The book discusses how the most severe abuses of political power, traditionally termed from the ancient times as 'tyranny', were presented in 16th century political philosophy, propaganda, and literature in Italy, France, England, Scotland, German countries, and Poland-Lithuania. Using a unique interdisciplinary methodology, the book is both timeless and timely as it demonstrates various approaches of acknowledged Renaissance intellectuals to the problem of tyranny and how best to avoid or fight it. The author consciously avoids categories of the classic history of ideas or political thought and instead reveals broader intellectual and cultural connections in the perception of tyranny in the 16th century and its impact on modern debates on different dangers of political abuses of power.

This book covers two fields of research. The first part of the volume includes essays authored by Polish, German, Czech, and Ukrainian archeologists and historians on the genesis and unique nature of the roads whereby Christianization proceeded in Polish lands in the early Middle Ages in the context of the kindred processes underway especially from the 10th century in neighboring lands. The second part of this publication includes considerations on the politics of memory as applied to the beginnings of statehood in Poland and Kievan Rus'. Chosen examples reveal the uniqueness and the evolution of various politics of memory related to the founding myths of statehood in modern Poland, Russia, and Ukraine.