School books and libraries of academic schools supervised by the Cracow University (1588-1773)

Abstract

The author characterises schools supervised by the Cracow Academy – the very first of them, so-called the Nowodworski Collegium, has been active since 1588. Their aim was to maintain the Academy’s position in Polish education system, as well as its popularisation among the Polish gentry. These were secondary (gymnasia, colleges, academies) and primary (parish) schools. The academic schools from their beginning had taken care for the textbooks, i.e. they were developing and publishing own textbooks. Publishing had been quite easy, as the secondary schools (e.g. the Nowodworski Collegium, the Lubrański Academy, the Chełmno Academy) run their own printing houses, and disseminated their texbooks among other academic schools. Grzelecki found out that academic schools used other textbooks as well. He discusses school book collections which were developed quite randomly, from gifts mostly, therefore they included books of very different content, partially useless in teaching and upbringing the youth. Nevertheless, just as the texbooks, they played important function in activities of the academic schools of the Cracow University.