In 1776 the King commissioned Andrzej Zamoyski to codify the laws, and the result was a proto-constitution which took Polish law back to its roots and restated or reinterpreted it with reference to eighteenth-century conditions. It effectively affirmed royal power, made all officials answerable to the Sejm, placed the clergy and their finances under state supervision, shored up the rights of cities and of the peasants and, most controversially, deprived the landless szlachta of many of their legal immunities and political prerogatives. Its publication in 1778 induced sabre-rattling in the minor szlachta and apoplexy in the clergy. Zamoyski’s collaborator Józef Wybicki was nearly hacked to pieces at a provincial sejmik. With feeling running high it was held back by the reformers until the Sejm of 1780, but even then it was thrown out. It was nevertheless an important document, accepted amongst progressives as the basis for future political reform.
An extraordinary renewal was taking place in public life, but unlike that of the Renaissance this was not a natural evolution, a process of ideas spreading gradually through print, by word of mouth, or by example. It was the result of a concerted effort, a war on obscurantism declared by a relatively small group whose aim was the social and political regeneration of the state, based on the re-education of society. In 1773 at the King’s suggestion the Sejm established a Commission for National Education, in effect a ministry of education. It comprised a selection of enlightened aristocrats—Bishop Ignacy Massalski, Joachim Chreptowicz, Ignacy Potocki, Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, Andrzej Zamoyski—and its first secretary was the French physiocrat Dupont de Nemours. It was endowed with a part of the wealth of the Jesuit order, abolished by the Pope in 1773, and was put in control of every school in Poland, regardless of which religious order or institution it belonged to. It laid down curricula, commissioned and published textbooks, and supervised standards and teachers. With its extensive powers and resources, the commission was able to tackle the reform of the Jagiellon University and that of Wilno.
This was accompanied by a remarkable resurgence of literary activity, the majority of it didactic. The inspiration came from abroad, and the luminaries were Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, d’Alembert and the Encyclopedists, whose political and social comment seemed particularly relevant to the Polish predicament. But the majority of minor szlachta viewed this with suspicion marked by xenophobia. The sort of argument which would rage in Russia a hundred years later between Westerners and Slavophiles, between those who wished to bring the country into line with the rest of Europe and those who felt that foreign influences were corrupting the purity of the ethnic genius, now began to develop in Poland. While the progressives attempted to apply logic and reason, jingoism and ignorance came together in defence of such hallowed institutions as Polish dress and the veto.
In 1765 Stanisław Augustus had founded the weekly
This second Renaissance produced only one great poet, Ignacy Krasicki (1735-1801), Prince-Bishop of Warmia, a fief in which the spiritual incumbent was also the temporal ruler. A creature of the Enlightenment, Krasicki despised stupidity and ignorance, and wrote poetry and novels that satirised and ridiculed in beautiful, witty language. No other Polish poet of the age measures up to him, but he had many talented contemporaries, some of whom struck the first proto-Romantic notes of sentimental nationalism, which are also present in the
The thread that runs through the work of the writers of the day is the urgency they felt with regard to reviving the Polish state. An impressive array of enlightened magnates devoted their fortunes and their influence to the same cause, while less exalted figures, including many of the clergy, worked assiduously to further it.
The King himself was in the forefront of the changes. He was vain and pleasure-loving, but behind the languid frivolity lurked a strong sense of purpose and a profound love of his country. He had no personal wealth and no distinguished ancestry. He was widely despised as an upstart who had reached the throne via Catherine’s bed, who preferred the company of women to that of hard-drinking men, and who rejected sarmatian manners for foreign dress and taste.