University of Königsberg Padua University
Where was Jan Kochanowski educated from 1552 to 1555?
Jan Kochanowski Janek Kochanek ( ; 1530 – 22 August 1584 ) was a Polish Renaissance poet who established poetic patterns that would become integral to the Polish literary language . He is commonly regarded as the greatest Polish poet before Adam Mickiewicz . Life . Jan Kochanowski was born at Sycyna , near Radom , Poland . He was the older brother of Andrzej Kochanowski , who would also become a poet and translator . Little is known of Jans early education . At fourteen , fluent in Latin , he was sent to the Kraków Academy . After graduating in 1547 at the age of seventeen , he attended the University of Königsberg ( Królewiec ) , in Ducal Prussia ( a fiefdom of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland ) , and Padua University in Italy . At Padua , Kochanowski came in contact with the great humanist scholar Francesco Robortello . Kochanowski closed his fifteen-year period of studies and travels with a final visit to France , where he met the poet Pierre Ronsard . In 1559 Kochanowski returned to Poland for good , where he remained active as a humanist and Renaissance poet . He spent the next fifteen years close to the court of King Sigismund II Augustus , serving for a time as royal secretary . In 1574 , following the decampment of Polands recently elected King Henry of Valois ( whose candidacy to the Polish throne Kochanowski had supported ) , Kochanowski settled on a family estate at Czarnolas ( Blackwood ) to lead the life of a country squire . In 1575 he married Dorota Podlodowska , with whom he had seven children . Kochanowski is sometimes referred to in Polish as Jan z Czarnolasu ( John of Blackwood ) . It was there that he wrote his most memorable works , including The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys and the Laments . Kochanowski died , probably of a heart attack , in Lublin on 22 August 1584 . Works . Kochanowski never ceased to write in Latin ; however , his main achievement was the creation of Polish-language verse forms that made him a classic for his contemporaries and posterity . His first major masterpiece was Odprawa posłów greckich ( The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys , 1578 ; recently translated into English by Indiana Universitys Bill Johnston ) . This was a blank-verse tragedy that recounted an incident leading up to the Trojan War . It was the first tragedy written in Polish , and its theme of the responsibilities of statesmanship continues to resonate to this day . The play was performed at the wedding of Jan Zamoyski and Krystyna Radziwiłł at Ujazdów Castle in Warsaw on 12 January 1578 . Kochanowskis best-known masterpiece is Treny ( Threnodies , 1580 ) , a series of nineteen elegies on the death of his beloved two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Urszula ( pet name , Urszulka ) . It was translated into English ( as Laments ) in 1920 by Dorothea Prall , and in 1995 by Stanisław Barańczak and Seamus Heaney . Other well-known poems by Kochanowski are Proporzec albo hołd pruski ( The Banner , or the Prussian Homage ) , the satiric poem Zgoda ( Accord ) published in 1564 , and the merry Fraszki ( Epigrams , published 1584 ) , reminiscent of the Decameron . His translation of the Psalms is highly regarded . He also wrote in Latin , examples being Lyricorum libellus ( Little Book of Lyrics , 1580 ) , Elegiarum libri quatuor ( Four Books of Elegies , 1584 ) , and numerous poems composed for special occasions . He greatly enriched Polish poetry by naturalizing foreign poetic forms , which he knew how to imbue with a national spirit . His writings were published collectively for the first time at Krakow in 1584–90 , but the so-called jubilee publication , which appeared in Warsaw in 1884 , is better . Many of his poems were translated into German by H . Nitschmann ( 1875 ) .