Stanisław Lubieniecki

Lubiniezky is a redirect to this article. For the moon crater, see Lubiniezky (moon crater) .

Stanisław Lubieniecki

Stanisław Lubieniecki (also Lubieniecius , de Lubienietz , Lubiniezky , Lubienietzki et al .; * 23 August 1623 in Raków ; † 18 May 1675 in Hamburg ) was a Polish theologian , historian , astronomer and an important representative of Socinianism and the Unitarian Church of the Polish Brothers .

Life

In Poland

Lubieniecki was born on August 23, 1623 in Raków in the Kraków Voivodeship in the Polish Crown, from a noble family. Lubieniecki's father Krzysztof was the head of the Unitarian community in his place of residence. Lubieniecki received extensive training from his father, initially at the Raków Academy , until both the site and the academy were largely destroyed during the Thirty Years' War in 1638. Afterwards his father taught him himself and took him on frequent trips to the Polish diets and meetings of the Polish aristocracy.

During a two-year stay in Thorn , he also took part in 1645 as a representative of the Polish Brothers in the Thorner Religious Discussion , at which a reconciliation of the various religions was sought, and recorded a report on it. As tutor of the young Count Stefan von Niemierycz, he went on trips abroad to France and the Netherlands , where he gained the esteem of many scholars with whom he discussed religious topics and with whom he later corresponded intensively.

After the death of his father in 1648, he returned to Poland in 1650. He married Sophia Brozijski in 1652; two sons were Theodor Bogdan (* 1653) and Christoffel (* 1659). He was first assistant preacher in Thorn and was soon afterwards appointed pastor in Czarków because of his cleverness and erudition.

In 1655 the Second Northern War broke out between Poland and Sweden ; the invasion of the Swedes forced him to leave the city and retreat with his family to Krakow , which was occupied by the Swedes , where he gained freedom to practice his religion through the Swedish King Charles X Gustav . Poland was defeated and devastated. When Krakow came under Polish rule again in 1657, he followed the Swedish troops with two other Socinians to ask the king to include the Unitarians under his protection in the general amnesty that followed the peace treaty Poland should be decided. Lubieniecki arrived in Wolgast on October 7, 1657 and was received very kindly by the Swedish king. He made close friendships with some Swedish noblemen, although the other clergy tried to prevent this, and was able to establish his own religion several times.

During the siege of Stettin in 1659 by the Austrian and Brandenburg troops, he was in Elbing , but his family was trapped in Stettin. The Swedish Count Schlippenbach promised to adopt the Socinian religion if Lubieniecki could achieve the lifting of the siege through his prayers. Inspired by his private interest and hoping to convert an illustrious person to his religion, he fasted and prayed for three weeks and then returned to the count with the message that the city would not be taken. Everyone thought he was crazy, but after six days the news came from Szczecin that the siege had been lifted. When the count was reminded of his promise, he replied that he had asked God about the correctness of this decision and that it had been confirmed in the Augsburg Confession .

During the negotiation of the peace treaty , Lubieniecki went to Oliva , but had to experience the humiliation that the Unitarians were excluded from the amnesty granted to all other deviants from the Catholic religion. When Charles X Gustav died in 1660, Lubieniecki's position was greatly weakened. The Unitarians were accused by other religious groups in Poland of collaborating with the Swedish army and were expelled on this pretext. Lubieniecki was also accused of treason because he was actively involved in the peace negotiations with Sweden.

In exile

Without hope of being able to return to Poland, he fled to Copenhagen , where he arrived on November 28, 1660 and was met by the Danish King Friedrich III. sought asylum where his exiled fellow believers could retreat. At first he was received favorably because he was interesting for the court as a source of news from foreign countries thanks to his pen pals with many important personalities. He received an annual pension to copy the correspondence he received for the king. In a private conversation the king told him that anything he could allow him in the matter of the Unitarians would be a toleration of their settlement in Altona . When the king summoned him privately to discuss religious issues with him, the Lutheran clergy aroused suspicion, who feared that the king might convert to Unitarianism.

Due to their influence and without a promise of asylum for his Unitarian fellow believers, Lubieniecki was forced to return to Stettin first , where he did everything in his power to obtain benefits for his religious community. But his opponents persecuted him without ceasing, so that he had to flee to Hamburg , where he had his family follow him in 1662. There he sought his livelihood as a political correspondent by systematizing the contacts with his friends to a news service of political, theological and astronomical content, and tried to live his faith as a writer and theologian.

He also visited Friedrichstadt , where in 1662 he received a promise from the city's magistrate that the exiled Polish Unitarians would be allowed to stay and practice their religion privately in this city. Lubieniecki informed his brothers and made every effort, including large out-of-pocket expenses, to settle them there. However, they could not enjoy this favor for long, because at the instigation of the Lutheran superintendent and court chaplain John Reinboth, they were banished from there again 18 months later by Christian Albrecht , the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf . A promise made by the Elector Palatine Karl I Ludwig from Mannheim was withdrawn again at the instigation of the theologian Johann Ludwig Fabricius from Heidelberg .

