Biernat of Lublin

Woodcut from Żywot Ezopa Fryga (The Life of Aesop the Phrygian), Kraków, 1578 ed. Biernat of Lublin (Polish: Biernat z Lublina, Latin Bernardus Lublinius, ca. 1465 – after 1529) was a Polish poet, fabulist, translator, and physician. He was one of the first Polish-language writers known by name, and the most interesting of the earliest ones. He expressed plebeian, Renaissance, and religiously liberal opinions.

Life Biernat was born in Lublin and wrote the first book printed in the Polish language: printed in 1513, in Kraków, at Poland's first printing establishment, operated by Florian Ungler—a prayer-book, Raj duszny (Hortulus Animae, Eden of the Soul).

Biernat also penned the first secular work in Polish literature: a collection of verse fables, plebeian and anticlerical in nature: Żywot Ezopa Fryga (The Life of Aesop the Phrygian), 1522.

Works

Raj duszny (Eden of the Soul), 1513 Żywot Ezopa Fryga (The Life of Aesop the Phrygian), 1522 Dialog Polinura z Charonem (Dialog of Polinur and Charon), ca. 1507