From 30 September 2023, the National Library in Warsaw will host the exhibition “Brückner. The Middle Ages Recovered’, which will show eight extraordinary medieval manuscripts including one of the most valuable relics of the Polish language, the ‘Holy Cross Sermons’.
The exhibition “Brückner. The Middle Ages Recovered” presents the profile and discoveries of Aleksander Brückner, one of the most eminent Slavists and historians of Polish culture, and a long-standing professor at the University of Berlin. The manuscripts on display at the National Library are some of Brückner’s discoveries from his explorations at the Imperial Public Library in St Petersburg. The professor stayed there from 1889 to 1890, researching Polish collections stolen by the Russians during the Partitions.
Brückner’s work resulted in groundbreaking discoveries, including the surprising finding of parchment strips with the manuscript of the ” Holy Cross Sermons”, the oldest continuous text in the Polish language.
“Holy Cross Sermons” probably date from the late 13th or 14th century and are considered to be the oldest prose document created in the Polish language. Aleksander Brückner found them in the binding of a codex containing the Acts of the Apostles and the Apocalypse. The researcher named them after the probable place of their origin (the book in which they were preserved had formerly belonged to the library of the Benedictine monastery on Łysa Góra in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains).
The exhibition also presents medieval religious and secular songs, the oldest Polish jokes and even 15th-century incantations.
The exhibition is the only opportunity to see the most precious relics of medieval Polish, which are kept in the treasury of the National Library. The display also provides an insight into the personality of one of Poland’s greatest humanists, whose work continues to inspire admiration and scholarly debate to this day.
The event accompanies the transfer of the ashes of Aleksander and Emma Brückner from the Tempelhofer Parkfriedhof cemetery in Berlin, which is in liquidation, to Kraków.
Adrian Andrzejewski