Jan Andrzej Morsztyn

Jan Andrzej Morsztyn (1621–1693) was a Polish poet, a member of the landed nobility, and an important official in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He held several important positions, including being starosta of Zawichost, Tymbark, and Kowal. He also served as pantler of Sandomierz from 1647 to 1658, Royal Secretary starting in 1656, a secular referendary from 1658 to 1668, and Deputy Crown Treasurer from 1668.

Morsztyn is also well known as a leading poet from the Polish Baroque period and a key figure in the Marinist style of Polish literature. Through his work and service, he gained great wealth. However, in 1683 he faced accusations of treason and had to leave Poland, spending his final years in France.

Life

Jan Andrzej Morsztyn was born on July 24, 1621, in Wiśnicz, near Kraków. He came from a wealthy Calvinist family with the Leliwa coat-of-arms. He studied at Leiden University and traveled with his brother in Italy and France.

After returning to Poland, Morsztyn worked for the powerful Lubomirski family and joined the royal court. He served in many government meetings called Sejms from 1648 to 1659 and worked on important tasks for the government. He also traveled for diplomatic work to Hungary in 1653, Sweden in 1655, and Austria in 1656.

Morsztyn became Royal Secretary in 1656, Crown Referendary in 1658, and Deputy Crown Treasurer in 1668. He helped negotiate the Treaty of Oliwa in 1660 and fought in battles during The Deluge and the Chmielnicki Uprising. He supported French policies and even took French citizenship. When Poland's king allied with Austria instead of France, Morsztyn was accused of treason and fled to France in 1683. There, he lived as a royal secretary and took the title comte de Châteauvillain.

Morsztyn passed away on January 8, 1693, in Paris.

Family

Jan Andrzej Morsztyn married a noblewoman from Scotland named Lady Catherine Gordon of Huntly in 1659. Catherine was the daughter of an important Scottish noble and came to Poland with her brother, who served the Polish king for many years. Catherine worked at the court of Queen Marie Louise de Gonzaga.

They had a son and three daughters. Their younger daughter, Isabella Morsztynowna, married into the important Czartoryski family. Because of this connection, Jan Andrzej Morsztyn and Catherine Gordon are related to important figures in history, including Stanisław II Augustus, who became King of Poland, and Mathilde d'Udekem d'Acoz, who became Queen of the Belgians.

Works

Jan Andrzej Morsztyn was a well-known poet during the Polish Baroque period. His writing style was influenced by the fancy and expressive way of writing used in 16th-century Italy. He wrote most of his poems before he took on a big government job in 1668. Morsztyn liked to think of his writing as just a fun side activity, so he usually shared his poems only in handwritten copies. Because of this, many of his works were not printed until much later, in the 1800s.

He was very good at making poems that followed special rules. Two of his collections are called Kanikuła (Dog Days, 1647) and Lutnia (Lute, 1661). In his poems, he often wrote about love and deep feelings, mixing happy and serious ideas. Some of his other poems also talked about politics, like Pospolite ruszenie and Pieśń w obozie pod Żwańcem (Song in the camp near Żwaniec), where he pointed out that some people were not ready to protect themselves from dangers like attacks from Tatars or Cossacks. Unlike his cousin, Zbigniew Morsztyn, most of his poems were not about religion, except for one called Pokuta w kwartanie.

Morsztyn was also good at translating the works of other writers. He translated the work of Torquato Tasso, Giambattista Marino, and Pierre Corneille. His translation of Corneille's Le Cid was the very first time this famous story was written in Polish, and it is still the most used version today.

In 1660, he helped write a plan to change how the government worked.