Pokłosie Skargowskie: „książki polskie” o św. Kazimierzu Jagiellończyku (na tropach druku i egzemplarza)

Abstract

The subject of attention as well as the bibliographic and librarian inquiry is the first biography of Saint Casimir that was written in Polish. The Saint was mentioned by Piotr Skarga in the seventh edition of Lives of the Saints (Krakow 1610) when the author incorporated his own biography of St. Casimir into the collection. Skarga also added information that this biography written in Polish was published in 1606. Thanks to this information, bibliographers managed to establish that the print was published in Vilnius and that its author was Chryzostom Wołodkowicz (Wołodkiewicz), as was believed – a soldier of the military commandeer Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, later a writer of Samogitia. The information was most fully popularized by Bibliografia polska (Polish bibliography) by Karol Estreicher (vol. 33, published by Stanisław Estreicher, Krakow 1939). However, the print was only known by its title, and its copy had not been described. The author of the article investigated the history of the information about the print and established that it was first mentioned by bibliographers and Jesuit heraldic officers in the 17th and 18th centuries (Wojciech Wijuk Kojałowicz and especially Kasper Niesiecki). Following this path, the author assumed that the copy should be in Lviv or one of its neighbouring cities. His intuition was rewarded and the copy was found in the Lviv library. As a result, the author described the copy and on its basis corrected the information about its author.