Mickiewicz’s Prisca Theologia

Abstract

The article, which is a fragment of a larger dissertation under preparation, focuses on the operations – symbolic rather than conceptual – which Mickiewicz uses in the first course of Literatura słowiańska [Slavonic Literature] to construct an image of the pre-Christian spiritual culture of Slavs according to a desired, a priori model. This phenomenon, considered in the context of a cultural process going beyond Romanticism, finds analogy in the humanistic concept of mythological monogenesis, thoroughly developed by Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski in the treatise Dii gentium. Mickiewicz proves the original monotheism of the Slavs in a manner similar to the one used in the tradition of humanistic mythology to prove the original monotheism of the Greeks and Romans. This convergence is not motivated by direct filiation, but rather by a common conceptual and symbolic apparatus of the apologetic tradition, whose characteristic feature is the camouflage of aporias generated by the concept of primordial theology. Due to the ongoing misunderstanding that Mickiewicz’s position on this issue is basically the same as that of Joachim Lelewel, upon analysing the assumptions of the arguments of both authors, the article shows that the concept of original Slavic monotheism, which is close to both of them, in both cases results from different, contradictory premises and performs different functions.