Early Modern Privacy at the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Courts

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Notes

1 The Centre for Privacy Studies is funded by The Danish National Research Foundation (DRNF 138) and runs 2017–27. The research method applied by the Centre consists, on the one hand, of close-readings of Early Modern texts to identify and contextualise words that come out of the Latin privatus (‘priv* words’), and on the other hand, of phenomenological analyses that describe different zones and delineations of privacy with the aid of a set of ‘heuristic zones’: soul/mind/self; body; chamber/alcove/studio; home/household/community; state/society. Mette Birkedal Bruun, ‘Towards an Approach to Early Modern Privacy: The Retirement of the Great Condé’, in Michaël Green, Lars Cyril Nørgaard and Mette Birkedal Bruun (eds), Early Modern Privacy: Sources and Approaches (Leiden, 2022), pp. 12-60, esp. 12-24; Mette Birkedal Bruun, ‘Privacy in Early Modern Christianity and Beyond: Traces and Approaches’, Annali Istituto storico italo-germanico/Jahrbuch des italienisch-deutschen historischen Instituts in Trient 44, no 2 (2018), pp. 33-54; Lars Cyril Nørgaard, ‘Past Privacy’, in Green, Nørgaard and Bruun, Early Modern Privacy, pp. 1-12.

2 For other research outcomes related to the privacy studies concerning the early modern court, see: Bruun, ‘Towards an Approach to Early Modern Privacy’; Michaël Green, Lars Cyril Nørgaard and Mette Birkedal Bruun, ‘En privé & en public: The Epistolary Preparation of the Dutch Stadtholders’, Journal of Early Modern History 24 (2020), pp. 253-79; Dustin Neighbors and Natacha Klein Käfer, ‘Zones of Privacy in Letters between Women of Power: Elizabeth I of England and Anna of Saxony’, Royal Studies Journal 9, no 1 (2022), pp. 60-89; Bastian Felter Vaucanson, ‘Between Faith and Works: Fénelon’s Conception of Charity for a Monarch’, French Historical Studies 46, no 1 (2023), pp. 37-55; José Eloy Hortal Muñoz ‘The Regulation of Private Spaces: The Codification of the Royal Chamber of the Spanish Monarchy in the Seventeenth Century’, The Court Historian 28, no 1 (2023), pp. 18-31.

3 Dustin M. Neighbors, “Privacy and the Private within European Court Culture”, The Court Historian 28, no 1 (2023), p. 5.

4 Alan F. Westin, Privacy and Freedom (New York, 1970), pp. 31-3; Bruun, ‘Towards an Approach’, p. 14; Sjoerd Keulen and Ronald Kroeze, ‘Privacy from a Historical Perspective’, in Bart van der Sloot and Aviva de Groot (eds), The Handbook of Privacy Studies (Amsterdam, 2018), pp. 21-56; Dustin M. Neighbors, ‘Privacy and the Private’, p. 5.

5 Maria Bogucka, Kazimierz Jagiellończyk i jego czasy (Warsaw, 1981); Maria Bogucka, Bona Sforza (Warsaw, 1989); Maria Bogucka, Anna Jagiellonka (Warsaw, 1994); Maria Bogucka, The Lost World of the ‘Sarmatians’: Custom as the Regulator of Polish Social Life in Early Modern Times (Warsaw, 1996).

6 For the Jagiellonian court see: Bożena Czwojdrak, Zofia Holszańska: studium o dworze i roli królowej w późnośredniowiecznej Polsce (Warsaw, 2012). For the sixteenth-century Jagiellonian household see: Agnieszka Januszek-Sieradzka, Królowa Barbara Radziwiłłówna w dworskim mikroświecie (Lublin, 2017); Katarzyna Kosior, Becoming a Queen in Early Modern Europe: East and West (London, 2019).

7 Bożena Fabiani, W kręgu Wazów. Ludzie i obyczaje (Warsaw, 2014); Wojciech Krawczuk, ‘Dwór Wazów polskich’, in Jacek Żukowski and Zbigniew Hundert (eds), Świat polskich Wazów. Przestrzeń-ludzie-sztuka (Warsaw, 2019), pp. 23-39.

8 Aleksandra Skrzypietz, Królewscy synowie — Jakub, Aleksander i Konstanty Sobiescy (Katowice, 2011); Joanna Kodzik, Ceremoniał polskiego dworu królewskiego w XVII wieku z perspektywy niemieckich uczonych (Warsaw, 2015).

9 Weronika Kosmalska, ‘Konwencja epistolograficzna i bezpośredniość wyrazu w listach Jana III Sobieskiego do Marysieńki’, Racjonalia. Z punktu widzenia humanistyki 7 (2017), pp. 77-100.

10 Jacek Staszewski, August III. Kurfürst von Sachsen und König von Polen. Eine Biographie (Berlin, 1996); Bożena Popiołek, Kobiecy świat w czasach Augusta II. Studia nad mentalnością kobiet z kręgów szlacheckich (Kraków, 2003); Anna Penkała-Jastrzębska ‘Noble Matrimonial Policy at the Royal Court in Dresden during the Reign of King Augustus the Strong (1697–1733): Public Affairs, Private Interests’, The Court Historian, 28, no 1 (2023), pp. 80-95.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Oskar J. Rojewski

Oskar J. Rojewski

Oskar J. Rojewski is Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Valencia and University Jaume I. He is an assistant professor at the Institute of Art Studies at the University of Silesia in Katowice. He developed postdoctoral projects at the University of Copenhagen and the University Rey Juan Carlos. He researches Flemish and Netherlandish art reception at the European courts during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, artistic migration, and court festivities.

Mette Birkedal Bruun

Mette Birkedal-Bruun

Mette Birkedal Bruun is professor of Church History and director of the Danish National Research Foundation Centre for Privacy Studies at the University of Copenhagen. In 2017 she received the Carlsberg Foundation Research Prize. She is a member of The Danish Council for Research and Innovation Policy at the Ministry of Higher Education and Science and of the board of the Royal Danish Society of Sciences and Letters. Her research focuses on the dynamic between religious withdrawal from the world and engagement with the world. She worked on medieval and early modern monasticism and lay devotion in early modern France.