A THOUSAND YEARS OF HISTORY 5Boleslaus the Wry-mouthed. Wincenty Kadlubek, also known as Master
Vincent (d. 1223), sometime student of the Sorbonne and Bishop of Cracow,
composed a chronicle on the model of Livy, filling the considerable gaps in his
knowledge with moral homilies or with recherche and entirely inappropriate
classical digressions. His terms of reference as laid down by his patron, Casimir
the Just, were 'to endow posterity with the honesty of their ancestors'. Janko of
Czarnkow, (d. 1387) was more political, detailing the events of his own lifetime,
and, as he saw it, the misdemeanours of Louis of Anjou.^2
Jan Dlugosz (Longinus, 1415-80), Canon of Cracow and royal tutor, is often
regarded as Poland's first historian. He has also been described as the 'greatest
medieval publicist', using his vast literary output to defend the position and
privileges of the Church and clergy. He was one of the pioneers in collecting and
recording historical sources, both documentary and oral. He spent many years
of his life touring the monastic libraries and cathedral chapters of the country,
copying manuscripts, and interviewing eyewitnesses of prominent events. He
was certainly one of the most endearing of chroniclers, and laced his learned
panegyrics to the Polish kings with intimate, personal anecdotes. Of the twelfth-
century monarch, Wladyslaw II, for example, he tells how the Prince, preparing
to bivouac in the forest, turned to his hunting companion with the words: 'It's
as soft as for your lady with her knight', and received the reply: 'or for your
queen with her bishop'. The twelve books of his Historia Polonica (Polish
History) contain little sense of analysis. His aim, as he said, was simply 'to
recover the memory of great men from their ashes'. He lived in a world where
Causality was still ruled by Providence: where the concept of Progress had not
been invented: and where History, as the science of the development of human
affairs, would have been thought quite pointless. In the medieval view, mankind
does not advance. Rather, with every year that passes, it retreats ever further
from that original state of grace whose recovery is the only conceivable goal of
our existence. Even so, Dlugosz was well aware that historical study has moral
and didactic value. 'Unlike philosophy', he wrote, 'which merely arouses people
and excites them, History ... permits us to look, as through a mirror, on every-
thing relating to heroism, wisdom, modesty, piety, and human folly.'^3
The sixteenth-century chroniclers did not question earlier assumptions.
Maciej Miechowita's Chronica Polonorum (Chronicle of the Poles) of 1519 con-
tinued Dlugosz's narrative up to his own day. The Kronika wszystkiego swiata
(Chronicle of the Whole World, 1551) of Marcin Bielski (1495-1575) was the
earliest historical work composed in the Polish vernacular. The Chronica
Polonica (Polish Chronicle, 1555) of Marcin Kromer (1512-89), Bishop of
Warmia, was full of fables and fine illustrations, and was a best-seller.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the art of the chronicler
adorned with extravagant poetic flourishes and with increasing social interest.
A justly renowned Polish translation of Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, pub-
lished in 1618 by Piotr Kochanowski, nephew of the poet, set the style for
numerous works of contemporary history. Samuel Twardowski (1600-60)