“Sarmatian Perspective of Fame”? About the Sarmatian Myth in the Context of the Knightly Ethos of Nobility

Abstract

Starting from the reference to the title of Marian Kaczmarek's book, Sarmatian, the perspective of fame. On the "War of Chocim" by Wacław Potocki, I discuss the functioning of the concepts of Sarmatian / Sarmatian and derivatives in poetry and occasional and religious prose (sermons), heroic epics, chronicles, as well as all literary works (including Maciej Stryjkowski, Jan Kochanowski, Abraham Rożniatowski , Marcin Paszkowski, Samuel Hutor Szymanowski, Piotr Skarga, Jakub Hasjusz, Łukasz Opaliński and Mikołaj Karol Juniewicz and others), having a didactic or parenteral dimension from the mid-16th to the mid-18th century. I am trying to establish how the words referring to the sphere of Sarmatian concepts, derived from the ethnogenetic myth in the context of the chivalrous ethos, functioned in the epoch. The aim of the study is to examine the formation and evolution of the "Sarmatian self-awareness" of the noble community on the basis of literature. The collapse of the Sarmatian ideals can be observed in Something new Opaliński and later in Juniewicz's Clerical Reflections. I would like to remind you that the Sarmatian myth is the founding myth of the community that was established at the time of concluding the union of the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Sarmatians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the nobility and magnates, not necessarily of Polish nationality, and the Polish-Latin culture of this community was founded on the unified Jesuit and Piarist education. I come to the conclusion that the concept of Sarmatism established by the thinkers of Stanisław's classicism in relation to what emerges from literary works is not needed. They can be replaced with the term "Sarmatian", which is closer to the words of the era such as Sarmatian, Sarmatian and Sarmatian, or the notion of "gentry culture".