Transcultural Knowledge Production in Renaissance Europe (c. 1470-c.1620): competition and cooperation between Poland and Livonia

FUNDING SCHEMES:

NAWA (Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange) Ulam Programme

DURATION: June 1, 2021 – January 31, 2022
PI: Dr. Kristi Viiding

My stay at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw enabled to advance my research project, Polish time in the early Livonia and especially the contacts between Livonians and members of the Academia Samosciana. Zamość was the main place of exile of my main research subject, Livonian-Polish humanist and lawyer David Hilchen (1561-1610, in exile 1603-1610). His Latin correspondence, almost 800 Latin letters, is an unused source to understand the relationships between Poland and Livonia, but also Eastern and Western Europe, especially in the field of education, law and culture. During my stay I had the possibility of systematic research of  historical archival materials of the Academia Samosciana until 1610; of the written legacy of Hilchen (in Warsaw, Torun, Gdansk); of reading prosopographical and historiographical books and articles extant in the research libraries in Warsaw (National Library, BUW). I had fruitful discussions about my project during my seminars in June and July and in December 2021 as well as during the workshop in December 2021. I received many useful hints by the members of the ERC project for the commentary of  Hilchen’s correspondence. In addition, my research in Polish libraries and archives enabled me to discover a generation of exiled Livonians, who after the  loss of Old Livonia’s independence in 1561 stayed in Poland, incl. Prussia, or moved via Poland to Vienna and Prague. As the literary activity of these Livonian exules, many of the from noble families or included in the Polish nobility, needs systematic research, I initiated a grant project “Connections, transition, change: nobilitas haereditaria ac litteraria in the emergence of early modern literature in Polish and Swedish Livonia”, supported by the Estonian Research Council (PRG1926, 2023-2027).

MEDIA:
  • Article ‘Academiae voluntas mihi potior est… Letters by the Livonian Humanist and Lawyer David Hilchen to the Professors of the Academy of Zamość 1603–1609’ (DOI: 10.4467/20843844TE.22.009.15667),
  • Book ‘Briefe, Recht und Gericht im polnischen Livland am Beispiel von David Hilchen. Letters, Law and Court in Polish Livonia. The Case of David Hilchen’ (ISBN: 978-3-643-14589-5).