Master Polikarp's Dialog with Death

The original version of the dialogue has been lost; what remains is an incomplete copy from 1463–1465, belonging to Mikołaj of Mirzyniec (Mikołaj z Mirzyńca). The ending of the work was known due to its 16th century Russian translation. It has 498 lines, and presents the everyday life of members of different social classes in 15th century Poland. A formerly unknown printed edition of Rozmowa Mistrza Polikarpa ze Śmiercią (Master Polikarp’s Dialogue with Death) from 1542 (Cracow, Maciej Scharffenberg) has been discovered in one of the European university libraries. The discovery was made by Professor Wiesław Wydra from the Institute of Polish Philology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. The critical edition of the discovered text has been published by prof. Wiesław Wydra and became available on 7 November 2018. == Characters ==

• Master Polikarp – a well-educated person • Death – pale, skinny, bald, yellowish, without nose and lips, showing its ribs, naked, a rotten kind of a woman; it holds a scythe in its hands, and its appearance reminds the reader that life is short, and that after death, human bodies decay == See also ==