Emotions in Motion: Intellectual Friendship between Poland and Basel in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract As objects of numerous contacts, the friendship albums ( alba amicorum ) played an integral role in building interpersonal relations. They had become a sort of social media equivalent. In them, emotions, as the diverse factor that brought people together, reflected close friendships between Polish students and their colleagues, as well as professors. By entries to the friendship albums, they had begun to live in a common ‘emotional community’; and in this way, they entered a group that was loyal to certain values and ways of expressing feelings and emotions. The aim of the present essay is to investigate this emotional community – intellectual and emotional relations that were formed by the Polish students in Basel. By analysing the entries made by the Poles, we will see how they expressed their feelings and what linguistic forms and means they used to communicate their emotions.