Mieszczański republikanin contra absolutum dominium. Jan Sachs i obrona Rzeczypospolitej w dobie potopu szwedzkiego
Bourgeois Republican Contra Absolutum Dominium. Jan Sachs and the Defense of the Commonwealth in the Era of the Swedish Delug

Summary/Abstract: The article contrasts the Western European centralization process (16th–18th centuries), where the bourgeoisie supported absolute monarchs against feudal lords in exchange for a unified market and privileges, with Polish specificity: weak bourgeoisie (5–7% of the population) preferred decentralization, urban autonomy, and a weak elective king, fearing wars, taxes, and mercantilism. The nobility marginalized the burghers legally (e.g., Piotrków Sejm of 1496, 1520, 1565) and ideologically, denying them a republican ethos. In the context of the Swedish Deluge, the analysis focuses on Jan Sachs’s treatise (De scopo Reipublicæ Polonicæ) – a Protestant burgher from Wschowa and Toruń city secretary – who polemicizes with Hermann Conring’s absolutist propaganda. Sachs defends the mixed constitution (monarchy–aristocracy), free election, noble equality, and the primacy of bonum commune over salus rei publicae. The Commonwealth emerges as a unique republican experiment in the age of absolutism, whose libertarian ethos attracted even non-noble burghers and dissenters. The work demonstrates that noble dominance did not preclude a broader anti-absolutist consensus.

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