De optimo senatore

The Counsellor, an English translation published in 1598

De optimo senatore (also The Counsellor and The Accomplished Senator) was a book by Wawrzyniec Grzymała Goślicki published in Venice in 1568, republished in Basel (1593),^[1] and then translated into English and published in 1598 and in 1607.

Written in Latin and dedicated to a Polish King Sigismund II Augustus, the book describes the ideal statesman who is well versed in the humanities, as well as in economy, politics, and law. This theoretical treatise on the art of ruling postulated the importance of the senate as a body mediating between the monarch's absolute tendencies and noblemen's attempts to acquire more power.^[2]

It was a political and social classic, widely read at the time of its publication.^[3]

Notes

1. Laurentii Grimalii Goslicij De optimo senatore libri duo: in quibus ... Text in Google Books
2. Wawrzyniec Goślicki The Accomplished Senator Page, Retrieved August 5, 2007
3. Bałuk, T., "De optimo senatore" Wawrzynca Goslickiego I jego oddzialywanie w Anglii (Wawrzyniec Goslicki's "De optimo sentore" and Its Reception in England'). Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Jagiellonian University, 1979., Retrieved August 5, 2007. Bałuk-Ulewiczowa, Teresa. Goslicius' Ideal Senator and His Impact over the Centuries. Shakespearen Reflections. Kraków: PAU & UJ, 2009. Bałuk-Ulewiczowa, Teresa. "The Senator of Wawrzyniec Goślicki and the Elisabethan Counsellor." The Polish Renaissance in Its European Context, ed. S. Fiszman, Bloomington & Indianapolis, Ind.: University of Indiana Press, 1988, pp.258-277.

Bibliography

1. Aleksander Stępkowski (red.) O senatorze doskonałym studia Warszawa, Kancelaria Senatu 2009.
2. Teresa Bałuk-Ulewiczowa, Goslicius' Ideal Senator and His Impact over the Centuries: Shakespearean Reflections. Kraków, PAU i UJ 2009.