Meeting with Teachers and Students of the Jagellonian University (22 June 1983)

On Wednesday, 22 June 1983, the Holy Father met with the teachers and students of the Jagellonian University in Krakow. In his address, the Pope reminisced about the many years, as a resident of Krakow, he had studied there, even during the Nazi occupation.

Your Excellency, Rector, Magnificent
Academic Senate of the first University in Poland,
Minister, Professors, Researchers, Students,
Distinguished and dear Sirs:

1. I cannot hide the fact that today I am particularly moved to cross the threshold of the “Alma Mater Jagiellonianus”. For many years, as a resident of Krakow, I have often come across this complex of buildings, which conceal the University within itself — and yet it has not lost any of its grandeur. It has not become ordinary. It has remained great with that fundamental grandeur which it possesses in the history of the Fatherland and in the history of Polish, European and world culture. This is how his student, Father Peter Skarga, saw it when he called the Krakow Academy “a happy gift from the Polish Kings and the ornament of this Crown” (Lives of the Saints, 1855, p. 73). In my daily contact with it, during the forty years of my stay here, I have not for a moment lost the awareness that I am in connection with something great. One of those things that decide the place of my Fatherland in the history of universal human culture.

2. I first walked through the doors of the "Collegium Maius" as a ten-year-old primary school student to attend my older brother's doctorate at the Faculty of Medicine of the Jagiellonian University. I still remember that ceremony in the University Hall.

Almost thirty-five years have passed since I was given a similar promotion at the Faculty of Theology. This promotion constituted the completion of studies in a sense at two universities: the Jagiellonian and the Roman, the "Angelicum", where I studied in the years 1946-48.

3. The previous years of my studies in Krakow coincided with the period of the Second World War and the Nazi occupation . I began my studies in the autumn of 1938 at the Faculty of Philosophy, then enrolled in the Faculty of Humanities. I have deeply engraved in my memory that single year of studies before the war: the entire university atmosphere, the names of the great professors of whom I had the honour of being a student, the faces of my friends, most of whom were separated from me by the events of the years 1939-45. It is with even greater joy that I see some of them present here today. I would like to place in their hands my gratitude for all that I owe to the Faculty of Humanities of the Jagiellonian University . Even today I am reaping the fruits of that study, which in fact was very brief and fragmentary.

4. During the period of clandestinity during the occupation , I began my studies as a worker in a factory in Borek Falecki at the clandestine Faculty of Theology of the Jagiellonian University . It was in the autumn of 1942. Amidst the terrible trials of the war, I gradually discovered within myself a vocation to the priesthood and embarked on a new path. My studies at the Faculty of Theology in the autumn of 1942 marked the beginning of this path. The first stage was clandestinity, and then, from January 1945, I continued my regular studies at this Faculty.

This was the second chapter of my student experience, very different from the pre-war one, which in a way complemented the previous one. As a student at the Major Ecclesiastical Seminary in Kraków, in those early post-war years I was able to take part in the life of the university's academic society: for a certain period I was even vice-president of the Brotherhood of Students of the Jagiellonian University — "Bratniak".

5. After completing my studies and research doctorate at the Faculty of Theology, I continued to be in contact with the Athenaeum. In November 1953 I was also granted my habilitation in the field of moral theology. This was the last habilitation at the Faculty of Theology of the Jagiellonian University before the abolition of that Faculty — after almost six centuries — from the University structure: from the oldest " Alma Mater " in Poland. From my "Alma Mater"!

6. As I return to its walls today, at the kind invitation of the Rectorate, I feel — as I have always felt in the past — the historic greatness of the Jagiellonian University, to which Providence has allowed me to link, albeit in a somewhat fragmentary way, the early years of my life. Through the prism of that unforgettable and irreplaceable experience, I embrace the more than six centuries of existence of the University at the heart of the history of my country.

