The abundant collection of works in Jan III’s royal library included numerous volumes on rhetoric and oratory, among them Jan Pisarski’s collection of Polish speeches entitled The Polish Orator (Mówca polski; vol. 1—1st ed. 1668; supplement published as vol. 2 in 1676). The presence of this particular volume in the library testifies not only to the King’s interest in rhetoric—understandable given his practice of the art: the volume in question was in fact a tribute to the monarch’s father. Jan Pisarski, the King’s secretary, was the first to compose an anthology of actual speeches—before, such collections included only model orations (e.g. Marcin Filipowski’s A storeroom of varied acts [Spiżarnia aktów rozmaitych]). The first volume, composed of funeral and parliamentary speeches, is dedicated to Jan Sobieski, still Grand Marshal and Hetman at the time. In his letter of dedication, the editor outlines the purpose of the collection: to preserve the tradition of Sarmatian eloquence, understood as a commitment to the memory of the fame of grand orators. The metaphors Pisarski uses to describe the contents of his collection are characteristic: the Hetman’s father, Jakub, speaks to Poles again, placing under his son’s command ‘a new force of orators of powerful mettle, among whom he himself stands as the foremost … leader; in an appeal for approval comes a formidable … line of native Ciceros’. It is, therefore, a select group of accomplished speakers forming a veritable canon of Sarmatian orators, spearheaded by Jakub Sobieski.
In his anthology, Pisarski devoted comparatively the most space to speeches by Sobieski, including seventeen overall in the first volume and one nuptial speech in the second. However, these umpteen printed orations offer only a meagre representation of the enormous amount of discourses the orator has actually delivered. Far more remain in manuscript—some in dozens of copies, a tell-tale sign of the popularity of Sobieski’s eloquence. Two of the manuscripts that have been studied so far are in fact original collections of Sobieski’s speeches (manuscripts of the Library of the National Institute of the Ossolińskis, no. 400 II and 3567 II), while the list of his known orations currently includes over hundred entries.
Performing as a speaker was an indispensable part of the experience of public as well as private life. Jakub Sobieski thus spoke on all occasions deemed suitable for public speeches in seventeenth-century Commonwealth. The future Castellan of Cracow was primarily a politician; he served as Marshal at four different Sejms—in 1623, 1626, 1628, and at the election Sejm of 1632. His addresses to the Sejm on those occasions were recorded in the journal of the parliament, also those edited by Sobieski himself. The Marshal’s orations included ceremonial speeches at the opening and closing of parliamentary sessions (the so-called speeches at the kissing of the King’s hand), as well as making appeals and expressing gratitude in the name of the chamber of the deputies (e.g. demanding that vacated offices, i.e. vacancies, be filled). The election Sejm put particularly high demands on the Marshal, who was also responsible for receiving deputations, of course in Latin. Sobieski’s fluency in Latin was so formidable that Marek Radoszowski in his journal of the Sejm recorded an unprecedented commendation of the Marshal’s response to the Pope’s legate: ‘H[is] H[onour] L[ord] Marshal of the knightly faction gave an oration in Latin … that he may have as well written, not even in gold, but in diamonds’.
In his speeches at the Sejms, Sobieski frequently and ceremoniously invoked the virtues informing the consciousness of the society of nobles. In 1626, he said:
Our Fatherland, the C[ommonwealth], rests on two mighty pillars: the valiant and world-famous achievements of our ancestors and the entirety of laws and freedoms. If we were to establish which basis [foundation] constitutes a greater firmamentum [support], it would not surprise us to find that, due to our noble birth, it is freedom that grants us a greater conviction and commitment in knightly matters. Freedom was indeed the value that pushed those splendid first Poles to take up arms against all enemies—not to defend their riches gained through their own frugalitas [frugality] and work manuum [of the hands], not to safeguard their cara pignora [proofs of love, i.e. children], as these are equally beloved of mancipiis [the enslaved], not to save their own health or life, as they knew full well there was no escaping death. This free nation took up arms to defend freedom, the very soul of its Fatherland, and warded off various enemies to pass it on unbroken, to give great joy and ornamenta [pride] to the living and in sera posteritate nomina [names remembered long into the future] to the dead, for many centuries and even today.
