„Everyman his own historian” – o pojęciu „historia” w wybranych słownikach i encyklopediach długiego wieku osiemnastego

In the Polish historiography of the early modern era, still little attention is devoted to the semantics of particular concepts. Even more so, there is a lack of studies showing the transfer of ideas in the Republic of Letters. For these reasons, an analysis of the concept of ‘history’ in the dictionary and encyclopaedic works of the eighteenth century was carried out. The aim of the research was, on the one hand, to analyse the content of articles devoted to ‘history’ and, on the other, to show the influence (or lack thereof) of some works on others. Works by Louis Moréri, Pierre Bayle, Ephraim Chambers, Johann Heinrich Zedler, Gianfrancesco Pivati, the authors of the Encyclopédie, Ignacy Krasicki, and Franciszek Salezy Jezierski were explored. The analysis made it possible to conclude that the Enlightenment spirit was hugely influenced by Bayle’s ideas, which were later developed by the French encyclopaedists: the need to separate a legendary/ mythical past from real history, the need for criticism and a critical approach to historiographical works (including ancient ones), the attention to the difficulty of being a good historian, and the functions of history, especially moral‑educational.