Ostroh Academy - History

History

In the 17th century, all the universities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were under influence of the Catholic or Protestant nobles. To counter this influence, Count Konstanty Ostrogski, one of the most influential people in the Crown of Poland and a major partisan of the Orthodox faith, founded a large university-like school in his estate in Ostrog in what is now Ukraine. Ostrogski envisioned a lay academy, that would however strengthen the Orthodox spirit in the country and prevent mass conversions to Protestantism, Greek or Latin Catholicism, a process in full swing at the time. and as such was first mentioned in Piotr Skarga's 1577 On the Unity of God's Church under a Single Shepherd and on Greek Dismissal of this Union.

The school was founded some time between 1576 and 1580, but it did not start full activities until 1585. Initially tasked only with translation of The Bible to Ruthenian (later published as the Ostrog Bible), with time it grew to become a permanent institution of secondary education.

A large part of the funding came from Princess Halszka Ostrogska's testament of 1579, in which she donated "six times sixty thousand" (360,000) Lithuanian grosz to local school, hospital and St. Spas' monastery near Lutsk.

The school, while officially styled Academy rather than University, was modelled after European universities of the epoch. It taught the trivium (grammar, rhetorics, dialectics) as well as the quadrivium (arithmetics, geometry, music and astronomy). In addition to that, it also featured education in Latin, Greek and Ruthenian (predecessor to both modern Ukrainian and Belarusian), the only institution of higher education in the world teaching that language at the time.

The first rector of the academy was Herasym Smotrycki, a noted Greek Orthodox writer of the epoch. With time, Ostrogski assembled a significant group of professors, many of them having been expelled from the Jagiellonian University (such as the first dean of astronomy Jan Latosz) or having quarreled with the king or the Catholic clergy. However, the political nature of the conflict between Ostrogski, Protestants and Catholics prevented the school from attracting enough professors of international fame. It did however invite numerous Greek scientists from abroad, including Smotrycki's successor Kyrillos Lukaris, as well as Metropolitan bishop Kizikos, Nicefor Parasios, the envoy of the Metropolitan of Constantinople, and Emmanuel Achilleos, a religious writer. Some of the professors were also of local stock, including Jurij Rohatyniec, Wasyl Maluszycki and Jow Kniahicki. The religious character of the academy was underlined by close ties to Orthodox monasteries of Derman, Dubno, Slutsk and later also Pochayiv.

While the school failed to attract as many students as the founder had envisioned, it nevertheless became very influential as a centre of Ruthenian (that is Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian) culture and literature. Among the notable alumni were religious writer Zacharius Kopystensky, hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, one of the fathers of Belarusian poetry Andrzej Rymsza and future exarchs of Lwów Gedeon Balaban and of Polotsk Meletius Smotrytsky, son of the first rector and a noted Orthodox writer and teacher. It also became the alma mater of professors of the so-called brotherhood schools for Orthodox burghers being founded in late 16th century all around the country in accordance with the royal decree of 1585 by king Stefan Batory. After the foundation of the Jesuit Collegium in Ostroh in 1624 the academy lost its significance, and it was closed around 1640.