Józef Herman Schitt, “The Similarities and Differences Between the Eastern and Western Churches” [1831]

Title: The Similarities and Differences Between the Eastern and Western Churches, or A Proposal for the Reunification of the Schismatic Greek Orthodox Church with the Roman Catholic Church.

Author: Józef Herman Schitt [born Hermann Joseph Schmitt (1796–1869), a German Catholic author].

Edited and Adapted into Polish by Fr. Franciszek Siarczyński [(1758–1829)].

Publisher: Warsaw, at the Printing House of the XX Missionaries.

Year of publication: 1831.

Format: 20 cm.

Volume: [XXIX], 533, [5] pp.

Binding: Half-cloth binding.

This treatise, translated from German, compares the commonalities and differences between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church in the areas of dogma, liturgy, and canon law, and at the same time—as the subtitle suggests—presents “an idea for the union” of the two Churches. It thus belongs to the tradition of nineteenth-century literature devoted to the cause of church union, a topic of particular relevance in the lands of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where Catholicism and Orthodoxy had coexisted for centuries. The Polish edition was published in Warsaw in 1831, during the November Uprising, at the Missionary Priests’ printing house—two years after the translator’s death—and is thus a posthumous work. The author of the German original was Hermann Joseph Schmitt, whose surname is rendered as “Schitt” in the Polish edition.

The Polish version was prepared by Fr. Franciszek Siarczyński (1758–1829), a historian and geographer associated with the Piarist Order. In 1794, during the Kościuszko Uprising, he wrote for the *Gazeta Wolna Warszawska*, combining his clerical vocation with political journalism. In 1827, after the Ossoliński collection was moved from Vienna to Lviv, he became the head of the Ossoliński National Institute Library and directed it until his death in 1829. For years, he collected material for a historical and geographical dictionary of Galicia, which was not published until 1857 as a weekly supplement titled “Rozmaitości” to the “Gazeta Lwowska.”

The provenance of this piece is complex. On the front endpaper, an inventory slip reads “Zygmunt Chrzanowski, Section H, No. 537”; on the next page, there are three handwritten ownership signatures: “F. Bielewicz,” “Z. Chrzanowski,” and “Wenincjusz Soboń.” Zygmunt Chrzanowski of the Korab coat of arms (1872–1936), born in Dziadkowo in Podlasie, was a landowner and politician; in 1918, he served as Minister of the Interior in the government of Józef Świeżyński; he died in Warsaw and was laid to rest at Powązki Cemetery. The section designation and serial number on the inventory card indicate a systematically organized private book collection.

A posthumous translation by the first director of the Ossolineum Library, published in Warsaw during the November Uprising, with provenance from the minister dating to 1918 — a valuable resource for researchers of the history of the church union and ecumenical thought, historians of the Church in the Kingdom of Poland, and collectors of the writings of Father Franciszek Siarczyński.

The block is compact and tightly bound; the original stitching holds the sections firmly in place, with no loose or detached pages; the volume is complete in terms of text. Handmade paper of high stiffness, with scattered foxing, acid-induced yellowing, discoloration, and superficial soiling along the margins from past pagination; no modern underlining and no postwar library stamps. All ownership marks—the inventory label and signatures—are legible and sharp, without any staining of the paper. The hardcover half-cloth binding is clean, with slight dust on the covers and minimal scuffing on the cardboard edges. Overall condition is good.

Catalog ID: 17180x20-B-W