Biernat of Lublin

Biernat of Lublin (Polish: Biernat z Lublina, Latin Bernardus Lublinius, ca. 1465 – after 1529) was a Polish poet, fabulist, translator, and physician. He was one of the first Polish-language writers known by name, and the most interesting of the earliest ones. He expressed plebeian, Renaissance, and religiously liberal opinions.^[1]

Woodcut from Żywot Ezopa Fryga (The Life of Aesop the Phrygian), Kraków, 1578 ed.

Life

Biernat was born in Lublin and wrote the first book printed in the Polish language: printed in 1513, in Kraków, at Poland's first printing establishment, operated by Florian Ungler—a prayer-book, Raj duszny (Hortulus Animae, Eden of the Soul).

Biernat also penned the first secular work in Polish literature: a collection of verse fables, plebeian and anticlerical in nature: Żywot Ezopa Fryga (The Life of Aesop the Phrygian), 1522.

Works

• Raj duszny (Eden of the Soul), 1513
• Żywot Ezopa Fryga (The Life of Aesop the Phrygian), 1522
• Dialog Polinura z Charonem (Dialog of Polinur and Charon), ca. 1507

See also

• Physician writer
• Fable#Fabulists
• Fables and Parables

Notes

1. "Biernat z Lublina" ("Biernat of Lublin"), Encyklopedia Polski (Encyclopedia of Poland), p. 57.

References

• "Biernat z Lublina" ("Biernat of Lublin"), Encyklopedia Polski (Encyclopedia of Poland), Kraków, Wydawnictwo Ryszard Kluszczyński, 1996, ISBN 83-86328-60-6, p. 57.