The Jesuit College in Polotsk (Latin : Collegium Polocense) was a college established by the Jesuit Order in Polotsk, then part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later occupied by the Russian Empire, and now in Belarus. It was established in 1580 and continued to function until 1820 when Jesuits were banished from the Russian Empire.
Polish King Stephen Báthory captured Polotsk in 1579 during the Livonian War and invited Jesuits to the city in hopes to lessen the influence of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Jesuits established a college (equivalent to a secondary school), modeled after the Jesuit Academy in Vilnius, in 1580. Its first rector was Piotr Skarga. [1] A faculty of philosophy was added in 1649 and a faculty of theology in 1737.
After the first partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, Polotsk became part of the Russian Empire. That saved the college from the suppression of the Jesuits as Russian Empress Catherine the Great did not follow papal decrees. After lobbying by Joseph de Maistre, the college was elevated to an academy (equivalent to a university) in 1812 by Tsar Alexander I of Russia only to be closed eight years later when Alexander I banished the Jesuits from the Russian Empire and closed their schools. [2] Academy's library, which held up to 60,000 volumes, was dispersed among various institutions in Eastern Europe.
The Polotsk State University [3] and the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Warsaw, established in 1998, both claim historical heritage of the Polotsk College. [4] In 2005, former buildings of the college were partially reconstructed and transferred to the Polotsk State University. [5]
Stephen Báthory was Voivode of Transylvania (1571–1576), Prince of Transylvania (1576–1586), King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania (1576–1586).
The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 123 years. The partitions were conducted by the Habsburg monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire, which divided up the Commonwealth lands among themselves progressively in the process of territorial seizures and annexations.
Polotsk or Polatsk is a town in Vitebsk Region, Belarus. It is situated on the Dvina River and serves as the administrative center of Polotsk District. Polotsk is served by Polotsk Airport and Borovitsy air base. As of 2024, it has a population of 79,579.
The Constitution of 3 May 1791, titled the Government Act, was a written constitution for the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that was adopted by the Great Sejm that met between 1788 and 1792. The Commonwealth was a dual monarchy comprising the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; the new constitution was intended to address political questions following a period of political agitation and gradual reform that began with the Convocation Sejm of 1764 and the election that year of the Commonwealth's last king, Stanisław August Poniatowski. It was the first codified, modern constitution in Europe and the second in the world, after that of the United States.
Minsk Voivodeship was a unit of administrative division and local government in Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1566 and later in Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, until the partitions of the Commonwealth in 1793. Centred on the city of Minsk and subordinate to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the region continued the traditions – and shared the borders – of several previously existing units of administrative division, notably a separate Duchy of Minsk, annexed by Lithuania in the 13th century. It was replaced with Minsk Governorate in 1793.
The Collegium Hosianum was the Jesuit collegium founded in 1565, 1566 by Polish Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius in Braunsberg (Braniewo), Kingdom of Poland. The town was then part of the Polish Prince-Bishopric of Warmia under rule of Cardinal Hosius. The Collegium Hosianum was one of the biggest Jesuit schools and one of the most important centres of Counter-Reformation in Europe and was particularly established to educate Catholic clergy of different countries.
Tadeusz Brzozowski, SJ was a Polish scholar, teacher, administrator and a Jesuit priest. Having secured its continuity during the suppression of the Society until its restoration, he was elected twentieth Superior General of the Society of Jesus and was its first world-wide general.
Gabriel Gruber, SJ was an Austrian Jesuit and polymath of Slovenian descent. Aside from his classical formation for the priesthood, his interests ranged across agriculture, architecture, astronomy, engineering, hydrology, physics, chemistry and art.
Franciszek Kareu, SJ was a Polish-Welsh Jesuit priest, architect, missionary and teacher in the region of modern day Belarus. During the worldwide suppression of the Society of Jesus, with the exception of the territory of the Russian Empire, he was elected temporary vicar general of the Society of Jesus in Russia from 1799 to 1801. His careful management of this precarious institutional challenge facilitated a transition leading to the universal restoration of the order in the early 19th-century.
Gabriel Lenkiewicz-Ipohorski, SJ was a Polish-Lithuanian Jesuit priest, and Temporary Vicar General of the Society of Jesus from 1785 until 1798, at a time when under papal suppression in all Catholic countries, the Society continued in Russia.
Stanislaw Czerniewicz, SJ was a Lithuanian-Polish Jesuit priest. He was Rector of the Jesuit College in Polotsk when the Society of Jesus was suppressed in 1773; in 1782, he was elected vicar general for the Jesuits in Russia in 1782 and de facto Superior General of the Society of Jesus.
The early modern era of Polish history follows the Late Middle Ages. Historians use the term early modern to refer to the period beginning in approximately 1500 AD and lasting until around the Napoleonic Wars in 1800 AD.
The history of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1648) covers a period in the history of Poland and Lithuania, before their joint state was subjected to devastating wars in the mid-17th century. The Union of Lublin of 1569 established the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a more closely unified federal state, replacing the previously existing personal union of the two countries. The Union was largely run by the Polish and increasingly Polonized Lithuanian and Ruthenian nobility, through the system of the central parliament and local assemblies, but from 1573 led by elected kings. The formal rule of the nobility, which was a much greater proportion of the population than in other European countries, constituted a sophisticated early democratic system, in contrast to the absolute monarchies prevalent at that time in the rest of Europe.[a]
The history of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1648–1764) covers a period in the history of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, from the time their joint state became the theater of wars and invasions fought on a great scale in the middle of the 17th century, to the time just before the election of Stanisław August Poniatowski, the last king of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The History of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1764–1795) is concerned with the final decades of existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The period, during which the declining state pursued wide-ranging reforms and was subjected to three partitions by the neighboring powers, coincides with the election and reign of the federation's last king, Stanisław August Poniatowski.
Jesuit College in Khyriv, formerly Jesuit College in Chyrów, was a purpose-built Polish secondary boys college, owned by the Society of Jesus, in the occupied Austro-Hungarian partition of Poland in the late 19th century. The vast estate, comprising the college, has the rare distinction of having existed in at least five separate national Jurisdictions in the last century and a half. From 1918 the college was in independent Poland until 1939 when it ceased to exist as an institution, although not as an asset, due to foreign invasions, first by the Red Army till 1941, then by the German Wehrmacht until 1943, before being re-taken by the Soviet Union. Since 1944 the site and its entire estate was in the USSR and since 1991 has been in present-day Ukraine.
The Ruthenian Uniate Church was a particular church of the Catholic Church in the territory of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was created in 1595/1596 by those clergy of the Eastern Orthodox Church who subscribed to the Union of Brest. In the process, they switched their allegiances and jurisdiction from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople to the Holy See.
Žygimantas Liauksminas was a Lithuanian Jesuit theologian, philosopher, theorist of rhetoric and music, founder of Lithuanian musicology, one of the first Lithuanian professors and rectors of the University of Vilnius.
Heraclius Lisovsky or Heraclius Listovsky was a bishop of the Ruthenian Uniate Church served at first as administrator for Metropolitan see of the Uniate Church in the Russian Empire.
