This process was mapped out in cultural terms. In the north, Flemish architects originally brought in by the Teutonic Order and the Hanse left their mark in the churches, town halls and city walls of Gdańsk and other cities. In Poznań, Warsaw and Kalisz, the Flemish style was mitigated by local variants—themselves marked by Franconian and Burgundian examples of an earlier age. In Kraków the most remarkable cross-breeding took place, dominated at first by a strong Bohemian influence which was superseded by that of German artists, most notably by one of the greatest sculptors of the Middle Ages, the German Veit Stoss, who settled in Kraków in 1477.
Polish thought and literature remained encased in the limits of medieval parochialism, their primary expression being religious verse. The only notable prose to be written at the time were the annals of Jan Długosz, a church canon and tutor to the royal family, begun in 1455. Długosz was a creature of the Middle Ages. As he painstakingly wrote his last
Although it had been founded by the Piast Kazimierz the Great and lavishly endowed by the Angevin Queen Jadwiga, it had come to be known as the Jagiellon University. It was under this dynasty that it received funds necessary for expansion and the patronage of kings who recognised its uses. Foreigners from as far afield as England and Spain came to study or teach in its halls, while native graduates went abroad to widen their learning, one of them, Maciej Kolbe of Świebodzin, becoming rector of the Paris Sorbonne in 1480. During the reign of Kazimierz IV (1446-92) some 15,000 students passed through the university, including the major dignitaries, prelates and even soldiers of the time.
The Church, and particularly its prelates, also encouraged the dissemination of the new ideas emanating from Italy. Piotr Bniński, Bishop of Kujavia, devoted his own fortune and that of his diocese to patronage of the arts, paying more attention to arranging symposia by humanist poets than to the spiritual duties of his position. Grzegorz of Sanok, Archbishop of Lwów, who had studied in Germany and Italy, established at his residence of Dunajów near Lwów a small court modelled on that of Urbino, nurtured by a stream of visitors from Italy. It was there Buonaccorsi first came when he had to flee his native country.
Buonaccorsi later moved to the royal court in Kraków and wrote, among other things, a set of counsels for the king, like some Polish Machiavelli. His writings, which he published under the pen name of Callimachus, his position at the Jagiellon University, and his part in founding, along with the German poet Conrad Celtis, a sort of Polish writers’ workshop, the
The Italian connection grew stronger as Poles travelled to study or to visit cities such as Padua, Bologna, Florence, Mantua and Urbino. Italians came to Poland, bringing with them amenities and refinements, ranging from painting to postal services. The impact was omnipresent and lasting, nowhere more so than on the language. The first treatise on Polish orthography appeared in 1440, and the Bible was first translated in 1455, for Jagiełło’s last wife, Sophia. In their search for words or expressions to describe hitherto unknown objects or sentiments, the Poles more often than not borrowed from Italian, particularly in areas such as food, clothing, furnishing and behaviour, as well as in the expression of thought. These words rapidly passed from speech into writing, and from writing into print.
The year 1469 saw the first commercial use of Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type, in Venice. The idea was taken up throughout Europe with breathtaking speed: printing presses began operating in Naples, Florence and Paris in 1471; in Spain, the Netherlands and Kraków in 1473; in Wrocław, where the first book in Polish was printed in 1475; and in London in 1476.