Dialogas su renesansiniu humanizmu Petro Skargos veikaluose

ENThe paper presents the shaping of a cultural formation based on the teachings of the Council of Trent. It follows the debate of Jesuit creators of this formation – in particular Piotr Skarga – with the heritage of humanistic Renaissance and proposes a thesis on the continuation and radical reinterpretation of the humanistic model. The aim of Skarga’s writing and that of his Jesuit contemporaries was the reformulation of the humanistic vision of the world and anthropology, of the system of values and of the political concept. The doctrine of the Latin Church constituted the criterion of choice. Elements both of the humanistic and medieval origin were subjected to rigorous selection, verification and re-assessment in a religious spirit and were included in an integral ideological whole. Pluralistic and open humanistic culture was to be replaced by the integral construct of Christ (along the lines of the post-Tridentine Catholicism). It included historical issues, defined the attitude to ancient history and native culture treated as a range of accultural activities, and to historical characters presented as patterns. He substituted the anthropocentric perspective with the theocentric one, placing man in the presence of God, reminding the doctrine of the ancestral sin and grace necessary for salvation, which was indifferent to humanism. He shaped the image of the world contrasting with the humanistic myth of ‘the city of the Sun‘, and he defined the place of man in the world within the eternity aspect. In terms of anthropological issues he redefined the concept of human nature, the categories of dignity and freedom, as well as the projects of sense and aim of existence of the citizen’s and nation’s mission. He restored the past demands of overcoming evil in oneself, asceticism and kenosis. He disputed both the protestant concepts and the model of Erasmus of Rotterdam.He introduced contents characteristic of Ignatian spirituality: maximal requirements, the imperative of responsibility for culture and community’s destiny, the heroic pattern of Christ’s soldier, fighting with the body, the world and Satan and with the opponents of the homeland and the Church. Chivalrous and civic patterns created within the Ignatian spirituality reflect the author’s work over the adaptation of a universal anthropological concept to the political and social situation and mentality of the inhabitants of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.