In 1745, a Polish parish priest named Benedykt Joachim Chmielowski published Nowe Ateny (New Athens), the first encyclopedia ever written in the Polish language. Spanning nearly a thousand pages, divided into thematic “classes” rather than arranged alphabetically, it was intended—as its sprawling subtitle announced—for “the wise to remember, for fools to learn, for politicians to practice, for melancholics to entertain.”
It drew on more than a hundred sources, from the Bible and Aristotle to Pliny the Elder and contemporary European authors. But Nowe Ateny was not a dry compilation of facts. Chmielowski mingled scholarship with folklore, theological speculation, travel tales, and outright fantasy. The result was an exuberant baroque miscellany—part reference work, part cabinet of curiosities.
The book’s most famous entry is about horses:
Horse: What a horse is like, anyone can see. (Polish: Koń jaki jest, każdy widzi )
In Chmielowski’s time, the horse was no stranger to human society—it clopped through every market square, grazed in every field, and waited patiently outside every tavern. To describe it in detail would have been, in the author’s eyes, as needless as explaining what bread tastes like or what the sun looks like at noon. Thus came his immortal verdict: “What a horse is like, anyone can see.” In an age when modern encyclopedias would solemnly trace the genealogy of the Equidae, catalogue its anatomy, and debate its domestication, Chmielowski dispensed with the whole affair in a single shrug of a sentence. This entry is famous in Poland, where it has entered the language as a humorous idiom for something too obvious to warrant explanation.
Goats, he informed readers, were a “śmierdzący rodzaj zwierząt”—“a stinking kind of animals.” Beavers were credited with biting off their own testicles to escape hunters (a medieval legend), and the encyclopedia soberly described the giant ant in the Persian city of Susa, that supposedly ate a pound of meat. The passage on dogs is equally amusing:
A certain French duke had a dog trained in such a way that it set the table for guests, it opened the chest containing the tablecloth with a key taken from its master, and after spreading the cloth on the table, it laid out the plates, spoons, knives, and napkins in the appropriate order.
Chmielowski did not shy away from the marvellous. His pages contain dragons, basilisks (a creature rumoured to possess the deadly power of killing with its gaze), and the biblical sea-monster Leviathan. He recorded tales of “acephali” — headless people whose faces were on their chests — citing ancient authorities. Astrology, alchemy, and magical cures appear alongside theology and geography, without clear boundaries between them.
Chmielowski described dragons as huge creatures that “covered entire hectares with its body” and could “fit a horse with a rider in its mouth”. “Its scales were as large as shields,” it added.
“Dragons existed for sure,” Chmielowski assured readers. “I myself held, visiting Radziwills' castle, a rib of a dragon bigger than a regular sabre” He then noted solemnly that “It’s hard to beat a dragon, but you have to try.”
A winged dragon, circa 1277 or after. Credit: Getty
In a section devoted to the devil, sorcerers, and magic, Chmielowski ventures into the world of possession. He describes the remarkable abilities attributed to the possessed and outlines the signs by which their condition might be recognized. Magic, he explains, comes in three forms—natural, artificial, and demonic. Along the way, he parades a gallery of sorcerers before the reader, from biblical figures such as the Witch of Endor and Simon Magus to more recent practitioners. His account also examines the powers and customs of witches, offering a glimpse into their shadowy, enchanted realm.
Turning to the heavens, Chmielowski’s chapter on astronomy and astrology takes a striking turn. He openly challenges the Copernican system, presenting instead an older vision of the cosmos. Here he introduces the sublunary sphere—a geocentric domain lying beneath the Moon’s orbit—composed of the four classical elements: earth, water, air, and fire. His narrative also wanders into the cartography of the underworld, mapping infernal rivers like the Acheron, Styx, and Lethe, as well as the enigmatic lakes Geluchalat and Avecigus. The discussion concludes with a survey of divination in its many forms: prophecy, physiognomy, palmistry, and oneiromancy—the reading of dreams.
Nowe Ateny also contains entries about real people. The one about the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates notes that “Socrates never laughed in his life; his face was neither happy nor sad.”
When it appeared, Nowe Ateny was already out of step with the Enlightenment ideals sweeping Europe. Critics dismissed it as backward, superstitious, and riddled with errors. Yet today, its quirks are precisely what make it fascinating. Today, scholars view Nowe Ateny less as a failure and more as a cultural artefact. It captures an era when empirical observation, hearsay, and inherited myth still mingled freely in print.
References:
# “10 Quirky Quotes from Poland’s First Encyclopaedia”, Culture.pl
# “The Eccentric First Polish Encyclopedia”, VOICES magazine
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