| Abstrakt: |
The full-time jurist and gifted Neo-Latin poet Petrus Royzius, born in Spain, came to Cracow in 1541/1542 to teach Roman law at the university. He left for Vilnius in 1551 and died in the Lithuanian capital in 1571. Several scholars have collected observations about Lithuania and the Lithuanians that are scattered over Royzius's more than one thousand verse texts. This article goes further in closely analysing and interpreting well-known texts, such as the macaronic poem about travelling through the Lithuanian province (In Lituanicam peregrinationem). It also adds new material that has not yet been considered from this point of view, such as Royzius's poems in favour of the Union of Lublin in 1569. I further analyse the contextual meaning of the terms Sarmatia/n and Lithuania/n. Although the latter is often replaced or subsumed by the superordinate terms Sarmatia/n or Poland/Polish, it occurs frequently in the corpus of Royzius's writing. However, Royzius's texts feature little information about a specific Lithuanian historical or cultural identity. Likewise, there is hardly any information about smaller entities such as Samogitia or Russia (Ruthenia). Unlike his contemporary Augustinus Rotundus or later poets like Ioannes Radvanus, Royzius still belongs to a 'pre-Lublin' cultural paradigm in which literary representations of regional, non-Polish identity were of little significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
