The salaries of professors from Poland at the University of Bologna in the second half of the 15th century Cover Image

Wynagrodzenia profesorów z Polski na Uniwersytecie Bolońskim w drugiej połowie XV wieku
The salaries of professors from Poland at the University of Bologna in the second half of the 15th century

Author(s): Stanisław A. Sroka
Subject(s): Cultural history, Economic history, Oral history, 15th Century
Published by: Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: University of Bologna; Polish astronomers of the 15th century; salaries of professors

Summary/Abstract: In the State Archive of Bologna there are registers of salaries paid to the professors of the University of Bologna, staring from 1470. They were paid quarterly, usually in April, July, October and December. Every register includes the names of all lecturers, who were employed in a given academic year, beginning with the university of law (citramontans and ultramontans), then the medical university and artists, and at the end are those who held various university dignities and offices. Among all professors in the analysed period (from 1470 till the end of the 15th century) there are names of four Poles, who lectured in Bologna at the time and received salaries for that. They were: Jakub of Zalesie, Jan de Bossis, Jerzy Koternak of Lviv and Mikołaj Wódka of Kwidzyn, later excellent astronomers. Jan de Bossis, although he most probably came from the Bossi family of Milan, is listed in Bologna records as Polonus. Besides the registers of salaries, in the archive of Bologna there also survive lists of punishments for not holding the classes. These were financial penalties, diminishing a professor’s salary. The paper discusses briefly the lives of the Poles mentioned, with special attention to their stay and activities at the University of Bologna. All of them were counted as members of Polish intellectual elite of the last three decades of the 15th century.

  • Issue Year: 2017
  • Issue No: 83
  • Page Range: 175-186
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: Polish