King Kazimierz III the Great

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 62-63:

King Kazimierz III the Great encouraged Jewish settlement in the Polish lands. The recent incidence of the so-called Black Death in Europe’s west had led Jews there to be turned into scapegoats, leading many to flee eastward. Kazimierz’s reception of the Jewish communities led some even to label him “king of the Jews”—and led Jews to revere his name. In charters granted in 1334, 1364, and 1367, Kazimierz made it clear that Jews were subjects of the Crown, and as such they were protected by it.

Kazimierz was a nearly model medieval monarch. He did more than consolidate and make secure the country’s expanding borders and provide for further economic development. He truly established the Corona Regni Poloniae—the Crown of the Polish Kingdom. No longer were the Polish lands simply the property of the Piast dynasty. As the Crown of the Polish Kingdom, they existed independently, outside the person of the monarch. In this way, one can see parallels between the formation of other states in the region. The united Bohemian lands were also referred to as the Crown of Saint Wenceslas, which Charles IV declared distinct from the fate of the Luxemburg dynasty; a similar understanding took hold in Hungary, which was also known as the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen.

Kazimierz drew up a number of statutes that would help shape the administration of the state, especially insofar as laws and the functioning of a judiciary were concerned. He also upheld the country’s defense. Even today, any Polish child can recite the ditty (unpoetically rendered here) that Kazimierz “inherited wooden towns and left them fortified with stone and brick” (Kazimierz miasta zastał drewniane i zostawił murowane). The country underwent a great program of construction. It was funded in part by a land tax paid by peasants (who nonetheless had a favorable view of the monarch, who was also known as “king of the peasants”), in part by income that came from the rich salt mines of Wieliczka and Bochnia in the south of the country. (Even today, the salt mine at Wieliczka—quite a tourist destination—is a testament to the technological feat undertaken in this early period.) Growing exports and tax revenues funded the construction of some fifty castles, and fortification walls were supplied to nearly another thirty towns.

Another major and far-sighted achievement of King Kazimierz the Great was his establishment, in 1364, of a studium generale (variously titled an academy or a university) in his capital of Kraków. Pope Urban V gave his permission for instruction to be provided in canon and civil law and all other faculties except for theology. Nonetheless, Kazimierz’s academy was a secular institution, like the universities of Padua and Bologna. Its establishment boded well for education in the Polish lands. Furthermore, it was a rare distinction in this part of the world: in Central Europe, only Prague can boast of having obtained a university earlier.