Instauracio Studii: the Foundation of a Pearl of Powerful Learning
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
CHAPTER 1 Instauracio Studii: The Foundation of a Pearl of Powerful Learning The end of the beginning for the University of Cracow came in mid-summer 1400. Less than a decade and one-half before, King Władysław Jagiełło had been the pagan Grand Prince of the still unconverted Lithuanians. Now as the Christian ruler of Catholic Poland, he was presiding over the opening in Cracow of an institution which, in its several European permutations, was, as A.B. Cobban has noted,1 one of the most “valuable and fructifying bequests of the middle ages to the modern world.” On Monday 26 July, in the house he had purchased for the school, the king stood in the presence of learned dignitaries from throughout the kingdom and proclaimed the establishment of a studium in Cracow, where his predecessor Casimir the Great had sought to found one in the 1360s. Although his wife Jadwiga, herself ruler of Poland since 1384, had also been a fervent supporter of this reactivation, she had not lived to see it; she had died the year before. Thus it fell to the king to complete what she and he had begun. In his proclamation he decreed that in Cracow there should be A pearl of all powerful learning to produce men noteworthy for the ripe- ness of their judgment, clad in the splendours of the virtues and flourish- ing in diverse branches of study, and in that place let a plentiful spring of knowledge well up, from the abundance whereof all desirous of being imbued with learning may take a draught.2 1 A.B. Cobban, The Medieval Universities: their development and organization, (London: Methuen, 1975), 235. 2 CDUC, I, no. 16, 25–30, here 26. This charter is also printed in Najstarsze przywileje Uniwersytetu Krakowskiego / The Oldest Charters of the University of Cracow, edited with an introduction by Bożena Wyrozumska, ed. (Cracow: Biuro Jubileuszowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2000), 43–47; and, in the following item, 51–56. In the text above, I have utilized the translation of these words in Casimir’s documents of foundation (1364) found in University of Cracow, Documents Concerning Its Origins, with An Introduction by Leon Koczy (Dundee, Scotland: Millennium Poloniae Christianae, 1966), 81. Jagiełło’s document draws upon the earlier decree verbatim at this point. This Dundee volume was prepared by the Polish diaspora in Scotland to celebrate the millennium of Polish Christianity in 1966. It is revealing of the values of this émigré community, whose presence abroad was due to events of the Second World War and © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/97890043�60�9_003 Instauracio Studii 11 From this act and those to follow in the next days, the school in Cracow even- tually come to honor Jagiełło as its greatest benefactor, and today it is known as the Jagiellonian University (Universitas Jagellonica, Uniwersytet Jagielloński), proudly bearing the name of its second founder.3 The details of this founda- tion represent the culmination of a process whose roots lie in the university tradition of the middle ages sketched in the Introduction to this study. But they have their source equally in the Casimiran era of the previous century and in late fourteenth century attempts to bring about the instauracio studii that was successfully accomplished in Jagiełło’s lifetime. This chapter is devoted to these latter two elements and the details of the foundation of 1400. The Casimiran Foundation According to a long-standing historiographical tradition, Casimir the Great, King of Poland from 1333 to 1370, had recognized early in his reign the impor- tance of university education for the welfare of his kingdom. Spurred by the example of Emperor Charles IV, who with papal support had founded his own university in Prague in 1347, Casimir dispatched Chancellor Florian Mokrski of Łęczyca, who had studied canon law in Padua and was one of his most trusted the subsequent establishment of Communism in Poland, that it should choose to mark the millennium by reference to the establishment of an institution of higher learning. 3 Son of Lithuanian Grand Prince Algirdas (Polish Olgierd), King Władysław was born in 1348. He ruled Lithuania as Grand Prince from 1377 to 1401 under his Lithuanian name Jogaila, but this was eventually Polonized to Jagiełło after he converted to Catholic Christianity and married the Polish ruler Jadwiga in 1386. At that time he adopted the Christian name Władysław (Wladislaus). For his biography see, among much else, the following: Małgorzata Duczmal, Jagiellonowie. Leksykon biograficzny (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1996), 461– 478; Urszula Borkowska, Dynastia Jagiellonów w Polsce (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2011), 36–46; and Jadwiga Krzyżaniakowa and Jerzy Ochmański, Władysław II Jagiełło (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1990). For the appellation “Jagiellonian” as applied to the Cracow Studium, note that the king is designated first among the secular personages listed in the “Nota modum et ordinem petendi pro benefactoribus Universitatis” (MS Cracow, BJ 258, f. 2), printed in Album Studiosorum, 1, 8–9 and Metryka, 1, 5–6, where he is identified as “funda- tore et conservatore.” (Two other lay names above his have either been crossed out or, per- haps, added later.) The question of Jagiełło’s status as “founder,” which will be touched upon again in Chapter Three, is addressed by Krzysztof Stopka, “The Jagiellonian Foundation of Cracow University,” Quaestiones medii aevi novae 8 (2003): 49–66, the English version of his “Jagiellońska fundacja Uniwersytetu Krakowskiego,” Rocznik Krakowski 69 (2003): 35–46. The university was officially designated “Jagiellonian” in the Organic Statute of 1817, which gov- erned the Free City of Cracow that had been established at the Congress of Vienna..