The Younger Europe—or the Older?: Visions of Politics in the Early Modern Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

In: Defining the Identity of the Younger Europe
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Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk Poland

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Abstract

This essay explores the trajectory of Polish–Lithuanian political thought from 1569 to 1795, focusing particularly on elements of modern state concepts that did not find their way into Polish–Lithuanian discourse. In the sixteenth century, political ideology in Poland–Lithuania, much like most European humanists and specifically “civic humanists,” was firmly rooted in classical state thinking. Ideas about the state, a citizen’s role, and freedom were all drawn from this classical tradition. However, Western European thought started to diverge from these classical theories during the seventeenth century. It established modern notions of sovereignty, natural rights, and the concept of the state as an entity separate from its citizens. Contrastingly, in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, state theorists and political debaters remained loyal to older notions, largely bypassing the emergence of new trends in political thought. The essay illuminates how the ancient tradition was summoned and sustained in Polish–Lithuanian political discourse. It delves into the reasons behind this steadfast adherence, particularly when European thought was veering onto a different course around the cusp of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Furthermore, it illustrates how references to classical antiquity in the eighteenth century provided a platform for re-engaging with contemporary Western theories.

My somewhat provocative title encapsulates the reflections the theme of this volume prompted in my mind. The “younger” Europe, at least the way I see it, refers to the part of Europe that was late to adopt certain ideas and attitudes and intellectual, artistic, and moral fashions. This also holds true for political thought and political discourse. This essay explores how the noble citizens of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth thought and talked about the state. The word “noble” should be emphasized here, as although bourgeois authors also sketched out their visions of the state over the two hundred years of the Commonwealth’s existence, they did so almost entirely beyond the mainstream political discourse.1 Such discussions were thus reserved for nobles who had, or believed they had, a share in wielding power. As a result, Polish–Lithuanian political discourse started to diverge from what would become the mainstream of West European political thought in the seventeenth century and would not reconverge with it until the second half of the eighteenth century. But did that divergence, as some scholars believe, result only from backwardness, conservatism, xenophobia, and a refusal to open up to foreign influences?2 Or was it due to the nobility choosing a different path—whether deliberately or otherwise—and turning away from certain solutions and notions, instead opting in favor of other, undoubtedly older concepts?

I was inspired to ask these questions by the work of the Vilnius University professor Aaron Aleksander Olizarowski (1618–59).3 He was the Commonwealth’s best and essentially only expert on Jean Bodin (1530–96). However, he appeared to take no notice of Bodin’s concept of sovereignty as a supreme, unaccountable power, a crucial element of the French master’s theories. He also regarded the classical terms Bodin used to characterize the ruler’s sovereignty as descriptions of tyranny.4 And although he had a perfect definition by Bodin in plain sight, as Eugeniusz Jarra (1881–1973) has aptly pointed out, he nevertheless referred to Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and Cicero (106–143 BCE) in constructing his definition of the state. Thus, despite all his admiration for the French philosopher and knowledge of his theory,5 Olizarowski clearly found some of Bodin’s thoughts unacceptable. The question is, why? To answer this question, the essay analyzes the broader evolution of Polish–Lithuanian political thought from 1569 to 1795, focusing in particular on the aspects of the modern concepts of the state that were not adopted in the Polish–Lithuanian political discourse.

1 On the Main Route: The Republican Tradition

Researchers have long pointed out that the entire concept of the state, as defined by authors first in the Polish Crown and later in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, was based on classical foundations, above all Aristotle’s thought and Roman republicanism.6 Practically all major concepts present in the political discourse were taken from the ancient traditions, as was the approach to politics together with its close links to ethics. Although the latter relationship could be traced to the work of Aristotle, who saw the state as an ethical project, a place where citizens could pursue a good (i.e., virtuous) life,7 it was the later Roman tradition of Livy (59 BCE–17 CE), Sallustius (86 BCEc.35 BCE), and above all Cicero that was of greater importance in the Polish–Lithuanian context, particularly the conviction that the existence of a republic was based on, and only guaranteed by, the virtue of its citizens.8

In the Commonwealth’s case, those classed as “citizens” were the people vested with political rights rather than all the individuals who lived under one law and one ruler, as Bodin and his successors would have it. Citizens were bound to lead an active public life and love their homeland, which was also understood after the manner of the ancients: “The homeland lieth not within walls, not within borders, not in plentitudes, but in the exercise of rights and liberties.”9 This love manifested itself in putting the common good before the good of the individual. Salus rei publicae suprema lex esto (The welfare of the people should be the supreme law) was another eagerly quoted Roman aphorism.

The canon of civic virtues was drawn from classical authors, but so was the concept of the state as a community of citizens; Cicero’s definition of a republic as “the gathering of citizens into a society bound together by law and an association of utility”10 was often invoked, whether more or less deliberately. Another assumption drawn from classical authors, though this time more likely from the Greeks, was that the best system of government for such a state was a respublica mixta (mixed republic). The idea of a mixed republic was partly based on Aristotle’s politeia, but it seems to have been influenced to a greater extent by Polybius (c.200 BCEc.118 BCE)11 and was seen as the only solution able to reconcile the power of the state with the freedom of its citizens. After the manner of ancient authors, above all the eulogists of the Roman Republic, Polish–Lithuanian authors understood freedom primarily as independence from the will of others, the ability to decide for themselves and their community, and subordination not to a ruler but to a law they had established—libertas consistit in legibus (freedom consists in laws),12 as they repeated after Cicero. It was not the monarch but the law that was given supreme authority in the state. The law was the only guarantee of freedom, but it also required all members of society, starting with the ruler, to obey it unconditionally.

