Hermetism in Poland in the 16th Century

The basic aim of this paper is to give an answer to the following question: to what extent were the hermetic writings known in Poland in the sixteenth century? Corpus hermeticum and Asclepius were known at least as early as 1505. They were not, however, used to the larger extent in philosophical and theological works until the edition of six volumes of commentaries on those writings. They were edited in Cracow in the period of 1584-1590 by Hannibal Rosseli, an Italian Bernardine. If we claim this author to be the only representative of hermetism, whose writings were considerably influenced by doctrinal contents specific to hermetic texts, then there arises a question: Can H. Rosseli be called the representative of the Renaissance hermetism? He was perhaps only one of the number of representatives of a „new apologetics”, similarly to Jakub Górski. There were many of them in Europe in the second half of the sixteenth century. Rosseli's standpoints on the teaching of Hermes and the irenic attitude which is abased on them, as well as the model of religiousness which they promote (being influenced by an optimistic tendency of hermetic writings authored by M. Ficino and G. Pico della Mirandola) can make the basis for accepting him as the representative of philosophico-religious hermetism. At the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century many Polish philosophers and theologians made reference to hermetic writings and used H. Rosseli's commentaries