Receptions of Rome in Counterreformation Poland
Video Arts & Humanities 2025 Graduate ExhibitionPresentation by Julia Kossowska
Exhibition Number 507
Abstract
From the time of baptism of its first historical ruler, Poland’s identity had remained closely tied to Christian religion, with Poles viewing their country as the Bulwark of Christendom. By the early modern period, Poland found itself situated between Protestant Germany to the West, Orthodox Russia to the East, and Muslim Ottoman Empire to the South. During this time, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth stood as the connector between the various religions and cultures, and between the West and the East. My research explores these transcultural dynamics by examining Polish connection to Rome and its role in shaping the early modern Polish identity. Working with primary sources from archives in Poland and Italy, this project looks at existing discussions found in the scholarship on Polish humanism and Counterreformation, approaching the topic using methodologies of Classical Reception and cultural history. Through this, I aim to answer three leading questions: 1) How do portrayals of ancient and contemporary Rome reflect the ideas of Counterreformation in Poland? 2) How do these portrayals change throughout the period and how were they shaped by religion and political conflicts in the Commonwealth? 3) What are the distinctions between depictions of ancient Rome and the personal accounts on contemporary Rome?
Importance
In my project, I aim to recenter the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth within the Western European narratives, putting it in conversation with the West, while simultaneously showing its individual identity based on its Eastern connections. Furthermore, this project concentrates on a topic that, for a long time, has been taken for granted within Polish scholarship, namely, the role of Rome as an idea in the cultural and political landscape of the period. While the ancient influences and the religious and political involvement of the Vatican have been previously discussed, there have yet to be a thorough study on how these ideas of past and present Rome corresponded with one another.