From this brief outline of the foundations of the idea of the state in theoretical works and political writings on current topics in the Commonwealth in the sixteenth century,13 we can see that it was a vision deeply rooted in the classical—and therefore undoubtedly older—tradition. However, at least until the end of the sixteenth century, all of Europe talked about politics using a language largely borrowed from ancient writers. The Polish–Lithuanian authors consequently referred to classical traditions when participating in political discussions in Europe. Here, however, they made a decisive choice by following a trend that emerged in the Italian republics in the fifteenth century, particularly in Florence, and spread beyond the Alps in the sixteenth century, providing inspiration for authors in various countries, although to the greatest extent in England, The Netherlands, and the Commonwealth.14 I am referring here to the phenomenon that Hans Baron (1900–88) defined as civic humanism,15 and the researchers from English-speaking countries called classical republicanism.16 Although scholars disagree over whether that trend was influenced more by Aristotle’s thought or by the Romans, especially Cicero,17 the fact remains that those who represented it sketched out their projects related to the system of government based on antique thought and used it to interpret the crucially important terms and ideas that made up the ideal of vivere civile (civic life), such as homeland, republic, citizen, civic virtue, patriotism, public good, and finally, or perhaps above all, freedom.18 Those same concepts provided the basis for the discourse in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and represented a similar vision of the political world.

Polish–Lithuanian authors were not merely passive recipients of external ideas but proposed their own concepts as well. Most theoretical works were written in Latin and were also published outside Poland: Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski’s (1503–72) treatise on the reform of the Commonwealth was published in Basel,19 and Wawrzyniec Goślicki’s (1530–1607) work on the perfect senator was published in Venice.20 Both were translated into German (De republica emendanda [On the improvement of the Commonwealth])21 and English (De optimo senatore [On the best senator]) respectively,22 and aroused considerable interest (this holds true in particular for Goślicki’s work).23 More importantly, however, even the writings that were not intended for an external audience played an important role in the European discussions on the state. Those writings were abundant from the middle of the sixteenth century onward, and the years 1573–76 brought a true deluge of such works. This comes as no surprise: the participants in the Polish–Lithuanian political discussions of that time were confronted with an enormous challenge—they had to name and describe their aspirations and political ideals as well as a political reality that was changing before their very eyes. What had been initiated by the most prominent theorists, namely Modrzewski, Stanisław Orzechowski (1513–66), and Goślicki, was continued by the participants in the major political battles related to the great interregnum. Thus, in the second half of the sixteenth century, the political writers of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth successfully used well-defined classical concepts to create their own vision of the state and their own language of the political discourse, both of which were ideally suited to the needs of the emerging noble Commonwealth. In a sense, the participants in the discussions that played out at the end of the sixteenth century felt that they had created “a new incarnation of the ancient ideal of the civic state,”24 and they talked about politics using words drawn from the classical tradition, albeit filtered through humanist thought, especially its Italian version.

Even then, however, the Polish–Lithuanian authors made their own decisions about what to adopt, both from that tradition and from its later interpretations. Above all—although they were practically unmatched in “internalizing” the Roman tradition and, just like the Venetians of the Renaissance,25 regarded their own republic as a direct heir of republican Rome26 —they rejected Roman law, extremely important as it was in European political deliberations, including those considered republican. This was not a complete rejection: the influence of Roman law can be seen especially in the Statutes of Lithuania, for example.27 However, Justinian’s (527–65) Digest, which provided the basis for thinking not only about law but also about the state in the whole of Europe, had only very limited influence on the debate, and some authors (such as Orzechowski) even rejected it as constituting the foundation of royal despotism.28

This was not the only difference. Contrary to what was once thought, Niccolò Machiavelli’s (1469–1527) work was known and widely discussed in the Commonwealth,29 but it had a decidedly greater influence on Western republicans than on Polish–Lithuanian political thought, which could hardly be described as experiencing what John G. A. Pocock calls a “Machiavellian moment.” It lacked what was very important for the English republicans, namely the “mechanization of virtue,” the creation of a political construct that would force individuals to adopt attitudes beneficial for the community.30 Polish–Lithuanian thinkers also had a different attitude toward the government of Venice, which held a fascination for all of republican Europe. Participants in the Polish–Lithuanian discussions about the state knew and admired the government of Venice, but they did not see it as a model to be emulated. What mattered for them before everything else was libertas Venetiana (Venetian freedom), as confirmation that they had chosen the right path,31 and not the specific solutions in terms of the system of government that were topics of a dispute between the English and the Dutch.32

