8 MILLENIUM
the form of the Noble Democracy of the old Kingdom and Republic. The final
period of Servitude was initiated by the Partitions, and lasted until the time
when Lelewel was writing. Needless to say, Lelewel's historical scheme was
closely allied to his political programme. His Dzieje Polski potocznym
sposobem opowiedziane (Poland's Past Recounted in a Familiar Way, 1829)
became a bible for the thousands of insurrectionaries and emigres of his gener-
ation. In it, he described the role of the Polish nation as that of an 'ambassador
to humanity', whose sufferings were meant to inspire the world and whose spe-
cial mission demanded the rejection of worldly trappings and success. In short,
he invented a historiosophical variant of Mickiewicz's allegory of Poland as the
'Christ among Nations'.^5
Lelewel's theories proved particularly seductive for his contemporaries, and
the disasters of two abortive Risings, in 1830 and in 1863, were needed before
Polish historians were weaned away from them. In the interval, much of the
pioneering work on Polish History was undertaken in Germany. Among the
Poles, it was left to the Cracow School forming round the 'Stanczyk Group' of
Jozef Szujski (1835-83), Walerian Kalinka (1826-86), and Michat Bobrzynski
(1849-1935) to bring the subject back to earth.^6
Of all the Stanczyks, Bobrzynski perhaps did most to popularize their point
of view. As Professor at the Jagiellonian University he was a leading specialist
in medieval law; and as Governor of Galicia, he was one of the highest placed
Poles in the public life of his day. As author of Dzieje Polski w zarysie (Poland's
Past in Outline), which between 1877 in Cracow and 1944 in Jerusalem ran
through at least five editions, he exercised considerable influence over the Polish
reading public. Among his many contributions, he realized that periodization
was an important and neglected subject, and discussed it in a number of
methodological articles. In his own work, he adopted a common-sense scheme
based mainly on political considerations, and proposed three simple periods -
Primitive, Medieval, and Modern. He placed his dividing lines at 1241, the date
of the Mongol invasion; at 1505 with the constitution of Nihil Novi; and finally
at 1795 at the Third Partition. The Primitive Period was characterized by the
patriarchal governments of tribal lords and early Piast dynasts; the Medieval
Period by the independent development of society; and the Modern Period by
the indefatigable struggle between the adherents and the opponents of noble
privilege.^7
Bobrzynski's scheme led to a wave of polemics. 'Sub-periods' and 'transi-
tional periods' were proposed by those who could not bear the arbitrariness of
simple divisions. The nature and the relevance of the 'turning-point' and the
'dividing line' were thoroughly examined. Szujski confined his criticisms to the
ineptness of Bobrzynski's scheme in the realm of foreign affairs; whilst Tadeusz
Wojciechowski (1838-1919), Professor at Lemberg (Lwow) and the founding
President of the Polish Historical Society (PTH), argued that the Modern Period
of Polish History should begin with the outbreak of Chmielnicki's Rebellion in
the Ukraine in 1648. In effect the most far-reaching revisions were proposed by