History, Summer 2026
My dissertation looks at 16th- and 17th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth through the lenses of its cultural and political connections to Rome. By examining literary, hagiographical, and political works by secular and ecclesiastical authors, such as Andrzej Frycz-Modrzewski, Piotr Skarga, or Stanisław Grochowski, I explore how these various writers and reformers interacted with the idea of Rome and how they placed it in relation to Poland. With Poland-Lithuania standing in-between West and East of Europe, it was marked by diversity of cultures, ethnicities, and religions. I argue that in the early modern period there was an active shift in Polish relations with the West, marked by the closer connections with Rome and its legacy and the subsequent separation from non-Catholic East. Polish interpretations of Rome – its Classical past, contemporary papal power, and the splendor of old ruins and new churches – reflected the overall development of pre-modern national identity, defining connection to Latinity, Catholicism, and Classical education as defining traits of “Polishness”. At the core of my work, therefore, is the attempt to address the beginning of Polish “Catholic” and “Western” identity that still to this day remains central to the perceived Polish (ethnic) identity. In my project, I follow how that perceived national selfhood developed in the early modern period, moving Poland away from the Eastern cultural influences and towards the Western European legacy.