2 The Side Path: Disregard of New Concepts

Although these differences were significant, the political thought of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and discussions held throughout Europe could hardly be described as following divergent paths until the end of the sixteenth century, when new elements began to appear in European discussions that would alter the perception of the institutions of the state, authority, the rights of individuals, and the shape of the community, if not completely, then at least to a very substantial degree. Already at the end of the sixteenth century, Bodin outlined the early modern theory of undivided sovereignty. Around the same time, a modern concept of the law of nature began to take shape, developed by Johannes Althusius (1557–1638) and Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), as did, though somewhat later, the vision of the state as persona ficta (a legal person), an institution external both to the ruler and to society, the most perfect embodiment of which was Thomas Hobbes’s (1588–1679) Leviathan.33 Therefore, this discourse began to break from the classical framework and outline a different picture of the political world in at least some aspects. This also holds true for the narrative described as republican, which already in the middle of the seventeenth century accommodated natural law in its early modern sense, despite remaining in many aspects faithful to the traditional image of community.34

Meanwhile, Polish–Lithuanian political thought would continue to “adhere to the classical model at any price” for over a century,35 or, as Robert Frost would have it, remain stuck in “an Aristotelian prison.”36 This outcome was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that it became ossified, refused to open up to foreign influences, and departed from the mainstream of European thought. However, this explanation alone is too simplistic, particularly as lively political discussions took place in the Commonwealth until the middle of the seventeenth century, and their participants (especially in the period of Mikołaj Zebrzydowski’s [1553–1620] rebellion of 1606–8) skillfully invoked certain theoretical solutions while almost completely ignoring new political concepts. To understand why this happened, we should compare the circumstances that accompanied the arrival of new concepts and ideas into the political vocabulary and the situation in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, considering how useful those concepts could have been, the extent to which they could have been adapted to the existing discourse and to the political and social reality, and—to go even further—whether there was any need to do so at all.

The most important concepts of the early modern political discourse, such as sovereignty and natural law, were forged where disputes and wars were being waged, often against a religious backdrop,37 forcing theoreticians, and partially also the participants in those struggles, to ask themselves not only the traditional questions about the ways to ensure peace and security for the state and its inhabitants but also about the limits of government intervention in the lives of individuals, about the right to rebel against legitimate authority, and finally about who should wield that authority. The issues being considered not only laid the foundations for a new philosophy of the state but also became arguments in political clashes. This held true for the concept of undivided sovereignty, which not only provided the basis for talking about the state and authority but also became a weapon in disputes, both for supporters of absolutism (the sovereignty of the monarch) and advocates of republicanism (the sovereignty of the people).38 Similarly, for both sides, natural law quickly became the basis for the seventeenth-century dispute over power and the pivot around which this dispute turned.39 On the other hand, the concept of immutable and inalienable natural rights vested in every member of the community—the right to life, property, liberty, and, above all, freedom of conscience—was forged in the course of the battles for religious liberties waged by Protestants and was a fundamental argument in their defense.

Although political disputes also played out in Poland at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they were not characterized by conflicts of such magnitude. Even the most heated dispute in the period of Zebrzydowski’s rebellion focused more on the question of how to make the existing system of government work well, and if it amounted to a struggle for power, it was one within that system.40 Faced with an open dispute with the monarch, the noble opponents of King Sigismund III (1566–1632, r.1587–1632) made some attempts to determine more precisely who wielded supreme authority in the Commonwealth. However, they sketched out their visions within the old framework of monarchia mixta (mixed monarchy), which they attempted to fill with new content. The defenders of the monarch’s powers likewise did not go beyond the framework of mixed government. As one researcher aptly points out: “Debates on the absolute power of the prince exercised for the good of the citizens, which are known from the history of political thought in almost all European cultures of the time, could not be held in Poland because of this [particular] shape of the network of concepts.”41 However, the idea of popular sovereignty—present in the European deliberations on the state, including those regarded as republican, at least starting from the beginning of the seventeenth century—was absent from the Polish–Lithuanian discourse of the seventeenth century. The vision of authority was outlined within the framework of the classical participatory concept,42 where there was no notion of sovereignty because it was not needed to describe power or formulate arguments in struggles for power. Those statements did not reflect the opposition between the sovereignty of the ruler and the sovereignty of the people. Instead, we could talk about the clash between the king’s unlimited power and the freedom of “the people” (i.e., the nobility). In keeping with the classical republican tradition, “freedom” meant that the noble citizens depended on their own will and could decide matters for themselves at the individual and collective level. In this understanding, freedom was, in fact, equal to power, more specifically, the power to decide matters for oneself and the community. Those who expressed their opinions in the political discussions in the Commonwealth did not cross the threshold that would be crossed by Hobbes, arguing that freedom understood in this way meant sovereignty.43

The same held true for the concept of natural law in its early modern understanding. Both the concept of natural law as the foundation of authority and the vision of the natural rights vested with “the people,” which the king had no right to infringe upon, and the violation of which would amount to tyranny, were, in fact, absent from the political debate. Any echoes of those concepts are scarce, and such references are accidental and cursory.44 All those issues were regarded almost exclusively in terms of “common” law, that is, customary or enacted norms that remained in force in the Commonwealth and could, on the one hand, form a practical (as opposed to theoretical) basis for the monarch’s rule and the principles governing it, and, on the other, protect the liberties of the monarch’s subjects.45 Even in the course of the fiercest disputes with the rulers (Zebrzydowski’s rebellion and Jerzy Sebastian Lubomirski’s [1616–67] rebellion of 1666), their noble participants were not forced to formulate any resistance theory rooted in natural law as they could invoke a positive law: an actual, specific article about de non praestanda oboedientia (on non-observance of obedience) contained in the Henrician Articles (1573). As I have already mentioned, the Commonwealth was not characterized by violent religious disputes and struggles for power of the sort that led to the use of natural law as an argument in countries such as England, France, and the Netherlands. Even the participants in the rokosze (i.e., noble rebellions against the king) believed that they were acting within the existing system of government and saw their goal as being to repair it, not undermine it.

