Poetry, inspirations, and careers : Gregory of Sambor and His Ovidian "Censtochova"

The son of a shoemaker, Gregorius Vigilantius Samboritanus (c.1523–1573) had a brilliant career that saw him become a professor of theology at Krakow Academy, dean of the collegiate church of Saint Anne, and a creative Neo-Latin poet. His poems, written mainly in elegiac couplets, reveal an excellent knowledge of prosodic patterns along with the passionate assimilation of Vergilian phraseology and Ovidian style. He composed many elegies to his prominent patrons, university colleagues and close friends. This paper analyses one of these poems, Censtochova (1568), which the poet himself conceived as a multi-faceted literary work. Ovid’s Fasti provided Samboritanus with a model for this polyphonic work, including an aetiology of ritual traditions, prophecies and revelations. Following Ovid, the poet confined his narrative to the seven Marian feasts and themes such as the history of the famous image and shrine of the Virgin Mary in Częstochowa. Samboritanus addressed the Holy Virgin as his patron and Muse. Using various rhetorical strategies, he combined this story not only with many poetic images but also with personal experiences and autobiographical details that revealed much about, among other things, his career paths and strategies