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