Those who spoke their minds on political issues in the seventeenth century were perfectly capable of formulating their demands without invoking the concepts of sovereignty or natural law. However, the adoption of such a narrative also meant that there was essentially no need for certain other concepts that were crucial for the European discourse. It is striking that property attracted little interest, not only as a natural right but also as a component of the political universe,46 as property has been a fundamental concept in European political discussions and the basis of visions of the state, society, freedom, and rule since at least the seventeenth century.47 In extreme cases, such as the English disputes over the state following Oliver Cromwell’s (1599–1658) revolution, it could even be described as one of the most frequently used concepts, if not the most important one.48 However, until the middle of the eighteenth century, property was a marginal concept in the Polish–Lithuanian political discourse. Neither its foundations nor its role in the creation of the community and its life or its political significance became subjects of in-depth considerations. We might get the impression that in the eyes of the noble participants in the political discussions held in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, property belonged to the private sphere, not the political one. This fact resulted from the socio-political reality in the Commonwealth, where political rights were based not on property but on belonging to the noble state, and from the choice of a political language in which property was poorly represented. On the other hand, liberty, almost ubiquitous in the noble discourse, was for a long time treated in a Roman manner and encompassed positive and negative liberty. Those concepts were not separated, with liberty being treated as the property of citizens as opposed to a natural right of every human being. The latter theme, which continued to appear in the writings of Renaissance theorists such as Modrzewski and Andrzej Wolan (1530–1610) in the classical sense, borrowed from the ancient authors,49 would later practically disappear from the political discourse for a century and a half.

When we analyze the reasons why the participants in the Polish–Lithuanian political discussions of the seventeenth century ignored new notions and concepts, we must remember that their introduction into the political discourse would transform it almost completely. Meanwhile, in the Commonwealth, no one felt the need for such a change. To some extent, the political discourse became a victim of its own success. The vision of the state created at the end of the sixteenth century and the political language used to describe it were ideally suited to the needs of the participants in political life. In addition, they seemed to be an excellent tool for describing not only their political ideals but also the political construct of the Commonwealth they had created. New concepts and ideas appeared, in a sense, too late. In the second half of the sixteenth century, when the vision of a noble republic was taking shape, these concepts and ideas either did not exist or were still nascent. When they appeared in the European discourse, there was no room for them in the Commonwealth’s political narrative, which was coherent and encompassed the issues the nobility regarded as important. Their inclusion into the discourse would necessitate changing not only the political language but also the vision of society, noticing its other members, not just nobles, and admitting that the noble citizens were not the only individuals who comprised the people or the nation. The participants in the political discussions of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were not in the least ready for that; republican language, rooted in the tradition of antiquity, was much better suited to their needs. It did not constrain their freedom to formulate political projects and demands—until it ultimately did.

From the middle of the seventeenth century onward, the nobility’s political thought became ossified and focused on defending the status quo rather than sketching out programs for repairing the increasingly inept political system.50 Sovereignty and power were not separated, and the political system was not distinguished from the form of government, all of which made it difficult to propose new solutions. The absence of a clearly articulated concept of the delegation of power, linked to the idea of sovereignty, and on the other hand the absence of the early modern notion of the separation of powers, posed considerable obstacles to proposals for improvements in the functioning of the highest authorities in the Commonwealth. Moreover, the choice of that particular political language made it difficult not only to describe growing problems but even to take notice of members of society other than the nobles.

3 New Propositions: New Roads

Authors in the first half of the eighteenth century, such as Stanisław Karwicki (1640–1724) and Stanisław Leszczyński (1677–1766), were aware of this situation, but no far-reaching change of language occurred until the 1770s, when political thought underwent a great “opening-up to Europe,” and new concepts and visions of the state proposed in Enlightenment thought, in particular in France, began to be incorporated into theoretical treatises by such new authors as Józef Wybicki (1747–1822), Hieronim Stroynowski (1752–1815), and Antoni Popławski (1739–99). We can undoubtedly see certain elements of a catching-up process here, with concepts and ideas developed elsewhere being incorporated into Polish–Lithuanian thinking about the state. However, that was still a choice, the adaptation of new concepts into an existing political language rather than radical change. If attempts at the holistic implantation of certain Western proposals were not consistent with this narrative, they remained on the margins of the ongoing discussions and attracted little interest, one example being the otherwise interesting physiocratic treatises by Stroynowski.51

