The issue of rulers’ sanctity in the Early and High Middle Ages – a Polish case against the European background

The text analyses the problem of the sanctity of rulers, especially non-martyrs, in Latin Europe in the Early and High Middle Ages. The starting point for this discussion is a frequently asked question about the reasons for the lack of such a phenomenon in Poland.

FICTIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF PIETRO DE’ NATALI’S (1330-1406) VITA SANCTI ALBANI IN GIOVANNI BATTISTA MORONI’S (D. 1645) PRINCIPE SANTO

this article describes the rewriting process of Pietro de’ Natali’s Vita Sancti Albani in Giovanni Battista Moroni’s Principe Santo. through contextualising the experience among the canons of the 17th-century devotional novel and detecting the cultural and literary influences, this study explores the traits of the didactical project underpinned in the book, in which devotional purposes, moral meditations and political precepts are strongly intertwined. Finally, specific analyses are dedicated to the new geographical setting evoked in the novel, an ahistorical medieval Sarmatia (Poland); these examine the perception of a distant land and show the functional use of geographical elements to testify the historicity of an incredible story.

“You started a difficult life.” About the Patrons of the Christian East Against Infectious Diseases. Figures of Saints from the First Centuries of Christianity Based on the Lives of the Saints of the Old and New Order for Every Day Throughout the Year (1615) by Piotr Skarga

The article is dedicated to the first patron of the Christian Orient, who passed away in God’s glory with faith and professing the truth. It aims to present the profiles of selected divine intercessors of the oriental world, often forgotten patrons for the time of the pandemic in today’s society. However, this topic is too extensive for one article, so it is only an introduction to the hagiography of the saints of the Orient.

Historiographic initiatives related to the restoration of the Polish Kingdom

The unification and revival of the Polish Kingdom in the late 13th and the early 14th centuries, an event of great political significance, was accompanied by a remarkable development of medieval Polish historiography. It was the first time that historiographic works covered so many parts of Poland, almost simultaneously. In the chronicles produced at that time, great significance was attached to the reasons for the division of the Polish Kingdom, as well as identifying the prince who had the right to unite the Polish state and finally legitimise the royal power. This issue was equally addressed by hagiographical and strictly historiographic works (yearbooks and chronicles). This article deals with devising an ideological programme for the unification of Poland and discusses the various historiographic works in which this programme, formulated in different ways, was taken up. In the case of historiography, the political importance of the revival of the Polish Kingdom is evident both in the number of works on political themes and in the fact that unification ideas appeared several decades before the royal coronation of Vladislaus the Short, which sealed the process, as well as during the unification struggle, and even after the actual revival of the regnum Poloniae.