"The University served the truth and the Republic," writes Revelo Konatanty Michalski, "for centuries, sharing with it good and bad fortune, successes and calamities, so that the entire Republic could say with Jagellon to the Polish Academy: My daughter, bone of my bones and blood of my blood" (Where are we going, Krakow, 1964, p. 91).

I go back to the year 1364, to the beginnings during the reign of Casimir; I go back to the year 1397, to that second beginning, linked to the names of the founders of the Jagiellonian dynasty, who were at the same time the founders of the homonymous Athenaeum.

7. How many great names in the history of the Nation, Science, Culture! It is enough to mention only: Wojciech of Brudzewo, Mikolaj Kopernik, Maciej Miechowita, Stanislaw of Skalbmierz, Pawel Wlodkowik, Jakub of Paradyz, Saint John of Kety, Zbigniew Olesnicki, Stanislaw Hozjusz, Mikòlaj Rey, Jan Kochanowski, Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski, Marchi Kromer.

These are just a few names from the first period of the Jagiellonian Academy, which was also the period of its particular splendor .

8. Then the centuries passed . Epochs in the history of Poland, Europe and the world. Epochs in the history of science and culture. Through all these centuries the Jagiellonian Athenaeum remained at the very heart of Polish science and culture.

It is not possible to make a complete list here. Let me focus on: Jan Sniadecki, Hugo Kollataj, Zygmunt Wróblewski, Karol Olszewski, Marian Smoluchowski.

9. And now we are approaching our own times . Of those great names with whom I had the chance to meet personally during my studies. It is enough to name only the professors: Pigon, Kolaczkowski, Klemensiewicz, Kamykowski... of these only Professor Urbanczyk is still alive, who, in the first year of the Faculty of Letters, directed our exercises in descriptive phonetics as an assistant. And then, in the Faculty of Theology. I remember all the professors who are alive and those who have left us. Forgive me if I do not name them.

10. A great genealogy of teachers. And the genealogy of the disciples of that "mother of Polish schools", as John Sobieski called her, when, after the victory of Vienna, he laid the Turkish standards on the tomb of St. John Kanty. "In memory of the fortunate nourishment of science at the University of Krakow" (Inscription on the house of St. John Kanty). The university is like a great family. All united by the reciprocal love of truth, of that truth which is the very foundation of the development of man in his own humanity. It is also the foundation of the development of society in its deepest identity.

During my visit to UNESCO on 2 June 1980, I said: "I am the son of a nation that has lived through the greatest experiences in history, repeatedly condemned to death by its neighbours, but which has survived and continued to be itself. It has preserved its identity and, despite the fragmentation and occupations abroad, its national sovereignty, relying not on the resources of physical force but solely on its culture. This culture has shown itself, on occasion, to be a power greater than all other forces... There is a fundamental sovereignty of society that is manifested in the culture of the nation" (n. 14).

What is the part of the Jagiellonian University in the creation and dissemination of this culture that forms the sovereignty of the spiritual, we all know.

Today — in these truly extraordinary circumstances — I, John Paul II, Bishop of Rome, stand before these portraits, before this great academic genealogy of my Jagiellonian "Alma Mater" and, as one does before a mother , I kiss her hands, to bear witness with this gesture to the great debt I have incurred. I personally, and to my entire Nation.

11. If you wish, Rector Magnificent, most excellent Senate, that I accept the doctorate "honoris causa", I do so in a spirit of obedience to the "Alma Mater", although the rules of my ministry do not provide for it.

12. Above the door of one of the rooms of the ancient University, precisely here in the "Collegium Maius", we read this inscription: Plus ratio, quam vis .

I wish you, Jagiellonian University, that in the seventh century of your existence you will always remain faithful to this academic motto. May your presence in the life of Poland today serve to bring about the victory of what is worthy of man as a rational and free being. May it defend against the exclusive dominance of material forces. I wish you, Jagiellonian University – a great protagonist among all the athenaeums in the country – that you will always be able to contribute to the consolidation of all Polish life on the foundations of wisdom, knowledge and righteousness .

I ask God to bless successive generations of your Teachers and Students.

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