„Z każdego stworzenia umiał się ku więtszej miłości Boskiej pobudzić”: zwierzęta jako przyjaciele sług Bożych (na podstawie Żywotów świętych Piotra Skargi)
„Each Creature Inspired to Greater God's Love”: Animals as Friends of God's Servants (on the Basis of Piotr Skarga's Żywoty Świętych)

Summary/Abstract: This article is an analysis of the animal motifs in Piotr Skarga's Żywoty świętych [The Lives of the Saints]. It might initially seem that they do not play an important role in this monumental work. However, when we pay more attention to them, it turns out that they convey valuable information related to the way in which views on the place of man and animals in the Christian universe were formed. An analysis of the motifs collected in the article shows that there is no justification for those stereotypes which result mainly from an erroneous interpretation of the biblical phrase: „Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it”, according to which, from the very beginning, Christianity as a religion was supposed to be characterised by a lack of respect for the created world and a merely instrumental approach to animals. Similarly, the conviction that only St. Francis of Assisi had a friendly relationship with „friars minor”, while other saints were not interested in relationships with them, is also erroneous. The presented text methodologically refers to the findings of the so-called Silesian „school” of micrology, and therefore it aims to concentrate on those parts of the examined work which are considered to be fragments, scraps or „miniatures” – messages that (at first glance) do not determine its value. The present study supplements the article „Znać iżeście i bestyj podlejszy”: zoomorficzne inkarnacje szatana w „Żywotach świętych” Piotra Skargi published in the journal Terminus (2/2019).

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