2024-07-30

Eye Remedy or Allegories by Nicolaus Christophorus Chaletzki (Summary)

Jolita Liškevičienė (PDF)
https://doi.org/10.53631/DIS/2016.7.2

The article presents an iconographic interpretation of the book Allegories, written and published by Nicolaus Christophorus Chaletzki, a nobleman of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). The book has never been researched or analysed in detail. The title page of the copy of Allegories kept at the Ukrainian National Scientific Library in Lviv contains a note left by an unknown reader: Non lectore tuis opus est sed Apolline libris/ Vel teipso q[uo]d ais si tamen ipse scias (Your books require not a reader, but Apollo or yourself, as you speak of things known only to yourself). He implied that the book was hardly understandable even to a reader of its own time.

The book by Chaletzki is a collection of personal prayers and wishes, published by the Leon Mamonicz Printing House in Vilnius in 1618. The literary work of Chaletzki is the first presentation of religious allegories through a new literary form, and researchers estimate it due to its genre of emblems. It can also be attributed to devotional literature and private piety. Due to its unusual form, the publication falls beyond the context of its time and its literary genre, balancing between an emblem, devotional literature and confessions of faith.

Contemplation of piety was a vivid literary phenomenon at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries, and due to the use of emblems, it obtained an attractive form of word and image. The book published in Vilnius became the quintessence of Chaletzki’s studies and journeys, Western European literature, emblematic expression and thought of the time, the first bold, individual and original rendering of the confession of faith and its reflection in Lithuania. It is the publication of religious contemplations in a small format with a meditational character and an innovative form. It is one of the first examples of sacred emblems in the GDL, written and presented to readers by the nobleman.

Keywords: book, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, emblems, devotional literature, private piety