Barezzo Barezzi czy Antonio Possevino? Uwagi dotyczące autorstwa : Relatione della segnalata e come miracolosa conquista del Paterno Imperio conseguita dal Serenissimo Giovine Demetrio Gran Duca di Moscovia, in questo anno 1605 (Venezia 1605)

Relatione della segnalata e come miracolosa conquista del Paterno Imperio conseguita dal Serenissimo Giovine Demetrio Gran duca di Moscovia, in questo anno 1605 (...), published in Venice in 1605 by the printer Barezzo Barezzi, achieved a unique literary success during the 17th century. Thanks to the translation made by the Spanish Jesuit, Juan Mosquera, it became the basis of the plot of theatrical plays by Lope de Vega (1617), Enrique Suárez de Mendoza y Figueroa (1629), a source of inspiration for La vida es sueño by Calderon de la Barca and for ‘the tragic story’ Il Demetrio Moscovita by Majolino Bisaccioni (1649). The biographers of Barezzo Barezzi ascribe the authorship of the work to him, but in 1827 Sebastiano Ciampi, and then Paul Pierling (1900) accepted the view that it was Father An- tonio Possevino who was the real author of the text. Confirma- tion of this hypothesis may be found in several texts, such as the letter in which Possevino, in 1606, dedicated the volume Cultura ingeniorum Cultura ingeniorum (Balsamo, 1986, 1990), or in Condoglienza di Stanislao Przvvoski Lublinense studente in Padova, col P. Antonio Possevino Giesuita, published in the same year in Padua (Bernardini, 2005), to the alleged Dimitrij Ivan(ow). Among the sources of Relatione we should highlight the ‘news’ sent to the Vatican by the Apostolic Nuncio, Claudio Rangoni, dated from Krakow on November the 1st, 1603. The Relatione also includes information, unconfirmed else- where, that the alleged carevič [the alleged tsar’s son], before his appearance at the court of Prince Adam Wiśniowiecki in the autumn of 1603, served in the kitchen of the Hojski(s). We could hypothesize that this detail was added by Barezzi, an ex- pert and translator of Spanish picaresque literature, were it not that we find the same also in an anonymous text of an undated manuscript, which is one of the sources of Relatione. Further evidence for the authorship by Possevino could be a remark made by Demetrius about the imprisonment of the Polish king Sigismund III Vasa in his youth, along with his father John of Finland, on the orders of his uncle, Eric. The information, of which the young carevič could not know, was in all probability introduced into the text of the speech by Antonio Possevino, an envoy of Gregory XIII to John III in 1577, when only 10 years had elapsed since the release of the Duke of Finland.