Contribution to the descent affairs of Marcin Siennik

Abstract

Marcin Siennik (ca. 1540 – ca. 1580) is mostly known for elaborating Herbarz [“Herbary”] (a popular medical encyclopaedia) and translating the famous Secrets of the Reverend Maister Alexis of Piedmont into Polish.

Most historians (Kośmiński, Estreicher, Karpluk, etc.) are certain of Siennik’s German descent, pointing to the fact that the page of Herbarz containing the index of German names was signed by him with his original name: Merten Heüwrecher, which was then translated into Polish as Marcin Siennik. There are also other arguments in support of this thesis (which is what constitutes the contribution mentioned in the title of the paper), for example the way in which he translated the title of Alexis of Piedmont’s book (not secrets, as it is called in the original Italian version and the Latin base for the translation, but mysteries, which points to the influence of the German tradition), a number of words appearing in the text (e.g. Italian potione [beverage] is rendered in Siennik’s version as trunek [drink], which proves similar to the German etymon Trunk or Trank), as well as phrases such as “And having put it into hot ashes for four miserere...” (in Siennik’s translation: “put it into ashes and then take it out...”), which serve as a manifestation of his reluctance to follow the Catholic custom of counting time with the Word of God.

In this context, the least valuable is the opinion of Śleszkowski, the “author” of the second edition of the Polish version of The Secrets of the Reverend Maister Alexis of Piedmont, who wrote the following in the preface: “First and foremost I did not confide in the translation by Marcin Siennik when it came to the Polish language, as he is so inept in it that I have never read anything written in Polish quite so ineptly, which shows that he was either a foreigner or brought up in foreign lands in his youth...” – he focused not so much on Siennik’s descent (on which he may have had some information), but primarily on pursuing his own ambition, appropriating the authorship of the Polish translation of The Secrets in order for his “translation,” copied almost verbatim from Siennik’s version, to be considered better and definitive. He was also motivated by “patriotic” premises, which for him meant xenophobia, extreme anti-Semitism, and other products of the Counter-Reformation crusade.