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Rapidly spreading and ravaging diseases were not a rarity in Old Poland. The medical knowledge of the era could not properly explain the nature of infectious diseases and the mechanism of their spreading, so there were many different attempts at explaining their causes. Some suspected their enemies and infidels of poisoning air and water; others attributed pestilence to God's wrath or to unfavourable configurations of heavenly bodies that were said to bring misfortune. The most devastating effects were attributed to comets; a comet's appearance was seen either as a sign or as a cause of impending disasters, which, apart from pestilent air, included earthquakes, deaths of kings, wars, and tumults. Astrological explanation of the plagues proved to be very persistent and became a stock motif in the literature devoted to the subject, which, however, does not mean that it was accepted without criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the presence of astrology in the heraldic work Orbis Polonus by Szymon Okolski dating from the mid 1600s. While due to a growing fascination with neo-Platonism and hermetic writings, astrology had enjoyed popularity since the Renaissance, in Okolski's case its influence came mostly through early modern books of emblems and compendia of symbols. It is, therefore, important not only to track down astrological motifs in the works of Alciatus, Cesare Ripa, Giulio Cesare Capaccio, Julius Wilhelm Zincgref, and Diego de Saavedra to compare them with those found in Orbis Polonus but also to recognise the fact that emblematics had a great impact on how Okolski perceived the import of his heraldic work as such. The novelty of Okolski's project consisted in treating armorial bearings as universal symbols and interpreting them not only in accordance with the rules of heraldry but also through a wide range of cultural sources, trends and traditions. In order to make the symbolic significance hidden in coats of arms more apparent, the author tried to organise the heraldic entries in a new way. Apart from the usual parts describing the coat of arms (delineatio), its origins (origo) and the family that used it (lineafamiliae), he introduced subchapters dealing with its symbolic meaning. He called them "considerations," "precautions," or "omens" depending on which aspect of the symbolic explanation he wanted to emphasise. Especially the third of these dovetails with astrology because the symbolism of the coat of arms, including motifs derived from, or related to, astrology, is presented as the best path that should be taken by a family bearing a particular coat of arms. All the while, however, these auguries are made based on symbols as such and not on careful observation of stars, planets or comets, and Okolski is not concerned with the destiny of individual people but with more general tendencies that affect the virtue of noble families, and virtue is for Okolski the foundation of nobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses heraldic works as a specific phenomenon within Old Polish literature from the standpoint of a historian of literature. The author pays particular attention to the taxonomy of texts that could be labeled as armorials and to the limits and characteristics of the genre in all its diversity. It is the diversity of forms and functions of heraldic writings produced within the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that make the phenomenon so striking. The task of defining the genre characteristics is made more difficult by the loose relationship that Old Polish armorials have with the Western European heraldic models, though this is not to say that Polish heraldry developed completely apart from those models. It seems that the writings in question do indeed have a common denominator and that it is possible to distinguish some types of armorials that were characteristic for Old Polish culture and to trace them in their historical development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses one of the fundamental problems in preparing critical editions of old literature: issues concerning quotations and other intertextual references. Orbis Polonus by Szymon Okolski constitutes excellent material for such a discussion. Though essentially an armorial, apart from typically heraldic and historical content, it contains extensive passages of moral instruction based on symbolic interpretation of given armorial bearings. Within such discourse, the readers receive much information from various fields of knowledge. This knowledge, however, is not systematised in any way; the author is simply citing information, famous sayings or poetic fragments that have occurred to him as related to the coat of arms he is writing about. This strategy results in an erudite discourse built from numerous quotations and references whose style researchers call "Lipsian." Editorial work on such a text requires the editor to establish the scope and depth of intertextual references, which seldom are distinguished clearly, and to reconstruct the author's reading list. Without that it would be impossible to eliminate errors that found their way into the only edition of the text so far, whose successive volumes were published by the printer Franciszek Cezary in 1641-45. This trivial statement of fact promises titanic work to any future editor as Okolski made use of books in three languages (Latin, Polish and Italian) and flaunted his knowledge of Greek literature, although he probably did not know Greek. His reading list comprises various works, from the Bible and classical literature, to medieval theological writings, to the newest literature of his day. Heraldic literature, histories and documents from family archives appear within the discourse next to works on natural history, emblems, occasional literature, excerpts from apophthegmatic collections, epistles or hagiographies. Difficulties with correct attribution of citations are aggravated by the fact that references to other texts are often indirect as Okolski used anthologies and compendia.This not only makes it difficult to find sources of quotations, but also raises questions as to the extent of possible corrections in cases where the quotes are distorted or erroneously attributed: often the distortions are due not to Okolski's or the compositor's inattentiveness but to uncritical copying of the intermediate text. The situation of a potential editor gets worse with popular references as the more popular a quote, the harder it is to establish its exact source. Changes to the original text made by the author intentionally to emphasise his point are yet another matter. Not all such instances are obvious and it is not always easy to determine what purpose they serve, as sometimes the only indication of their intentional nature is the fact that they reappear someplace else. The issues discussed here are but a fraction of problems that an editor of Orbis Polonus would encounter. The aim of the article is not, however, to present a comprehensive plan of the armorial's critical edition but to point out some objective problems that hinder the process of establishing a proper version of any erudite neo-Latin text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]