An Antiquarian Passion: Explorations of the Graves of Polish Monarchs in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The subject of this article is the antiquarian explorations of the tombs of Polish monarchs, carried out from the late eighteenth to the second half of the nineteenth century. I draw particular attention to three aspects of the phenomenon. Firstly, I present the explorations in the international context, taking the activities of British antiquaries as a point of reference. Secondly, I point out their close and singularly consequential links with the culture of collecting. Thirdly and lastly, I analyse their social reception. It was the collecting of grave goods that stirred up the greatest emotions and controversies among the public and provoked a fundamental transformation in antiquarian exploration. I argue that Polish antiquarian explorations had their own distinctive idiom. After 1795, the political circumstances of being a nation without a state meant that in their early period of development antiquarian practices were not accompanied by the moral dilemmas and charges with which British antiquaries had to contend. And even later, when the exploration of graves and tombs became more controversial, the accompanying discourse did not lose its local specificity.