Francuskie przekazy „o ceremoniale domowym” dworu polskiego na przełomie XVII i XVIII
French sources concerning the "domestic ceremonial" of the Polish court at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Summary/Abstract: This article focuses on information about the Polish court in an eighteenth-century French publication which discusses court protocol. Because of the wealth of topics presented by the authors in the publication, this article only discusses the part relating to the highest officials of the state and the Polish court, as well as the duties assigned to them and aspects of the etiquette required at the Polish court. The subject of receiving foreign envoys at the Polish court, addressed by the French authors, is discussed in another article. The following article also refers to publications dating from the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (although modern versions have been used for the purposes of this text), which constituted the sources of knowledge for the authors of the work under discussion. Certain fragments are literal transcriptions of the words of the travellers who have been quoted. However, it should be emphasized that it was not possible to give a clear and accurate picture of the Polish court and the state offices of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; in this respect the publication discussed gives a less clear and correct account of Poland than do the accounts related by travellers, although they also could not avoid making errors.

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