The Kórnik Library holds many early printed books from the former church of the Unity of the Brethren in Leszno, including an adligat, i.e. a volume combining three works: one by John Calvin and two by Matthias Flacius. This artefact was bound in recycled parchment inscribed with text by an eminent philosopher/scholastic logician, Gilbert de la Porrée; it is a fragment of Commentarius ad Epistolas S. Pauli.
The author of the article compares the text of the Commentary from the parchment cover to other hand-written copies of this work. On the sidelines of reflections concerning the authorship of the treatises attributed to Gilbert, he points out that the research in this scope has not yet taken into account an analysis of the rhythmics. The text which survived on the cover has the form of rhythmic prose – a different one than that in one of Gilbert’s letters.

The paper comprises two parts: the first one discusses the history of versus quadratus from antiquity until the times of Walahfrid Strabon, and presents the origin and the history of the trochaic decapentasyllable until our own times, while the second part focuses on the structure and artistry of a famous trochaic decapentasyllable – Angilbertus’s Poem on the Battle of Fontenoy.

Versus quadratus is a form of verse which has been practiced in an unbroken form from the 5th–3rd centuries BC until today in the form of a rhythmic poem, a trochaic decapentasyllable. The transformation of the prosodic form of the poem into the rhythmic form took place in the 5th century AD. Initially, the two forms developed in a parallel way, one along with the other, but finally only the trochaic decapentasyllable survived.

A characteristic feature of versus quadratus was the isocolon, i.e. the same or a similar number of syllables in the particular elements, and in particular in the first hemistich. Versus quadratus differed from the “ordinary” trochaic septenarius by a great number of sound-based rhetorical figures, especially anaphoras, alliterations, homeoteleutons, and assonances.

The trochaic decapentasyllable of Latin poems faithfully maintained the main features of the ancient versus quadratus. From the point of view of the rigours and the distribution of rhythms (i.e. accents), we may observe two branches of its development in the Middle Ages: the first one was considerably free in terms of the division into elements (St. Secundinus), and sometimes even the number of syllables (the so-called Verona School), and the second one, rigorist, was very faithful to the vernacular versus quadratus (De die iudicii, Gallus Anonymus, and Hilary of Orléans). The first branch was marked by a diverse rhythm system, while the second by its considerable homogeneousness with a marked domination of pure trochaic metres.

It was as early as in the 13th century at the latest that the trochaic decapentasyllable was first used in vernacular poetry. It played an extremely important role in German, English, Italian, and Polish poetry. In the latter, it was probably inspired by Friedrich Schiller’s famous poem An die Freude. The German and Polish trochaic decapentasyllable continued its medieval models and only to a small extent moved away from the requirements of versus quadratus, leaving the regular division into two hemistiches with the help of the main caesura and dipodia (secondary caesurae), and isocolon. Just like in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, verses were filled with anaphoras, alliterations, and homeoteleutons. The forms of the last ones included rhymes. All the verses rhymed with a single syllable at the end of the second hemistich, and sometimes additionally on the main caesura. Sound-based rhetorical figures and rhymes were more popular in German poetry than in the Polish poetry. It was already in the Middle Ages that poetic experiments on the trochaic decapentasyllable were initiated, consisting in the doubling of some hemistiches (e.g. Stabat Mater dolorosa) or the removal of single elements of the verse (trochaic hendecasyllable).

Poem on the Battle of Fontenoy should be located somewhere in-between the two aforementioned branches of the development of the trochaic decapentasyllable: the free one and the rigorist one. An analysis showed that it has a highly innovative and diversified rhythmic structure. In this respect, it surpasses all trochaic decapentasyllables. Despite this diversification, Angilbertus observed the most important rigours of the trochaic decapentasyllable. In the poem under analysis, two verses of Lombardian rhythmic hexameter, including an imitation of the hephthemimeres caesura combined with the trithemimeres caesura, were discovered. Such verses can also be found in the famous epitaphs of the Kings of the Lombards dating to the first half of the 7th century. Some eminent philologists: Wilhelm Meyer and Dag Norberg, encountered serious difficulties with these forms.

Angilbertus filled his poem with the language of the Bible; however, he once quoted it via the famous poet Paulinus of Aquileia. Similarly to Paulinus, Angilbertus used school Latin. Neither Paulinus nor Angilbertus can be recognised as poets referring to the experiments of the Verona School. Peter Godman’s opinion on Paulinus in this scope is unjustified. Paulinus and Angilbertus share the mastery of meter and a great respect for language, but also the lyrics of the Vulgate. Paul von Winterfeld noted that when writing his planctus, Angilbertus consciously used certain figures of speech referring to vernacular poetry to underline the expression of the poem. Nevertheless, his was not folk (Mimen) or vernacular poetry – it only referred to its achievements.

Only a handful of specialists know that the exceptionally valuable collections of the Kórnik Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences include a Carolingian manuscript dating to the second half of the 9th century. The founder of the Kórnik Library, Count Tytus Działyński (1796–1861), most probably obtained it by purchase or as a gift from the branch of the Radziwiłł family living in the Greater Poland region. The historical object was produced in a monastery scriptorium in Gaul, and contains a work devoted to the rule of St. Benedict authored by Smaragdus (d. about 830), abbot of Saint-Mihiel Abbey near Verdun.

