Josephus testifies and comforts : remarks on the reception of Flavius Josephus’ "Jewish War" in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

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This article raises the understudied issue of the reception of the writings of Flavius Josephus in the literary culture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th and 17th centuries by means of a twofold perspective. On the one hand, I show rich material hidden in Polish historical collections by means of which one can understand the way texts by Josephus were read, understood and used by early modern scholars active in the intellectual centres of Poland-Lithuania such as Kraków or Gdańsk (Danzig). In light of this brief survey it becomes clear that in many cases works of Josephus were read quite thoroughly and at times in relation to a clearly defined scholarly and/or political agenda. The other perspective involves the reading strategy projected or suggested by the author of the first early modern Polish translation of the Jewish War, i.e. Lenart of Urzędów in his Historyja Józefa starego dziejopisa żydowskiego we dwoje księgi rozdzielona [A History of Josephus, the Ancient Jewish Historiographer, Divided into Two Books] of 1555. In relation to Lenart’s translation, attention is drawn to the fact that the result of his enterprise was dedicated to Duchess Beata Ostrogska and that certain elements of the book’s paratext determine the expected method of reading of Josephus’s historical work. Finally, joining these two perspectives together, further studies on the two ends are suggested, i.e. the reader’s and translator’s, of the process reception in the hope that it will shed some further light not only on the reading practices of the masculine educated community, but also on the readership and literacy of women in early modern Poland-Lithuania, especially in the 16th century.