicon (a poem about a journey) “Viaggio de la serenis- sima s. donna Bona regina” [“The Journey of the Most Illustrious Lady Queen Bona”] by Colantonio Carmignano published under the name of Parthenopeo Suavio in Bari in 1535 (Carmignano 1535). Carmignano nar­ rates the journey of Bona Sforza to Cracow in 1518 (see Patrik Pastrnak’s article in this cluster). The poem is very rich in geographical details, mainly related to Dalmatia and the lands of the Habsburg Empire.