THE ORIGINS OF GEOGRAPHY AT THE JAGIELLONIAN UNIVERSITY eography in Kraków has a tradition of many centuries. The growth of this field of study was one of the components contributing to the international reputation for scholarship the University of Kraków earned. Poland’s principal medieval chronicler Jan Długosz (1415–1480) is also regarded as the first Polish geographer. In 1460–1480 he gave a comprehensive description of the country’s geography in Chorographia Regni Poloniae, the introduction to his history of Poland, Annales seu cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae. He also compiled Liber beneficiorum dioecesis Cracoviensis, a record of the Church property belonging to the Diocese of Kraków, which is the first detailed account of the geography of Poland. He is appreciated for drawing up a division of the Polish territories into separate river basin systems, an important step in the development of concepts in geography, not only for Poland. At the turn of the 15th and 16th century the areas of study that determined the
Grzegorz Zygier
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Graphometer by Claude Langlois, 1730–1750. An 18th -c. measuring instrument, the predecessor of the theodolite. Jagiellonian University Museum
University’s reputation were mathematics, astronomy, and geography in the wide sense of the term. In 1490–1550 Kraków was one of the chief centres in Europe for geography. In this period, known as the Golden Age of Cracovian
Bernard Wapowski, Mappa Regni Poloniae ac M. Duc. Lithuaniae, ca. 1526, one of the earliest printed Polish maps; copy from the Jagiellonian University Museum
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and Polish geography, many geographers, both from Poland and beyond its borders, came to Kraków for an education in the field. Lectures and classes in geography at Kraków were among the earliest university courses of study in the subject on record, and they were given as of the late 15th century. In 1494 regular lectures started on cosmography, which encompassed the subject area of geography, and continued until about 1530. Analogous classes were not introduced in the universities of Germany and at Vienna until after 1500. Initially geography was closely connected with astronomy; gradually, however, descriptive geography emerged alongside astronomical geography. Textbooks were written on cosmography; they were modelled chiefly on Ptolemy. The earliest was Cosmographia dans manuductionem in tabulas Ptholomei, by Laurentius Corvinus (Wawrzyniec Korwin, ca. 1465–1527), published in Basel in 1496; followed by Introductionum compendiosum in tractatus Sphaere Joannis de Sacrobosco by Johannes Glogoviensis (Jan of Głogów, 1445–1507), published in Kraków in 1506. Johannes’