The Pen and the School: The Function and Circulation of Manuscripts in the Teaching Practices of the Zamość Academy in the First Decades of the 17th Century

Founded in 1594 by Jan Zamoyski, an eminent Polish politician and patron of culture, the Zamość Academy was a civil school with the main purpose of training cadres of the state administration. To achieve this, an educational program was drawn up based on the study of ancient literary, philosophical, and legal culture, sensitive to the evolution of humanism in the late 16th century and placed under the ideal patronage of Cicero. The legacy of this activity is a number of manuscripts, most of which contain commentaries by Zamość professors on classical texts. Examination of these sources can open a window on their formation process, their circulation and function, as well as the teaching practices that presumably gave rise to them. In the second part of the essay, the hypotheses formulated are tested on the basis of a particular case, a commentary on the Organon produced in the first decade of the academy’s activity.