Europejskie inspiracje, czyli o dawnych “podróżach do szkół w cudzych krajach”

Abstract

The Article attempts to inquire into premises encouraging young people in 16th –18th Centuries Poland to undertake journeys to foreign schools and academies as well as their progress and effects. Basing on historical sources such as diaries and private correspondence, the Author not only attempts to come up with a portrait of a typical “ERASMUS student” of the Renaissance and Baroque, but also to highlight specific features of education in that era. This includes discussion of premises which prompted Polish and Lithuanian gentry and burgher youth to choose education in Western European countries. For them such journeys presented quite unique and relatively popular opportunity for development in both educational and social aspects. Threats inherent in such a peregrinatio academica, with being very far from home for very long, and are also pointed out. The Author describes how the education worked and how individual academic institutions used to build their prestige in times in question (finding it not really different from our days). Finally, the question is asked about the influence the phenomenon of educational journeys had upon the history and growth of Poland.