Title page of Lubieniecki's "Theatrum Cometicum"

When the Great Comet C / 1664 W1 appeared over Hamburg in 1664 , Lubieniecki watched it from his home. He corresponded about this phenomenon with Petrus van Brussels, Ismael Boulliau in Paris and Henry Oldenburg in London . From 1666 to 1668, Lubieniecki compiled his own observations and those of the other astronomers in the three-part work Theatrum Cometicum . The first part contains his correspondence on the comets from 1664 and 1665 with the great European scholars, including Henry Oldenburg, Johannes Hevelius and Athanasius Kircher , together with their observations recorded on elaborate copperplate engravings ; the second part contains a detailed illustrated anthology of 415 comets "from the flood" up to 1665; the third volume deals with the astrological significance of comets along with the scholar's criticism and his own responses to them. Lubieniecki portrayed the star of Bethlehem as a comet and saw the Great Fire of London as divine punishment, heralded by the comet of 1664. To oversee the printing of the book, he even made a trip to the Netherlands. However, he had little commercial success with it.

Even though he was not without spiritual influence in Hamburg - he took part in three conferences on religious topics with Christina of Sweden during that time - he did not find peace there for long. In particular, his lively pan-European and interdenominational correspondence had given Hamburg the impression that he was entrusted with a diplomatic mission from Denmark. However, when this was not confirmed by the Danish court, his opponents were able to revile him again, denounce him as a blasphemer and heretic and have him expelled from Hamburg by the Senate . He returned under the protection of the Danish king and in 1668 moved to the Danish neighboring town of Altona, where he lived undisturbed for a few years.

In 1674 he made another attempt to settle again in Hamburg because he saw better opportunities there for his correspondence and because his friends suspected that his opponents had calmed down in the meantime. However, his enemies, in particular the theologian L. Edzard, immediately obtained his expulsion by the magistrate after he declared him a heretic and preached against him publicly, so that Lubieniecki could no longer take to the streets without danger. But before he could obey the exile, he and his whole family were poisoned there, to which his two daughters and two days later he himself died on May 18, 1675; his wife survived.

The circumstances of this incident have never been clarified. Edzard put the whole blame on an inattentiveness of his servants in the preparation of the meal; but another Lutheran writer confessed that Lubieniecki had been poisoned by his domestic servant because she had been instigated to do so by “a malicious person”. Other assumptions also go in the direction of ergotism , which was common at the time. Lubieniecki was buried in Altona against the opposition of the Lutheran clergy.

At the time of his death he was working on his work Historia reformationis Polonicae on the rise and course of the Reformation in Poland, which he could no longer finish and which was only published posthumously in 1685 . He was also the author of numerous other tracts.

Honors

The Lubiniezky lunar crater was officially named after him by the IAU in 1935 .

Works

• Stanislai de Lubienietz Lubieniecii Rolitsii, Theatrum cometicum, duabus partibus constans, quarum altera frequenti senatu philosophico conspicua, cometas anni 1664. et 1665. ... Amsterdam 1668 ( [1] ).
• Historia reformationis Polonicae, in qua tum reformatorum, tum antitrinitariorum origo et progressus in Polonia et finitimis provinciis narrantur. Authore Stanislao Lubieniecio, equite Polono. Freetown 1685.

literature

• Kai Eduard Jordt-Jørgensen: Stanislaw Lubieniecki - on the way of Unitarianism from East to West in the 17th century. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1968, DNB 457101113 .

Web links

• Article about Lubieniecki (French)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jerzy Jan Lerski: Historical Dictionary of Poland, 966-1945 . Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport 1996, ISBN 0-313-26007-9 , p. 313.
2. ^ MJ Bok, H. Nijboer (Ed.), Universiteit van Amsterdam: Ecartico. Retrieved July 9, 2014 . 
3. ↑ JL v. Mosheim, H. Soames (Ed.): Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, Ancient and Modern. Vol. IV, Modern period . London 1841, pp. 372-373.
4. ↑ The Comet Book ( English ) bibliodyssey.blogspot.de. Retrieved November 8, 2019.
5. ↑ Michal Choptiany: The theater of cosmic and human history. Retrieved July 14, 2014 . 
6. ↑ Ch. A. mandatory, Thomas Hockey (Ed.): Bibliographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers . Springer, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0 , p. 715.
7. ^ JH Voigt: Stanislaw Lubieniecki - From the world political news service to the comet theater . Retrieved July 8, 2014 . 
8. ↑ JP Bernard, Th. Birch, J. Lockman et al .: A General Dictionary, Hiſtorical and Critical ... Vol. VII, London 1738, pp. 202-206.
9. ↑ John Lemprière: Universal Biography; containing a copious Account, critical and historical, of the Life and Character, Laboratories and Actions of Eminent Persons, in all Ages and Countries, Conditions and Professions . New York 1810.