“Immortal Souvenir” – the Role of Print in Funeral Sermons from the 17th Century

Abstract

The material basis of the article consists of funeral sermons, published by Pawel Konrad in Lublin in the 17th century. The authors were aware of the differences between spoken and written communication. In the prefaces to the published sermons, the authors emphasized that thanks to them the memory of the dead would be preserved. They were also convinced of the consolatory function of such prints. In the print version of each sermon, the dead person was exhibited. The exhibition was made by appropriate lexicon as well as the typographical form of the text. Antroponims concerning the dead person were distinguished on the title page. On occasion, such stylistic measure was used in dedication letters and sermons themselves. The type matter’s equality of parallel segments was used to indicate ancestral analogy.