L'Embarras de richesses, czyli czemu poświęcona jest nowa książka o Sejmie Czteroletnim – historii idei, historii politycznej czy historii kultury?

Abstrakt

L’Embarras de richesse, or to What is the New Book about the Four-Year Seym Dedicated – the History of Ideas, Political History or the History of Culture?

After the Second World War there appeared in Poland a considerable number of publications about the history of the Catholic Church, although the political history of the eighteenth century remained insufficiently represented. The publishing of Richard Butterwick’s study (Polska rewolucja a Kościół katolicki. 1788–1792, Kraków 2012) fills this gap in historiography. The book is an expanded version of: The Polish Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1788–1792. A Political History (Oxford 2012, Oxford University Press). The first part of the book – Przed rewolucją – is a sui generis synthesis of the history of the Commonwealth from the first partition to the beginnings of the Great Seym. The remaining three parts deal with the history of the Great Seym to the period of the Targowica confederation. The book is written lucidly and with a slight distance towards the described events. Its great asset is the source material used by the author. A detailed and profound analysis of copious sources together with a thorough application of pertinent literature enabled R. Butterwick to depict the studied problems from various viewpoints against the backdrop of the activity of the Four-Year Seym and occasionally compared to the situation in Austria, France or Great Britain. The author demonstrated that for all practical purposes every discussion at the Seym referred to matters of the Church. The central theme of the book is an analysis of the decision-making process concerning the Church both at the Seym and backstage. The author proposed multi-motif reflections encompassing the entire work of the Great Seym and events transpiring behind the scenes. The book is a Seym monograph – naturally, profiled – and is the first work of its sort to take into account the whole period of the parliamentary debates. Owing to the diversity of the findings and the examined problems pertaining to political history, the history of ideas, and the political culture of the Polish elites at the end stage of the Commonwealth the presented publication will enter and long remain in scientific circulation.