The choice of specific Enlightenment projects for the system of government was determined by the distinctive characteristics of the political thought taking shape in the Commonwealth—the fact that it did not break the continuity of the tradition of thinking about the state that had its roots in antiquity. Besides, in the eighteenth century, this tradition was treated not so much as the heritage of antiquity but as a legacy left by ancestors—it was already a tradition of the citizens of the Commonwealth. The ideas of the natural rights of individual humans, popular sovereignty, the social contract, and the separation of powers in their Enlightenment-age version had already appeared and were relatively quickly adopted, and the whole of society, as opposed solely to the nobility, started to be noticed, albeit reluctantly. Importantly, however, the visions of the state sketched out in the Commonwealth remained faithful to the old tradition in which the state was not separated from society—it was still a civitas, a community of citizens collectively making decisions about their fate, not an institution external to them. If we concluded, in the manner of the German scholars, that the “absolute sovereign state was the political hallmark of modernity,”52 then in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the political thought of the eighteenth century rejected modernity thus understood. Similarly, a distinction began to be drawn between political and civil liberty, yet very few authors restricted their reflections to the latter. It was still believed that only those who could decide matters for themselves, including political matters, were fully free. Interestingly, although Stanisław Konarski (1700–73), perhaps the most prominent Polish political thinker of the eighteenth century, showed already in the 1760s how the state should function so that its existence would not have to be determined by virtue of its citizens,53 the question of their attitudes nonetheless remained important for the participants in political discussions, and the combination of ethics and politics was still very much in evidence in their statements, supported by the theories of Montesquieu (1689–1755) and above all Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78).

The latter authors aroused the strongest interest in the Commonwealth. Together with the physiocrats, from whom the concept of natural law was drawn (unlike the vision of the state), they were the greatest influence on Polish political thought at the end of the eighteenth century. This comes as no surprise: Montesquieu and Rousseau, together with Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709–85) (who was likewise known in Poland), rediscovered antiquity, as well as republican ideals and the republican discourse. References were made to their writings because they promoted the latest concepts in the philosophy of the state in a language close to the Polish readers. However, this influence was not merely one-sided. Mably, and above all Rousseau, not only wrote a set of advice for Poland at the request of Michał Wielhorski (c.1730–1814) but also, as we know from Jerzy Michalski’s (1924–2007) research, held discussions with the nobles who inspired their works and through them entered into dialogue with the Polish–Lithuanian nobility’s vision of the state.54 Although this was partially a dialogue of the deaf—based on words that sounded similar yet were understood in different ways (such as people and citizens)—these authors (especially Rousseau) referred to political values that their Polish readers had known about and accepted for a long time. In a sense, history came full circle: for reasons related to its backwardness and attachment to the old traditions, Polish political thought paradoxically had the capacity to adopt certain concepts that marked a breakthrough in European thinking about the state. This happened in the late 1780s and early 1790s, when such authors as Hugo Kołłątaj (1750–1812) and Stanisław Staszic (1755–1826) incorporated the most recent Western concepts, above all those put forward by Rousseau and Montesquieu, into their own traditions to propose a program for reforming the state that took into account society as a whole rather than the noble community alone.55 However, this is a topic in itself.

This essay has examined the path that the political thought of the Polish– Lithuanian Commonwealth followed from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. As we have seen, the word “younger” is not necessarily well suited to describe its evolution in this period. Instead, we should discuss it more as one of the many trends that made up the rich and varied European tradition. The participants in political discussions in the Commonwealth followed a path that sometimes ran along the main route and sometimes departed from it, only to rejoin it at a later date. That path sometimes led them astray, was sometimes neglected, but was maintained to reflect the needs of the travelers who used it.

Translated by Daniel Sax

Edited by Timothy Page

1

Such deliberations were mainly penned by burghers in Royal Prussia, as shown in Karin Friedrich’s article in this collection, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and this did not change until the end of the eighteenth century, more specifically the period of the Four-Year Sejm (1788–92).

2

Zbigniew Ogonowski, Filozofia polityczna w Polsce XVII wieku i tradycje demokracji europejskiej (Warsaw: PAN IFiS, 1992), 103; Jerzy Łukowski, Disorderly Liberty: The Political Culture of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century (London: Continuum, 2010), 13, passim.

3

Aaron Olizarowski, De politica hominum societate libri tres (Gdańsk: Georg Forster), 1651.

4

“Voces illae: Sic volo, sic jubeo, stat pro ratione voluntas, Principis placitum lex est, Principi quod libet licet, Princeps lege solutus est, voces, inquam, illae, non sunt regum, sed tyrannorum” (Those voices: Thus I will, thus I command, the will stands for reason, the law is what the prince pleases, the prince is allowed to do what he pleases, the prince is freed by the law, those voices, I say, are not of kings, but of tyrants). Olizarowski, De politica, 305 https://jbc.bj.uj.edu.pl/dlibra/doccontent?id=766223 (accessed October 17, 2022); on differences between tyranny and monarchy, see 307; see also Eugeniusz Jarra, “Le Bodinisme en Pologne au XVIIe siècle,” Archives de philosophie du droit et de sociologie juridique 3, nos. 1–2 (1933): 125–32, here 129, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k415552f?rk=21459;2 (accessed October 17, 2022).

5

He saw Bodin as “vir summi ingenii et rarae eruditionis” (a man of great talent and of rare erudition) and “sapientissimus rerum politicarum scriptor” (a very wise writer in politics); quoted after Jarra, “Bodinisme,” 126.

