Botero 2, parallels in depicting Cossacks and Tartars are noticeable: armed with longbows and spears in a clearly «Sarmatian» way, bravery, lack of whimsicality and exceptional endurance on the march, etc. At the same time, in other mentions of Cossacks by A. In 17th-century texts, the Cossacks pose as multiethnic people, often with a brigand past, but Christian people nonetheless brave and gallant, immune to the idea of amassing wealth, living, without wives or children, on the Borysthenes’ Isles, and enmical towards Tartars and Turks. This preamble leads to the angle that should be used while considering the depiction of Cossacks by Italian writers, ambassadors among them. Miechowski, is bestowed with traits of ancient Sarmatians and Amazons as seen according to the literary tradition. The main thing is that the population, not least thanks to M. At the same time, the lands of «Rusia» are connected to the ancient Ecumene, so Ovid’s grave is found there. there has to be what the native Europe lacks: boundless steppes, absolutely impenetrable woods, strange beasts, etc. Starting from 13th-15th centuries, and more so from late 15th century, Ukraine was perceived as a faraway land at the boundary of Europe bordering on the totally alien Tartar-pagan world (later, the Turkish world was added.) Thus, a set of features, and a range of characteristic topics and plots, as well as the interest in miracles which just have to be in a faraway land i. The ghosts and the swallows seem original while other elements of Ukrainian «miracles» make their way from one work to another with little change. graziani tell that in «Rusia» they saw a miracle of miracles, swallows that spend winters on the bottom of lakes and rise from there in spring 1. Duodo, speaks of ghosts in Lithuanian woods, g. The matter is not that the miracles depicted are absolute inventions (it is known that Ukrainian soils are really rather fertile) but due to the authors’ bias and emotions real data is noticeably transformed up to a complete fancy. Descriptions of «miracles» here take maybe more text than descriptions of cities and fortresses. these and similar statements are repeated in work after work, including not only compilatory cosmographies but also reports by Venetian ambassadors or Papal Nuncios, i. There, «Rusia» («Red Rusia», «Black Rusia», «Podolia», etc.) is constantly described as «the new land of Canaan», its fantastic fertility underlined, as well as great numbers of game, birds, and fish, with corn growing on its own, fish being born from the dew of the skies, a fir-tree branch that lies on the ground turning into precious stone within several years, etc.
Miechowski’s treatise, On Two Sarmatias, rather well-known in Italy, and numerous compilations stemming from it. Gaeta e (.)Ģ It can be said that by the early 17th century, a rather stable tradition had formed in Italian literature of depicting Polish-Ukrainian lands and their population, based in the first turn on M.
1 Duodo Pietro, Relazione di Polonia del 1592, in: Relazioni degli Ambasciatori veneti al Senato, I.