Recepcja dzieła Piotra Skargi w kulturze Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego w XVIII wieku. Rekonesans

• Petro Skargos kūrybos recepcija XVIII amžiaus Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės kultūroje. Ateities tyrimų gairės
• Reception of Piotr Skarga’s works in the culture of the 18th-century Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Guidelines for further research

ENThe research involves several aspects of the reception and functioning of Piotr Skarga’s creative work in eighteenth-century Lithuania. Throughout the entire century the works of Piotr Skarga, the rector of the Vilnius Academy, were systematically reprinted in the city which was the main publishing centre of the country. Quite an interesting image of this Jesuit arises in the forewords to these reprints written by his 18th-century apologists – he was ‘a truly apostolic man’, a "Golden Mouth". Skarga’s sermons have to the present time been considered an example to the priests of dioceses and religious orders due to the profound knowledge of the Scriptures which they reflect and their beautiful Polish language. As a part of the so-called spiritual education of young people, they were included in obligatory reading lists even in the colleges of religious orders. Spiritual education of the young was a common phenomenon, especially in the second part of the eighteenth century, but much depended on the initiative of individual bishops. Ignacy Jakub Massalski, the head of Vilnius diocese, undertook various activities aimed at improving the education of the clerics. The previously neglected biblical exegesis became one of the top priorities. On a broader scale, Massalski strove to ensure that the clergy steadily raised the level of their theological training and thus ensured better pastoral care. Among the publications he had recommended were collections of practical advice for preachers, reading lists for the libraries of parish houses, collections of supplementary sermons of a homiletic nature, and those which supported Skarga’s idea of founding charity fraternities, which were being revived at that time.In this area of his work Massalski resorted to the legacy of Piotr Skarga and his fundamental achievements both as a preacher and the author of "Żywoty świętych" (Lives of the Saints), a philanthropist and the initiator of social care for the clergy. Michał Karpowicz, the most outstanding preacher of the times of Stanisław August Poniatowski, was named "the Skarga of the eighteenth century" even by his contemporaries. The paper overviews his so-called "Tribunal sermons", which are an excellent example of the reception of "Kazania sejmowe" (The Sejm Sermons) in the Age of Enlightenment. This allows challenging the thesis, which has been reiterated for a long time, that Skarga was "discovered" by Romanticism. The impact of Skarga’s tradition on popular homiletic preaching deserves research in its own right. Another issue that would deserve closer examination is determining of the leitmotifs of Skarga’s work that attracted interest at the time when, in the process of the implementation of the so-called "reform of enlightenment", the Catholic Church was resorting to the great achievements of the post-Tridentine period, of which Piotr Skarga was one of the most prominent representatives. Also, it would be interesting to see how the reception of his work was influenced by various circumstances of the time and by the extraordinary and frequently dramatic political events that abounded in the 18th century.