6

Claude Backvis, Szkice o kulturze staropolskiej (Warsaw: PIW, 1975), 467–511, here 515; Robert Frost, “‘Liberty without licence?’: The Failure of Polish Democratic Thought in the Seventeenth Century,” in Polish Democratic Thought from the Renaissance to the Great Emigration: Essays and Documents, ed. Mieczysław B. Biskupski and James S. Paula (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 19–54, here 29; Edward Opaliński, “Civic Humanism and Republican Citizenship in the Polish Renaissance,” in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, ed. Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1:160–66; Dorota Pietrzyk-Reeves, Ład Rzeczypospolitej: Polska myśl polityczna XVI wieku a klasyczna tradycja republikańska (Kraków: Księgarnia Akademicka, 2012), abbreviated edition: Pietrzyk-Reeves, Polish Republican Discourse in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); Pietrzyk-Reeves, “Recepcja rzymskich idei politycznych w Rzeczypospolitej XVI i XVII wieku,” Teologia polityczna 8 (2015–16): 45–53; Jan Květina, Mýtus republiky: Identita a politický diskurz raně novověkě polské šlechty (Hradec Králové: Pavel Mervart, 2019).

7

See esp. Pietrzyk-Reeves, Ład, 291–334.

8

Backvis, Szkice, 549–50; in the words of Sławomir Baczewski, in the sixteenth century “virtue in its political aspect became a central component of state ideology.” Sławomir Baczewski, Szlachectwo: Studium z dziejów idei w piśmiennictwie polskim; Druga połowa XVI wieku–XVII wiek (Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, 2009), 67; Benedict Wagner-Rundell, Common Wealth, Common Good: The Politic of Virtue in Early Modern Poland–Lithuania (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 11.

9

From a letter written by Lithuanian Krzysztof Radziwiłł (1585–1640) to crown magnate Jerzy Zbaraski (1574–1631) around 1630, quoted after Henryk Wisner, Najjaśniejsza Rzeczpospolita: Szkice z dziejów Polski szlacheckiej (Warsaw: PIW, 1978), 221.

10

Stanisław Orzechowski, Dyjalog około egzekucyjej in Orzechowski, Wybór pism, ed. Jerzy Starnawski (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1972), 313, the definition given in Latin and in Polish, though without attribution to Cicero; see also Tomasz W. Gromelski, “The Commonwealth and Monarchia mixta in Polish and English Political Thought in the Later Sixteenth Century,” in Britain and Poland–Lithuania: Contacts and Comparison from the Middle Ages to 1795, ed. Richard Unger with the assistance of Jakub Basista (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 167–82, here 169.

11

Pietrzyk-Reeves, Ład, 337–79; Květina, Mýtus, 278–86, passim.

12

“And thus thou hast no place for freedom, where thou hast no laws”; Andrzej Wolan, De libertate politica seu civili: O wolności Rzeczypospolitej albo ślacheckiej [1606], ed. Maciej Eder and Roman Mazurkiewicz (Warsaw: Neriton, 2010), 89.

13

For more on this, see Pietrzyk-Reeves, Ład; Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, The Political Discourse of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth: Concepts and Ideas, trans. Daniel Sax (New York: Routledge, 2021); Květina, Mýtus; and from earlier works also Backvis, Szkice.

14

The first to emphasize the role of Italian thought was Robert Frost: “In establishing their new political system after 1569, Poles and Lithuanians explicitly identified with the ideas of Italian defenders of political independence and republican self-government”; Frost, “Liberty without licence?,” 38; see also Pietrzyk-Reeves, Ład, 85–164.

15

Hans Baron first used this term in the 1920s before describing it comprehensively in his famous book The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955); reflections on civic humanism and polemics against certain earlier research assumptions can be found in the collective work Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, ed. James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). The editor’s foreword (1–13) contains a review of earlier discussions on this topic.

16

The concept was introduced by Zera Fink, The Classical Republicans: An Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern of Thought in Seventeenth-Century England, 1st ed. (Evanston: Northwestern University, 1945). Both concepts were essentially used interchangeably until they began to be treated as separate trends and even contrasted with each other by researchers from the English-speaking countries in the 1990s—the first do so was Quentin Skinner; see Marco Geuna, “The Tension between Law and Politics,” in Republican Democracy: Liberty, Law, and Politics, ed. Andreas Niederberger (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 5–40, here 8.

17

The first viewpoint represents, e.g., John G. A. Pocock, the second, e.g., Quentin Skinner.

18

“From the early Renaissance to the Age of Revolution, appropriations of the ancient past loomed large over political debates and processes of republican identification, in terms of imitation and emulation as well as condemnation”; introduction to Ancient Models in the Early Modern Republican Imagination, ed. Wyger Velema and Arthur Weststeijn (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 1–19, here 19, https://www.academia.edu/35709655/Ancient_Models_in_the_Early_Modern_Republican_Imagination (accessed October 17, 2022); besides, the literature on this topic is vast.

19

Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski, Commentariorum de republica emendanda libri quinque (Basel: Ioannes Oporinus, 1559).

20

Wawrzyniec Goślicki, De optimo senatore libri duo (Venice: Giordano Ziletti, 1568; Basel: Robertus Cambierus, 1593).

21

Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski, Von Verbesserung des Gemeinen Nutz Fünff Bücher, trans. Wolfgang Weißenburg (Basel: Nicolaus Brylinger, 1557).

22

The Counsellor Exactly Pourtraited in Two Bookes (London: Richard Bradocke, 1598; 2nd ed., 1607).

