The article by Magdalena Ryszka-Kurczab discusses selected contexts of a 16th humanist tragedy Jephthes sive votum by a Scottish humanist George Buchanan, translated into Polish by Jan Zawicki and published in 1587 in Cracow. As far as plot is concerned the text is based on the Old Testament story about Jephte, who had sacrificed his daughter to God (Idc 11, 29–40), and is structurally modeled on Iphigenia at Aulis by Eurypides. The author of the article draws attention to the fact that – aside from the pattern of Euripides’ tragedy – there were several other literary and non-literary contexts that had crucially influenced on Jephthes sive votum: firstly its dependence on the school stage of Collegium de Guyenne in Bordeaux, where George Buchanan taught about 1539–1543 and where the play had been probably written, secondly the long and ambiguous exegesis tradition of the biblical passage on Jephte and the 16th polemic between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants on the vows (whether all of them have to be fulfilled or – under some circumstances – not) that escalated in the forties of 16th century in the letters exchange between reformer Martinus Bucerus of Strasburg and his catholic opponent Bartholomeus Latomus.