Skip to content
Surf Wiki
Save to docs
history

From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Book of Henryków

13th-century chronicle from Poland


13th-century chronicle from Poland

FieldValue
nameBook of Henryków
alternative title(s)Księga henrykowska
imageBook of Henryków.PNG
captionThe oldest known Old Polish sentence, highlighted in red
languagemedieval Latin, Old Polish
date1268–1310
provenanceCistercian Monastery in Henryków
genreChronicle
period covered1227–1310

| alternative title(s) = Księga henrykowska

The Book of Henryków (, ) is a Latin chronicle of the Cistercian abbey in Henryków in Lower Silesia, Poland. Originally created as a registry of belongings looted during the first Mongol invasion of Poland of 1241, with time it was extended to include the history of the monastery. It is notable as the earliest document to include a sentence written entirely in what can be interpreted as an Old Polish language. Currently the book is on exhibition in the Archdiocesan Museum in Wrocław. On October 9, 2015 the Book of Henryków was entered in the list of UNESCO's "Memory of the World."

The first part of the 100-page-long book is devoted to the early history of the abbey, from its foundation by Henry the Bearded in 1227 until 1259. The second part includes the later history until 1310. In the record for 1270, a settler from the nearby village is reported to have said to his wife "Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai." which could be roughly translated as "Let me, I shall grind, and you take a rest."

The circumstances under which this sentence was written closely reflected the cultural and literary conditions in Poland in the first centuries of its national existence. It appeared in a Latin chronicle, written by a German abbot. The man who reportedly uttered the sentence almost one hundred years earlier was Bogwal, a Czech (Bogwalus Boemus), a local settler, and subject of Bolesław the Tall, as he felt compassion for his local wife, who "very often stood grinding by the quern-stone." The local village, Brukalice, came to be named after him.

The Old Polish sentence

The medieval recorder of this phrase, the Cistercian monk Peter of the Henryków monastery, noted "Hoc est in polonico" ("This is in Polish") before quoting it.

"Unde dicti B[ogwali] Boemi uxor stab[a]t sepissime ad mola[m] molendo. Cui vir suus idem B[ogwalus], compassus dixit: Sine, ut ego etiam molam. Hoc est i[n] polonico: *Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai*." - *Book of Henryków* (Liber fundationis claustri Sanctae Mariae Virginis in Henrichow), 1270

References

Bibliography

References

  1. [[Allen Kent]], Harold Lancour, Jay E. Daily, ''Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science'', CRC Press, 1978, pg. 3, [https://books.google.com/books?id=tmnVublw2pwC&dq=Book+of+Henryk%C3%B3w+Polish&pg=PA3]
  2. Barbara i Adam Podgórscy: Słownik gwar śląskich. Katowice: Wydawnictwo KOS, 2008, page 12. {{ISBN. 978-83-60528-54-9.
  3. (2005). "Język polski : kompendium". Świat Książki.
  4. [https://digital.fides.org.pl/publication/834 Digital version ''Book of Henryków'' in latin]
  5. Barbara i Adam Podgórscy: Słownik gwar śląskich. Katowice: Wydawnictwo KOS, 2008, {{ISBN. 978-83-60528-54-9
  6. Bogdan Walczak: Zarys dziejów języka polskiego. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 1999, {{ISBN. 83-229-1867-4
  7. [https://digital.fides.org.pl/publication/834 Digital version ''Book of Henryków'']
Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Book of Henryków — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report