Correspondence was an essential form of communication in the world of the humanities in the 1960s and 1970s. The letters exchanged between Józef Andrzej Gierowski and Jacek Staszewski exemplify the scholars’ discussion of Saxon times. This collection is at the same time a reflection of the main currents of research on political history and cultural history of the 18th century. Simultaneously, it is a testimony to the struggle of historians with the black legend of the reign of August II and August III.
The article presents the nature of these conversations and the topics discussed by the scholars: an exchange of views on resources in European archives, the reigns of August II and August III, a discussion of the Enlightenment, reviews of subsequent monographs and doctoral theses prepared at seminars in Kraków and Toruń. The correspondence between the two scholars is evidence not only of a shared passion, an interest in the Saxon era, neglected for many decades and marked by a black legend, but also of an intellectual exchange between the two humanists, which in time developed into a friendship.

The article discusses the dispute over the chronology of the Enlightenment in Poland and the views of Józef Gierowski and Jacek Staszewski regarding the assessment of the Saxon times and the origins of the Polish Enlightenment. The problem of the reception of Western cultures (French, English, Italian and German) in the times of the Enlightenment in Poland was also treated more broadly.
After presenting various understandings of culture in Polish historiography, the positions of Polish researchers on the assessment of the Enlightenment in Europe (Emanuel Rostworowski) and then the culture of the Saxon times and the Enlightenment in Poland (Józef Andrzej Gierowski, Janusz Maciejewski, Jacek Staszewski) were discussed. The achievements of Polish historiography in the field of research on the reception in Poland of the works of the most eminent authors of the French Enlightenment (these were primarily Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu), English (including Locke), Italian (Genovesi, Beccaria) and German (including Wolff, Gottsched) were shown in greater detail. The reception of this work would not have been possible without the appearance in Poland of an intellectual elite, often speaking French, who were able to evaluate and appreciate the innovative views of Western writers and philosophers.

The main purpose of the article is to present the achievements of J.A. Gierowski in his research into the Saxon times, i.e., the period of the reigns of August II and August III Wettin in the Polish‑Lithuanian Commonwealth (1697‑1763). For a long time, this period was assessed negatively in historiography. There was a widespread view that both for the Polish‑Lithuanian state and for Saxony, those years meant decline and catastrophe. Gierowski, who began his scientific work after World War II, carefully analysing Polish and German archival sources, created his own paradigm of research on Saxon times. After rejecting extreme assessments, Gierowski focused on the following elements of this paradigm: 1. the problem of internal reforms 2. a general assessment of the importance of the Polish‑Saxon union and its conse-quences 3. the problem of the place in Europe, i.e., diplomatic activity, and 4. the economic and social situation combined by the “one‑person rulers” of states. This model of research proce-dure has been accepted by historians.