On the Sources of the Life of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski by Jan Poszakowski

Abstract

De viris illustribus provinciae Lithuaniae Societatis Iesu, a huge collection of summaries of the lives of deceased members of the Lithuanian province of the Society of Jesus compiled by Jan Poszakowski SJ (1684–1757) in the middle of the eighteenth century, exists in manuscript till date and has not yet been thoroughly investigated from the point of view of the sources used by the compiler. This article is the first attempt to initiate such research in the form of a case study.
In 2024, a brief description of the life of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski SJ compiled by Poszakowski in the middle of the eighteenth century was published in volume 52 of Senoji Lietuvos literatūra [Early Lithuanian Literature]. Darius Antanavičius and Živilė Nedzinskaitė promptly responded to this publication with the article on the original necrology of Sarbiewski, which was published in Lituanistica (2024, vol. 70/4), in which the most plausible cause of Sarbiewski’s death (i.e., tuberculosis) was suggested as well. The actual paper deals with the problem of written sources, which Poszakowski used while compiling his description of Sarbiewski’s life. Ona Dilytė-Čiurinskienė considered it being an authentical text written by Poszakowski and reflecting his views about Sarbiewski, while it appeared that Poszakowski merely translated the text about Sarbiewski published in the famous Korona polska (vol. 4, pp. 38–39) by Kasper Niesiecki in 1743 from Polish to Latin. In addition, Poszakowski copied two sentences from Bibliotheca scriptorum Societatis Iesu by Nathanael Southwell. As a result, the conclusion is drawn that Poszakowski’s text is of no significance in terms of independent bio-bibliographical source on the life of the famous poet. The similarities between the two texts examined are presented in Table 3.