Asking Piotr Skarga: an attempt to describe the strategy of writer’s approach towards the Protestants

Abstract

Asking Piotr Skarga: an attempt to describe the strategy of writer’s approach towards the Protestants is trying to rewrite the proposition of Skarga’s approach towards the Reformation. For King’s preacher reformers are unambiguously: „heretics”. Koehler analyses some basic Skarga’s texts, addressed to different readers, arisen in different historical or social contexts. His aim is to check if Skarga’s attitude towards protestants is permanent or connected with the context. Koehler then reads political treatise Kazania sejmowe, the formative text for Polish clergy Kazania na niedzielę i święta, as well as the sermon addressed to the King and his army given just before their marching off to the war: Wsiadane na wojnę and text Wzywanie do pokuty the audience of which was projected by King’s preacher as a general one.

Previous understanding of Skarga’s approach toward the „heretics” (historical and contemporary one) unequivocally stressed the aggressive and provocative attitude of him towards „heretics”. His contemporaries as well as 19th and 20 th centuries scholars referred Skarga with such terms as: „incendiary” (turbator rei publice). Koehler, using the methodology of close reading and intentional reading tries to verify: if this types of understanding of Skarga’s discourse, which came from outside the texts really coresponds with author’s intentions which are embodied in the texts. So finally Koehler gives a portrait of a person who unequivocally fights against the protestants and their religion (from different reasons: from religious to political one) but at the same time a person who values common good more (bonum commune) than religious differences or religious war.