Instalment Two

Forging the Word
Printed Monuments of Old Polish Literature

All Polish works
from the sixteenth century
interest me greatly.

These words, written by the not-yet twenty-three-year-old Tytus Działyński, marked the beginning of a collection of the oldest Polish books – the fruits of the printing houses of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during its golden age. His library became a refuge for unique works that testify to the intellectual abundance and ambition of the Polish Renaissance, as well as to the birth of literary Polish. Gutenberg’s invention democratised access to knowledge and paved the way for new ideas, but also significantly influenced the development of national languages, the standardisation of spelling, and orthography.

At the dawn of the 16th century, the Polish language resembled an uncut block of marble. Writers of the time grappled with a raw, awkward medium lacking the words needed to describe the complexities of the world. Yet they wrote tirelessly. Printers joined them in this effort: Hieronim Wietor and Florian Ungler produced extensive books entirely in Polish for the first time, while masters of the pen – Jan Kochanowski, Mikołaj Rej, Łukasz Górnicki, and others – turned rough Polish into a tool of infinite possibilities: refined, ornamental, and precise. The typefaces of Jan Januszowski, Maciej Wirzbięta, and the Szarfenbergs provided fitting form to this masterful language.

Thus, through the alliance of pen and printing press, amid the bustle of Krakow’s workshops, Polish orthography and literary language were born, and the book gradually became national, accessible, and beautiful.

A

Cim.Qu.2450
Biernat z Lublina
Żywot Ezopa Fryga
Kraków, druk. Stanisław Szarfenberg
1578

B

Cim.F.4188
Baltazar Opec
Żywot Pana Jezu Krysta
Kraków, druk.
Hieronim Wietor
1522

C

Cim.Qu.2173
Mikołaj Rej
Zwierzyniec
Kraków, druk.
Maciej Wirzbięta
1574