The Holy Cross Sermons (Polish: Kazania świętokrzyskie) are the oldest extant prose text in the Polish language, dating from the early 14th century. The documents are named after the place where they were originally housed — the Holy Cross Monastery in Poland's Holy Cross Mountains (Polish: Góry Świętokrzyskie).
The sermons, on the occasions of Church holy days, comprise fragments of five texts and one complete sermon (for St. Catherine's Day). Written on parchment, they had been cut into thin strips and used to reinforce the binding of a 15th-century Latin manuscript.
In 1831 they were taken to St. Petersburg, where they were accidentally discovered in 1890 by the renowned professor of Polish, Aleksander Brückner. They were brought back to Poland in 1925. During World War II, the Holy Cross Sermons were taken to Canada for safekeeping. They are now preserved at the National Library in Warsaw.
The photocopy of the Sermons may be seen on The Digital National Library Polona (electronic version of the Holy Cross Sermons).
Linguistically, the Holy Cross Sermons reflect an older stage of the language than the 13th century, the manuscript being a copy of original sermons composed some time from the end of 13th century. They manifest a variety of linguistic archaisms, for instance:
1) Hard-stem declension of the pronoun *tъnъ 'this one': Nom. sg. ten, Gen. sg. togo, Dat. sg. tomu;
- 1 sg. aor. widziech (cf. Lat. perf. vidi) < PSl. *viděti 'to see, to look', *viděχъ 'I saw, I looked (at); I have seen, I have looked (at)';
- 3 sg. aor. postawi (cf. Lat. perf. posuit) < PSl. *postaviti 'to place', *postavi 'he/she/it placed, has placed';
- 3 pl. aor. pośpieszychą się (cf. Lat. perf. venerunt) < PSl. *pospěšiti 'to go, to go somewhere', *pospěšišę 'they went, they went somewhere, they went out';
- 3 sg. impf. biesze (cf. Lat. impf. erat) < PSl. *byti 'to be', *běaše 'he/she/it was';
- 3 sg. impf. siedziesze (cf. Lat. impf. sedebat) < PSl. *sěděti 'to sit', *sěděaše 'he/she/it sat, was sitting'.