1480

So tonight, after eight months and two renewals, I’ve finished Długosz’s Annals. Even this abridgement at times felt interminable, five hundred and fifteen years of one thing after another, actually, the same damn things over and over, occasionally all at the same time, medieval things, mostly fighting, everywhere and between everyone, a thousand truces and never any peace, dynastic intrigue, religious and cultural bigotry resulting in copious bloodshed, every conceivable permutation of the Seven Deadly Sins, the plague, heresy, a dozen Władysławs at least, with an equal number of Bolesławs, and even more Casimirs, and to finish, Jan Długosz himself, a bit actor in his own chronicle, which ends in 1480 on his death bed:  

Though lying in bed, gravely ill, yet am I no little pleased that, after protracted, uninterrupted labour, much thought and deliberation, extensive travel and journeying in search of the chronicles of our own and other lands and in so doing subjecting myself to censure, abuse and rebuff, I have come to the end of this work, which all others have neglected. Gladly would I continue it for the honour of God and the benefit of my Fatherland, but Fate is preventing me, for I strongly suspect that the Cruel Sisters are even now drawing their threads. I have, by the Grace of God, reached an age that not all attain, having lived for sixty-five years. My afternoon being over and I having reached the actual evening and term of life, when I am to enter the kingdom of Eternal Light and enjoy everlasting life with all the saints, I confess, what I admitted long ago, that not absolutely everything I have written has accorded with the truth. Some of the things I have described have been trivial and ephemeral, though amusing, thing[s] that I have taken from the writings of others either on my own initiative or at the suggestion of others, things that I have found in minor works or in other people’s maps, or matters of hearsay, taking as worthy of belief what I have merely been told to be true. I beg those who are better endowed by Minerva and have ready tongues to correct my errors and misconceptions. Should they find what they read, even the whole, confused or amateurish, may they undertake the editing of it, and may they forgive my language and incompetence. With such a wealth and variety of topics, only an angel could explain and verify it all. It is not a gospel or a canonical letter I have been writing, as the holy apostles did, but, as an intellectual exercise, I have described things that are variable and ephemeral. I accept responsibility for verifying them or for failing to do so, should that be what I have done.

….I beg all who read or will read this Chronicle to kneel and say for me, first and last of sinners, one Paternoster and one Hail Mary, so that Our Lord Jesus Christ, son of the Immaculate Virgin, through all his torments borne with strange love for me, for him and every mortal, may deign to free me of eternal and temporal torment and lead me to see His Blessed Trinity, whose is the honour and the glory, now and for ever. Amen. (p. 601)

This I can do and have done, in Polish.