23

“Thanks to the universal language of Latin, an important contribution to this international republican conversation was made by writers from Poland”; Richard Butterwick, “Europe’s Wealth of Civic Traditions,” paper delivered at the conference “Citizen Matters: Views and Perspectives on European Citizenship” held at the European Parliament December 10, 2014, 6, https://www.coleurope.eu/sites/default/files/uploads/page/europes_wealth_of_civic_traditions.pdf (accessed October 17, 2022); Teresa Bałuk-Ulewiczowa, Goslicius’ Ideal Senator and His Cultural Impact over the Centuries: Shakespearean Reflections, Rozprawy Wydziału Filologicznego PAU 78 (Kraków: PAU and UJ 2009).

24

Jerzy Axer, “‘Latinitas’ jako składnik polskiej tożsamości kulturowej,” in Tradycje antyczne w kulturze europejskiej: Perspektywa polska, ed. Jerzy Axer (Warsaw: OBTA, 1995), 71–81, here 74; similarly, Teresa Kostkiewiczowa, Polski wiek świateł: Obszary swoistości (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 2002), 193.

25

Eco Haitsma Mulier, The Myth of Venice and Dutch Republican Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1980), 5; see also Franco Gaeta, “Alcune considerazioni sul mito di Venezia,” Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 23 (1961): 58–75, here 60.

26

“And here be the form of Republics which we call free […] and of which there have been but three in the world: the Roman, […] then it shifted to the Venetians there it remains to this day. Our forebears formed this third of their own, ad normam the Venetian one […]”; “Libera respublica quae sit,” in Pisma polityczne z czasów rokoszu Zebrzydowskiego 1606–1608, ed. Jan Czubek, 2 vols. (Kraków: Akademia Umiejętności, 1918), 2:403–9, here 407; Jakub Filonik, “The Polish Nobility’s Golden Freedom: On the Ancient Roots of a Political Idea,” European Legacy 20, no. 7 (October 2015): 1–13, here 9, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281769360_The_Polish_Nobility%27s_Golden_Freedom_On_the_Ancient_Roots_of_a_Political_Idea (accessed October 17, 2022); Tomasz Gromelski, “Classical Models in Early Modern Poland Lithuania,” in Velema and Weststijn, Ancient Models, 285–305, here 293.

27

Juliusz Bardach, Statuty litewskie a prawo rzymskie (Warsaw: OBTA, 1999); Andrzej Zakrzewski, Wielkie Księstwo Litewskie (XVIXVIII w.): Prawo—ustrój—społeczeństwo (Podkowa Leśna: Campidoglio, 2013), chapters 12 and 13: “Statuty litewskie” (215–31) and “Prawo w teorii i praktyce” (232–54); Sławomir Godek, Elementy prawa rzymskiego w III Statucie litewskim (1588) (Warsaw: Oficyna Naukowa, 2004).

28

On the nobility’s ambivalence toward Roman law, see Adam Vetulani, “Opory wobec prawa rzymskiego w dawnej Polsce,” Analecta Cracoviensia 1 (1969): 372–86; Backvis, Szkice, 556–57; Stanisław Estreicher, Kultura prawnicza w Polsce XVI wieku (Kraków: PAU, 1931), 44f.; Stanisław Grodziski, Z dziejów staropolskiej kultury prawnej (Kraków: Universitas, 2004), 166.

29

Robert Frost, “Medicinal Herbs and Poison Plants: Reading Machiavelli in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1560–1700,” in Unie międzypaństwowe—parlamentaryzm—samorządność: Studia z dziejów ustroju Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów, ed. Wacław Uruszczak et al. (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 2020), 28–53.

30

Dorota Pietrzyk-Reeves, “Kontynuacja i zmiany w polskim republikanizmie XVII i XVIII wieku,” Czasopismo prawno-historyczne 67 (2015): 45–74, here 60, https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/cph/article/view/4217/4285 (October 17, 2022).

31

Backvis, Szkice, 728.

32

Haitsma Mulier, Myth, passim; one exception was the treatise by Paweł Palczowski, Status Venetorum, sive Brevis tractatus de origine et vetustate Venetorum (Kraków: Officina Lazari, 1604), based largely on Gasparo Contarini’s (1483–1542) work, although its author knew Venice from his own experience.

33

Quentin Skinner, “The State,” in Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. Terence Ball, James Farr, and Russell L. Hanson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 90–131, here 102, 112; David Runciman, “The Concept of the State: The Sovereignty of a Fiction,” in States and Citizens: History, Theory, Prospects, ed. Quentin Skinner and Bo Stråth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 28–38, here 29.

34

“Characteristic republican combination of classical republicanism and natural law theory.” Jonathan Scott, Commonwealth Principles: Republican Writing of the English Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 89, 157; Charlotte Hamel noticed its influence even earlier, in the writings of the Dutch republicans at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Charlotte Hamel, L’Esprit républicain: Droits naturels et vertu civique chez Algernon Sidney (Paris: Garnier, 2012), 17.

35

Pietrzyk-Reeves, “Kontynuacja,” 45.

36

Frost, “Liberty without Licence?,” 54.

37

“The idea of undivided sovereignty was put forward in response to the European religious wars.” Bill Brugger, Republican Theory in Political Thought: “Virtuous or Virtual?” (London: Macmillan Press, 1999), 23; see also Frost, “Liberty without Licence?,” 40.

