To niedáleko od Siebie chodźimy, ieżeli tak wierzyćie i my tak wierzymy. A Conversation Between Three Persons of Two Confessions

Abstract

This paper discusses the seventeenth-century Rozmowa białocerkiewska that has not been interpreted from the language perspective. The author presents the discrepancies that are current in technical literature and concern dates and ascription of the text to a publishing house, once there is consent as to the text’s authorship. Principally, however, she focuses on structural and linguistic analysis of the text, which is a document of the polemic that took place between the Catholic clergymen, A. Piekarski and M. Prażmowski, and the Orthodox priest J. Galatowski. The mechanisms of constructing one’s position, i.e. quotations, replicas, addresses to an adversary, show far-fetched differences between them, while the tone of the polemic was retained.

The differences found here together with doubts as to the accordance between print and historical discussion give rise to two basic questions: who is the author of the text and how far the intervention in the shorthand notes went.