Abstract:

The famous aphorism of Mark Tullius Cicero «Ubi bene, ibi patria» could be taken by the Italian emigrant Alexander Guagnini as a creed. After leaving his Fatherland at the age of 19, the future chronicler found the new homeland far north — in the Polish Kingdom, which was suffered in this time from the miseries of the Livonian War. The passionate nature, Alexander Guagnini immediately started to defense his new home with the sword, and some years after — with a quill. That was the turning point in the Gwagnini’s life. This article is devoted to the studying of one of the aspects of Guagnini’s composition. Its aim — the investigation of the relations between the original text of Italian and the «borrowed» manuscript of Maciej Stryjkowski. During the comparison of the fragments about the Livonian War in the Guagnini’s «Cronicle of Sarmatian Europe» (1611) and the similar chapters of «Chronicle of Poland, Lithuania, Samogitia and all of Ruthenia», written by Stryjkowski, we can see the original text and ideas of Italian. In his chronicle, Alexander Guagnini turns into the real ideologist of the Baltic’s conquest by Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Keywords: Alexander Guagnini, Maciej Stryjkowski, Livonian War