“A Pearl of Powerful Learning”: The University of Cracow in the Fifteenth Century

Mar
01
2018

5:00pm | Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, Kislak Center, Van-Pelt Library, 6th floor

Paul W. Knoll, University of Southern California

DATE: Thursday, March 1, 2018
TIME: 5:00pm
LOCATION: Class of 1978 Orerry Pavilion, Kislak Center, Van-Pelt

Prof. Knoll's talk is based on his recent book, A Pearl of Powerful Learning: The University of Cracow in the Fifteenth Century (Brill, 2016), which is the first fully developed history of the University of Cracow in this period in over a century. The book places the school in the context of late medieval universities, traces the process of its foundation, analyzes its institutional growth, its setting in the Polish royal capital, its role in national life, and provides a social and geographical profile of students and faculty. It includes extended treatment of the content of intellectual life and accomplishments of the school with reference to the works of its most important scholars in the medieval arts curriculum, medicine, law, and theology. The emergence of early Renaissance humanist interests at the university is also discussed.

A Pearl of Powerful Learning is the Winner of the Early Slavic Studies Association 2016 Book Prize and was cited as a major contribution to the study of Polish history by international scholars as a part of the 2017 Pro Historia Polonorum Award given to Prof. Knoll by the Polish Historical Association.

Paul W. Knoll is Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University of Southern California. His other major publications include The Rise of the Polish Monarchy. Piast Poland in East Central Europe 1320-1370 (Chicago, 1972) and (with Frank Schaer) Gallus Anonymus, Gesta Principum Polonorum = The Deeds of the Princes of the Poles (Budapest, 2003)

The talk is co-sponsored by the Faculty Working Group in Global Medieval Studies, the History Department, Russian and East European Studies Department, and the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies.