Mythical Origins of the Szlachta

The political and culture-creating elite, who defined and personified the ethos of Old Poland were the szlachta (pron. “shloh-tah”), a term which in English usage has been rendered, more or less accurately, as land-owning nobility or armigerous gentry. “The Poland of an earlier era was a republic of nobles. Paradox as it may sound, it was a democracy of great lords or magnates, medium rich gentry, and a lower order of gentry owning little more than the sword by their side but equal in status with the richest of the land.” Their noble status was not tied to wealth but descent, and they ranged from the wealthy magnates and senators (i.e. the great lords), through medium landowners (or szlachta ziemianska), and the poor cottage gentry (or szlachta zagrodowa). Their main occupation had been to live on the land, see to its cultivation, defend it from enemies, and rule the state.

As elites in other places, the szlachta, wishing to be heirs to a glorious heritage, accepted certain mythical or semi-mythical accounts of their ancestry. During the Renaissance, since they were within the orbit of Latin and Roman Catholic civilization, scholars began to study historical accounts of classical Geek and Roman antiquity for clues as to their genesis. It became widely believed at the time that the szlachta were descendents of the Sarmatians. The Greek historian Herodotos in the fifth century BC wrote that the Sarmatians were a cross between the Scythians, an ancient Iranian people who dominated the Pontic-Caspian steppe (known as Scythia at the time) during Classical Antiquity and the Amazons, female warriors in Greek and Classical mythology that he placed in a region bordering what today is the modern territory of Ukraine, Sarmatia.

Today, what is known of the Sarmatians is that they were a nomadic, pastoral warrior tribe of Iranian origin, who flourished from the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD. They inhabited the Black Sea and Volga steppes during the middle of the 1st millennium BC and fought on horseback with bows, swords, and spears. English historian Norman Davies writes: “Sixteenth-century authorities such as Marcin Bielski (1495-1575) maintained that they (szlachta) were descended from the warrior Sarmatians whose pre-historic conquest of the docile Slavonic tribes justified the subsequent Paul Super. The Polish Tradition. (London, Great Britain: Polish Ministry of Information, 1944.), 29. supremacy of the szlachta.”

By the seventeenth-century, “Sarmatian” became a synonym for Pole or for citizens of the Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth, excluding infidels and bound servitors. From this comes the concept of “Sarmatianism.” Sarmatianism can be described as the lifestyle, customs, ideology and spiritual and intellectual culture of the noble Commonwealth (i.e. Rzeczpospolita) from the end of the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. Bockenheim states, “Sarmatianism is the Polish variant of the
Baroque. This concept embraces all aspects of culture and customary life; at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries, this ideology became the binding agent for the multi-national state. It concerned the szlachta, who as a social group remained above the divisions of nationality and religion.”

Sarmatian culture encompassed elements such as: the code of chivalry; a love of national tradition; a deep religious faith and personal piety; a love of personal freedom; enjoyment of personal rights and franchises within a republican order, comprised of an elected monarch and parliament; love of country life on a landed estate; love for exotic oriental finery in armor and dress; respect of the fair sex; and disdain for commerce (other than the grain trade), the skilled trades, money lending, and city life.

Polish Pioneers in Northern Michigan?

Over the years I have learned to expect Poles in unexpected places, fully in line with the
old Polish proverb that “you can even find Poles where the devil says good night.” (“Tam
nawet znajdziesz Polaka gdzie diabe mówi dobranoc.”

I was traveling in northern Michigan with my two daughters when coming to a stop sign
in a small hamlet called “Posen,” the younger one, Anastasia said “Look Tatus! Isn’t that
Polish?”

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Constitution of May 3, 1791

Holy Mass, festivals, patriotic assemblies, colorful parades, banquets, flag-raisings, wreath-layings, exhibitions at schools and public libraries, concerts, lectures and symposia were just some of the ways that I observed Poland’s  national holiday of the May 3^rd Constitution Day while being a master’s student of the Jagiellonian University of Krakow.  But what exactly is this holiday? And why should a fifth generation Polish-American, such as myself, even bother to honor an event that happened over two hundred years ago in what seems for most to be a far-off and distant land? The answer is simple – PRIDE.

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