On the first sheet of the manuscript, an unknown copyist placed a 15-stanza poem devoted to the battle which took place near Fontenoy, Burgundy, on 25 June 841. The work is written in a trochaic decapentasyllable by a man of whom we do not know much apart from his name, Angilbertus, and the fact that he fought in the ranks of Emperor Lothair. Karl Strecker (1861–1945), the most distinguished expert on Carolingian poetry, believed that, in terms of expression, the poem was the grandest piece of poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance. Unfortunately, the Carolingian poetical masterpiece has survived to our own times in a form which is questionable in many respects. Since the 18th century until today, the most eminent Latinists have made the poem a subject of their studies. The text has been published many times, and scholars undertook numerous attempts at a reconstruction of the original text in their separate studies. Although these works deserve the highest respect, the same cannot be said about the subsequent editions of the poem. The later the edition, the more errors it contains. In our opinion, the sheer number of errors in these editions prevents any critical analysis of the text of this unique poem. In this situation, I decided that it was necessary to prepare a new edition and simultaneously attempt a reconstruction of the original text. I read the text of all the three copies on the basis of: 1. the original manuscript kept in the Kórnik Library (K); 2. a photocopy of the Parisian copy (P), and 3. a photocopy of the copy from Sankt Gallen (S).

In the case of the copies from Paris and Sankt Gallen, I had their photocopies recorded on a CD added to the Corpus rhythmorum musicum saec. IV–IX1 edition; I also used highquality photocopies of the two copies published on the Internet by the National Library in Paris, and included in the Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland (e-codices).

Each of the copies was issued separately and compared to the other copies on pp. 36–39, whereas the attempted reconstruction was published on pp. 78–80. The reconstruction of the text was preceded by a palaeographic and grammatical analysis, as well as an analysis of the rhythm of the individual stanzas .

On November 2, 2018, an outstanding Polish medievalist Jerzy Lesław Wyrozumski died in Kraków; he was born on March 7, 1930 in Trembowla (now Ukraine). He graduated in 1955 with a degree in history at the Jagiellonian University. He wrote his master's thesis and doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Roman Grodecki. In 1981 he received the title of professor; he was dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and History in the years 1981–1987, and from 1987 to 1990 he was the prorector of the Jagiellonian University. He published over 600 scholarly books, articles and reviews.

Professor Henryk Bogdan Samsonowicz was born on 23rd of January 1930 in Warsaw in the family of a known University of Warsaw professor, geologist Jan Samsonowicz (1888–1959) and Henryka Samsonowicz nee Korwin Krukowska (1892–1987). He graduated in history at the Department of Humanity of the University of Warsaw, presenting a master's thesis on the policy of Gdańsk in the second half of the 14th century, written on a seminar by Marian Małowist. Professors Witold Kula and Aleksander Gieysztor have also played an important role in Henryk Samsonowicz's intellectual development, and later, during his stay in France, professor Fernandel Braudel. In 1954 he has defended his doctor's thesis, and in 1960 received his postdoctoral qualifications based on the famous work “ Studies of the patrician capital of Gdańsk in the 2nd half of the 15th century”. The academic interests of professor Henryk Samsonowicz have initially focussed on the history of the Hanseatic League, and later — on the importance of myth in history and on the beginnings of the Polish state in the 10th century. In his scientific work he has created a new model of historical narration, which combines various aspects of political, economic and cultural life in one whole. He has published over a thousand reviews, articles and dissertations in print. He has occupied a series of important positions he was, among others, a dean of the Department of History of the University of Warsaw; during the times of “Solidarity” he was appointed as the Chancellor of the University of Warsaw. In 1989 he became the Minister for the National Education in the first non-communist government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki. He was an acclaimed organiser of popularisation of historical knowledge in Poland.

Energy production from renewable sources is one of the main ways to fight against global warming. Anaerobic digestion process can be used to produce biogas containing methane. In the light of the growing demand for substrates, a variety of raw materials are required. These substrates should be suitable for anaerobic digestion, and processing them need to provide the desired amount of energy.
This paper aims to discuss the agricultural biogas market in Poland, its current state, and the possibility of development during energy transformation, in particular in terms of using waste as a substrate for energy production. In February 2022, there were 130 agricultural biogas plants registered in Poland. On the other hand, in 2020, 4,409,054.898 Mg of raw materials were used to produce agricultural biogas in Poland. Among all the substrates used, waste played a special role.
With the right amount of raw materials and proper management of a biogas plant, it is possible to produce electricity and provide stable and predictable heat supply. Bearing in mind the development of the Polish and European biogas markets, attention should be paid to ensure access to raw materials from which chemical energy in the form of biogas can be generated. Due to limited access to farmland and the increasing demand for food production, one should expect that waste will be increasingly often used for biogas production, especially that with high energy potential, such as waste related to animal production and the meat industry.