Lithuanians and Poles, and the language(s) of polemics. Multilingual capital in Stanisław Orzechowski's "Quincunx" (1564) and Augustinus Rotundus's "Rozmowa polaka z litwinem" (1565

ENThe 1560s were a decisive period for the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in general and for the elites of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) in particular. This decade culminated in the finalisation of the union of the Grand Duchy and the Kingdom of Poland at the sejm in Lublin in 1569. However, the conditions of the union treaty signed on 1st July 1569, as well as the preceding relocation of the Polish-Lithuanian inner border met with resistance among the Lithuanian magnates. The debates during the union sejm as well as the previous diets had also resulted in collisions of Polish and Lithuanian interests. The allegiance of the two political nations, which should become, with the words of the union charta, “one inseparable and in-different body”, led to counter-reactions in the GDL. The struggle for maintaining power and influence strengthened the consciousness of ones ‘Lithuanianness’; it provided the necessity to articulate this identity and made it first and foremost essential to define what ‘Lithuanian’ was supposed to mean. My article analyses a pair of key texts, both written in Polish, that contribute to these discussions of Polish-Lithuanian relations on the eve of the Union of Lublin and represent two antagonistic political camps: Stanisław Orzechowski’s provocative "Quincunx" (‘five nodes’, ‘pyramid’; 1564), which claims the inferior status of the Lithuanian Duchy (księstwo) and the slave status of its inhabitants, and the polemical refutation "Rozmowa Polaka z Litwinem" (Conversation of a Pole with a Lithuanian). [Extract, p. 59]

• Istorija / History
• Literatūrologija / Literary Studies