Monitor (Polish newspaper) – Warsaw

Fact of the Polish figure „Jagiellonian University”

Part of the „Transfer of the culture” topic

‘Monitor’ was a Polish Enlightenment periodical published between 1765 and 1785 on the initiative of King Stanisław August Poniatowski. It was the first journal in Poland with a journalistic and moralistic character, modelled on the English ‘The Spectator’. The main aim of the ‘Monitor’ was to criticise the vices of society and to promote modern reforms and Enlightenment ideas. The magazine drew attention to the need for education, raising the morals of citizens and political and economic reform.

Articles in the ‘Monitor’ took the form of essays, columns and satires, and their authors, such as Ignacy Krasicki and Franciszek Bohomolec, criticised the superstitions, backwardness and abuses of the nobility. ‘Monitor’ played an important role in promoting the ideas of the Enlightenment in Poland, contributing to the growth of social and cultural awareness. Its publications contributed to the formation of patriotic and modernising attitudes, which influenced the later reforms of the Great Sejm and the Constitution of 3 May.