Republican discourse in Renaissance Europe was one of the most important implications of the revival of ancient political ideas and their creative applications for a new reality. Polish political discourse in the early modern age is a beloved subject of research for many Polish scholars (lately by Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, Dyskurs polityczny Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów, Toruń, 2018). Though this subject was presented also in English, the book under review presents practically for the first time a meticulous and penetrating analysis of the sixteenth century Polish political discourse in the English language. The importance of presenting this subject in English lays not only in showing that the republican discourse also penetrated Poland, but also in the confrontation of this imported discourse with the unique early modern Polish political system and its socio-economic reality, which developed in the sixteenth century completely differently from west Europe outlines.
The leading force of republican discourse in western Europe, the urban burgher estates, were in declined in sixteenth century Poland. Transformation of Poland into “the granary” of western Europe in the sixteenth century caused a general ruralization of Polish society, enserfment of the peasants, and served as a fertile ground for the rise of the power of the Polish nobility, which gradually gained the upper hand over royal authority. This process coincided with the Renaissance revival of classical Greek and Roman political discourse. As a result, Polish political institutions came to be described in highly inadequate terms. The Polish elective monarchy became the res publica (Rzecz pospolita in Polish); the privileges of the Polish nobility called “golden liberty” (złota wolność) became Roman libertas; and the assemblies of local nobles (sejmiki) became an expression of direct democracy, Athenian style, and the whole Polish political system was treated as a “mixed constitution” of Polybius combining monarchical (the King), aristocratic (the Senate consisted of secular and ecclesiastic magnates), and democratic (the Chamber of Envoys delegated by local sejmiki) components.
Some of the contemporary authors participating in this discourse, such as Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski, Wawrzyniec Goślicki, Jakub Przyłucki, Andrzej Wolan, and Sebastian Petrycy were well aware of the inadequacies of the ancient republican model for Polish realities. Others, like Stanisław Orzechowski, solved the problem by claiming that the King, clergy, and knights constitute the “people”—citizen body of the “republic”—while burghers and peasants are destined to serve their needs. All participant of this republican discourse also widely used comparisons with the contemporary Italian merchants’ city-states (especially Venice), hardly relevant for the Polish “republic of nobles.”
It is not entirely clear to what extent Polish scholars, including Pietrzyk-Reeves, are aware of this contradiction between the medieval political system and republican rhetoric. Statements such as: “In comparison with the rest of Europe, Poland-Lithuania was the polity in which the greatest number of citizens had a say in the running of their country” (182), and “… although both commonwealths, Poland-Lithuania and Venice, eventually collapsed, they (especially Venice) enjoyed free institutions much longer than any other early modern state and at the same time avoided dramatic events like civil war, regicide and religious wars” (244, a concluding remark of the book) reveal that the Polish post-partition tradition of a nostalgic attitude towards the idealized “First Republic” continues to flourish also in the “Third Republic.” Contemporary representative bodies such as French États généraux, the English Parliament, and the Swedish Riksgad were far more representative than the Polish Sejm, and such “dramatic events” as civil war and regicide in England and France were parts of revolutions, which eventually transformed these countries into highly successful modern states.
The Polish republican discourse imported from the west was not the only one in sixteenth century Poland, but confronted alternative discourses of the Sarmatian ideology (see lately Martin Faber, Sarmatismus. Die politische Ideologie des polnischen Adels im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden, 2018) and the Catholic concept of antemurale Christianitatis, which reflected the Polish situation on the margin of Europe, in close contact and literary dialogue with Ottoman Turkey and Muscovite Russia. Both these concepts were addressed by most of the writers discussed in the book, but the role of republican discourse in this ideological confrontation did not find expression in this book.
All these shortcomings do not diminish from the value of the book. It presents for the English language reader a meticulous and penetrating presentation of the sixteenth century Polish political discourse for the first time, which is a most welcome enterprise.
