«Czarownica Powołana: abo Krotka Nauka y Przestroga z Strony Czarownic» as a Source of Intellectual Culture in the XVII Century Poland

This work is devoted to the research of the intellectual culture of Poland in the XVII century. The object of the research is the texts analyzing the phenomenon of witchcraft, the subject is the book “Czarownica powołana ...”, which was planned to describe. The most important question of my research is: why “Czarownica powołana…” could be called a source of intellectual culture in XVII century Poland. In the process, I received an answer to this question and others. The main purpose of this master thesis is to analyze the book “Czarownica powołana…” as a source of Polish intellectual culture of the XVII century. Tasks which I need to do: to describe the source from a formal and substantial point of view, to identify methods of the author’s argumentation on the problem stated in it and possible literary connections with some other sources of that time, to construct a possible reader of this text on the basis of the stated argumentation, to identify the reasons for the lack of popularity of the source, to consider cultural and other features, stated in the text through the prism of the realities of the XVII century in Poland. I used such data as: 3 editions of the source called “Czarownica powołana: abo krotka nauka y przestroga z strony czarownic, zebrana z rozmaitych doktorow ták w práwie Bożym, iáko i w świeckim biegłych dla ochrony i porátowánia sumnienia, osobliwie ná takie Sądy wysadzonych” written by an anonymous writer in different printing houses in 1639, 1680 and 1714. In addition, I used nowadays literature related to the topic, old polish legal acts, 2 editions of the Bible: the latin Vulgate, the Jakub Wujek Bible, etc. Methodologically, I lean on a Source criticism represented by Û. Rusina and R. Hester. The results I received after the research: I analysed different aspects of the source, collected the information about it, proved that the source could have seen as a source of intellectual culture. Moreover, I decided to focus my further research on the “Czarownica powołana: abo krotka nauka y przestroga z strony czarownic” because I have found no translations in my language and I want to open this text to russian reader, because some names in it, for example, Andrzej Szołdrski is well-known polish archbishop and the mentor of the king Wladisław IV Vasa, but his name does not known in Russian historiography as I researched. That is why my further goal is to finish the translation into Russian and to provide the historical commenting of the source. Now I am in progress with it.