Słowo o Złotoustym. Dziewiętnastowieczna metamorfoza wizerunku Piotra Skargi

Kazimerz S. OŻÓG

Instytut Sztuki, Uniwersytet Opolski, ul. Bolesława Kominka 6, 45-035 Opole, Poland , Polska

Abstrakt

The article focuses on the iconography of Piotr Skarga, Jesuit preacher who lived at the turn of the the 17th century, the author of the Lives of the Saints, numerous sermons as well as Counter-Reformation writings, and it includes a survey of texts published after his death up till the 1850’s. Skarga, who immediately after his death in 1612 was considered an unexampled religious person, a paragon of virtue and best human qualities, a preacher equal to the the legendary, «golden mouthed» John Chrysostom, was in the next century practically forgotten, and was referred to merely by some literary critics who praised his writings for their language. However, the 19th century brought a renewed interest in Skarga and a legend about him, praising him as the nation’s prophet, began to spread. His homiletic writings, in particular his Sejm Sermons, full of admonitions about the condition of the Polish-Lithuanian state and nobles’democracy, were being read with reference to the partitions of Poland and to the first independence uprisings that failed. Within a few decades, Skarga was commonly perceived as the nation’s prophet, seer, apostle, and even messiah. This change of his image was due to Adam Mickiewicz’s influential Paris Lectures from the 1840’s, as well as to comments from later authors who stressed the significance of his public activity. Thus a new profile of Skarga was created already before the 1850’s: he was now praised as the one who allegedly foretold the fate of Poland and the events that would take place in two hundred years, and was seen as the symbol of Polishness and the teacher of values for the succeeding generations, a national hero in way equal to Tadeusz Kościuszko. The ultimate contribution to the apotheosis of Piotr Skarga was The Sermon of Skarga (1864), one of the earliest large-format historical paintings by Jan Matejko.

 

Translated by Dorota Chabrajska

Słowa kluczowe:

Piotr Skarga, Jesuits, Counter-Reformation, Adam Mickiewicz, 19th century literature, national hero, myth