Master Polikarp's Dialog with Death ( pl, Rozmowa Mistrza Polikarpa ze Śmiercią, la, De morte prologus, Dialogus inter Mortem et Magistrum Polikarpum) is a late

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

dialog in verse, written probably in the early 15th century. Master Polikarp's Dialog with Death is now regarded as one of the most important examples of

medieval poetry Poetry took numerous forms in medieval Europe, for example, lyric and epic poetry. The troubadours and the minnesänger are known for their lyric poetry about courtly love. Among the most famous of secular poetry is ''Carmina Burana'', a manuscr ...

in the

Polish language Polish (Polish: ''język polski'', , ''polszczyzna'' or simply ''polski'', ) is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group written in the Latin script. It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In a ...

. Its author is unknown, but after discovering the complete, printed version from 1542, some

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

s speculate that

Mikołaj Rej Mikołaj Rej or Mikołaj Rey of Nagłowice (4 February 1505 – between 8 September/5 October 1569) was a Polish poet and prose writer of the emerging Renaissance in Poland as it succeeded the Middle Ages, as well as a politician and musician. ...

rewrote the original text for print. One of the unique features of the work is its use of

humour Humour ( Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in ...

. The dialog mocks monks and priests, inn-keepers, fat women, dishonest physicians and unjust judges. The work is patterned after the 12th century

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

poem ''Dialogus mortis cum homine'', and other such Latin-language publications popular in medieval Europe.

Versions

The original version of the dialogue has been lost; what remains is an incomplete copy from 1463-1465, belonging to Mikołaj of Mirzyniec (Mikołaj z Mirzyńca). The ending of the work was known due to its 16th century

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

translation Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...

. It has 498 lines, and presents the everyday life of members of different social classes in 15th century

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

. A formerly unknown printed edition of ''Rozmowa Mistrza Polikarpa ze Śmiercią'' (''Master Polikarp’s Dialogue with Death'') from 1542 (Cracow, Maciej Scharffenberg) has been discovered in one of the European university libraries. The discovery was made by Professor Wiesław Wydra from the Institute of Polish Philology at

Adam Mickiewicz University Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

Poznań Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint Joh ...

. In the contrast to the previously known version of the dialogue from the Płock manuscript, this text has been preserved in its entirety. This discovery, with a complete Polish text of 918 verses, was the most important event in Polish language and literature scholarship for several decades. The critical edition of the discovered text has been published by prof. Wiesław Wydra and became available on 7 November 2018.

Characters

* Master Polikarp – a well-educated person * Death – pale, skinny, bald, yellowish, without nose and lips, showing its ribs, naked, a rotten kind of a woman; it holds a scythe in its hands, and its appearance reminds the reader that life is short, and that after death, human bodies decay

References

Citations

Sources

* ''Polska poezja świecka XV wieku'', oprac. M. Włodarski, Wrocław - Warszawa - Kraków 1997, BN I, 60. * ''"Śmierci z Mistrzem dwojakie gadania…". Nieznany drukowany przekaz "Rozmowy mistrza Polikarpa ze Śmiercią" z 1542 r.'', wydał Wiesław Wydra, Poznań 2018.

External links