38

Oscar Gierke, Natural Law and the Theory of Society 1500–1800 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), 42; Martin van Gelderen, “Aristotelians, Monarchomachs, and Republicans: Sovereignty and Respublica mixta in Dutch and German Political Thought, 1580–1650,” in Van Gelderen and Skinner, Republicanism, 1:195–217, here 202.

39

“The idea of natural rights could be used to defend either absolutist or liberal theories of government.” Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law 1150–1625 (Grand Rapids, MI: B. Eerdmans, 1997), 182.

40

The reformist nature of the political discussions held in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was pointed out by Frost, “Liberty without Licence?,” 47.

41

Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg, Polska myśl historyczna a humanistyczna historia narodowa (1500–1700) (Kraków: Universitas, 2011), 251–52; Ogonowski, Filozofia, 78.

42

“The classical ideal of the direct participation of the citizen in public life.” Frost, “Liberty without Licence?,” 47; see also Konstanty Grzybowski, Teoria reprezentacji w Polsce epoki odrodzenia (Warsaw: PWN, 1959), 19, 230, in the context of the principle quod omnes tangit (that which touches all).

43

Quentin Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 76.

44

See Michał Zwierzykowski, “Sine iustitia in libertate żyć nie chcemy: Prawo i sprawiedliwość w dyskursie politycznym kampanii sejmowych lat 1696–1762,” in Wartości polityczne Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów: Struktury aksjologiczne i granice cywilizacyjne, ed. Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz in collaboration with Jerzy Axer (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2011), 264–88, here 275; in the seventeenth century, its distant echoes could sometimes be heard in the speeches of Protestants defending their rights, see, for example, Uniżona prośba do Króla Jego M[ił]ości i Rzeczypospolitej na sejm MDCXXVII pisana, in Państwo świeckie czy księże?: Spór o rolę duchowieństwa katolickiego w Rzeczypospolitej w czasach Zygmunta III Wazy; Wybór tekstów, ed. Urszula Augustyniak (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Semper, 2013), 367–401, here 389.

45

Urszula Augustyniak, “Granice wolności obywatela Rzeczypospolitej w XVIXVII w. Jednostka wobec władzy, prawa i społeczeństwa,” in Wolność i jej granice: Polskie dylematy, ed. Jacek Kloczkowski (Kraków: Ośrodek Myśli Politycznej, 2007), 13–36, here 17.

46

For a broader take, see Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, Political Discourse, chapter 11, “In Conclusion, What Concepts Were Absent? Property” (221–38).

47

Ellen Meiksins-Wood, Liberty and Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought from the Renaissance to Enlightenment (London: Verso, 2012).

48

Harry T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London: Methuen 1979); Henry Horwitz, “Liberty, Law, and Property, 1689–1776,” in Liberty Secured?: Britain before and after 1688, ed. James R. Jones (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 265–97; Howard Nenner, “Liberty, Law, and Property: The Constitution in Retrospect from 1689,” in Jones, Liberty Secured?, 88–121.

49

See Steffen Huber, Polifonia tradycji: Filozofia polityczna i teoretyczna Andrzeja Frycza Modrzewskiego (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Sub Lupa, 2014), 336; Jan Květina, Mýtus, 514.

50

Urszula Augustyniak, Wazowie i “królowie rodacy” (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Semper, 1999), 40.

51

Hieronim Stroynowski, Nauka prawa przyrodzonego, politycznego, ekonomiki politycznej i prawa narodów (Vilnius: Drukarnia Królewska przy Akademii, 1785).

52

On the opinions of German researchers, see Martin van Gelderen, “The State and Its Rivals in Early Modern Europe,” in Skinner and Stråth, States and Citizens, 79–96, here 92.

53

Stanisław Konarski, O skutecznym rad sposobie, 4 vols. (Warsaw: Drukarnia Pijarów, 1760–63); see also Jerzy Łukowski, “Stanisław Konarski: Polski Machiavelli?,” in W cieniu wojen i rozbiorów: Studia z dziejów Rzeczypospolitej XVIII i początków XIX wieku, ed. Urszula Kosińska, Dorota Dukwicz, and Adam Danilczyk (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Neriton, 2014), 181–96; Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz, “Nowe wino w starych butelkach: O języku politycznym Stanisława Konarskiego,” Wiek Oświecenia 32 (2016): 11–28.

54

Jerzy Michalski, Rousseau and Polish Republicanism, trans. Richard Butterwick-Pawlikowski (Warsaw: Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History Polish Academy of Sciences, 2015), https://rcin.org.pl/Content/58076/PDF/WA303_78371_JM_Michalski-eng.pdf (accessed October 17, 2022); Michalski, Sarmacki republikanizm w oczach Francuza: Mably i konfederaci barscy (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1995).

55

Rafał Lis, W poszukiwaniu prawdziwej Rzeczypospolitej: Główne nurty myśli politycznej Sejmu Czteroletniego (Kraków: Akademia Ignatianum, WAM, 2015); Anna Grześkowiak- Krwawicz, “A Polish Sattelzeit?: New Concepts in the Political Language at the Twilight of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth,” Acta Poloniae historica 122 (2020): 7–35, https://apcz.umk.pl/APH/article/view/APH.2020.122.02/28057 (accessed October 17, 2022).

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