Here, the reference to freedom as a fundamental value undergirding the entire code of conduct for the nobility and the Sarmatian ideology is made in a style typical of Baroque oratory: pathetic, rife with macaronic language, using extended sentences built on intricate parallel structures. Of course, such declarations formed a nobleman’s declaration of faith whose ideological implications became increasingly at odds with the political reality.
Sobieski was also an esteemed funeral speaker. The very fact that he spoke at funerals of Hetmans Stanisław Żółkiewski, Jan Karol Chodkiewicz (for their families), and Stanisław Koniecpolski (as the King’s envoy), as well as highest officials and senators—Chancellor Tomasz Zamoyski, Chamberlain of the Crown Andrzej Bobola, Castellan of Cracow Jerzy Zbaraski—testifies to his reputation. These speeches formed a majority of those that made it to school courses on rhetoric as exemplary. The artful rhetoric that infuses each and every one of them warrants a separate analysis, and thus a single, brief fragment must suffice as an illustration. Let us consider the opening of the speech at the funeral of Grand Hetman of the Crown Stanisław Żółkiewski, slain at Ţuţora, an address which all students a Jesuit colleges would have recognised:
Were it possible to invite the Commonwealth, our beloved Fatherland, gathered in all its vast extent, to this act of mourning, she would lend this ceremony all the pathos it requires and stand by the brave Hetman as her defender, displaying his bloodied bones to the whole world as proof of his fame, honour, and valour—and she would not cover them in dust, but indeed, would rather raise a splendid monument to him in our hearts and minds, burying him not in the ground, but as a precious jewel in the eternal memory of generations.
Jakub Sobieski clearly made sure that the example set by the grandfather left a lasting mark on the memory of the grandson Jan, a fact borne out by the King’s description of his ancestors (e.g. in Excerptum ex autographo Joannis III, in quo nonulla de gentis suae originibus … narrat …, published by F. Kluczycki). Understandably, Sobieski spoke just as often at the funerals of his family and kinsfolk, and his speeches concerning the departed female family members—particularly the beautiful eulogy to his mother-in-law, Zofia Daniłowiczowa (at Zhovkva on 27 November 1634)—merit particular attention.
Comparatively the least copied of the discourses of Castellan of Cracow recorded in old manuscripts were his nuptial speeches, even though the earliest of those—given at the wedding of his sister Gryzelda to Jan Rozrażewski—became the subject of a surprising imitation. The typical ruminative introductory part of the oration, discussing the significance of marriage, came to be used by Jakub Maksymilian Fredro in a speech giving away ‘Jadwiga of Lviv’—the mistress of King Władysław IV—to a Standard-Bearer called Nurski (the speech is arguably the most frequently copied text in noblemen’s silvae rerum). Sobieski spoke at the weddings of magnates—such as that of Urszula Brygida Ossolińska, daughter of Jerzy Ossoliński, or of Gryzelda Zamoyska, daughter of Tomasz Zamoyski—and often at the nuptials of regular noblemen which took place in his native Zhovkva, Lviv, Pidhaitsi, or Mykulintsy—invariably in grave tones, commending marriage as the assurance of life-long companionship and the spouse as a true friend, in accordance with the traditions of landed gentry, which identified marriage with friendship.
In 1625, at a time when Sobieski’s career was only developing, Szymon Starowolski included his profile in the list of the most esteemed Polish public speakers in his De claris oratoribus Sarmatiae. In his view, Sobieski was ‘so thoroughly distinct in our time thanks to his perfect articulation that he came to be considered Poland’s finest orator’.
Paradoxically, his orations which used to be known by so many, and his prose which taught others to write and speak beautifully, are absent today even from academic syntheses of history of literature, while the texts continue to lie unperturbed in old Polish manuscripts.
Translation: Antoni Górny
