Jesuit College in Polatsk

In 1580, Stefan Batory invited the Catholic Jesuit Order to settle down in the city and endowed them with lands and property. In 1581, the Jesuits opened a college in the Lower Castle of Polatsk – the first secondary educational institution of the Order on the territory of modern Belarus.

The college was originally wooden. In the 18^th century, the College complex and the Jesuit Church of Annunciation of the Virgin Mary and the Patron Saint of the King – Saint Stephen were both built of brick. The Jesuits’ building skills were of state of the art:  they constructed a land drainage system, created a complex drain sewage system, air ventilation system, and floor heating. It should also be noted that the College had a  theatre that dates back to 1585. Polatsk is proud to be the oldest theatre city in Belarus. Moreover, a specialized  seminary at the College trained musicians and had its orchestra.

The studies at the Jesuit College were based on the programmes of European schools, and the education here was free. Representatives of all confessions, as well as children of townspeople and peasants from the age of 10  were admitted to the College. During 6 years of studies, the students were expected to master Latin and Greek, to study grammar, rhetoric, poetics, to get acquainted with works of Cicero, Caesar, Ovid, Virgil, Aesop, Horace, as well as with Greek and Roman mythology. Until 1696, the old Belarusian language was taught at the College as well.

The lecturers of the College were well-educated people from different European countries:  Poland, Italy, France, Austria, Germany. Among them, there were: philosopher and Latin poet Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski, professor of rhetoric Žygimantas Liauksminas (who later taught Symiayon of Polatsk in Vilnius), orator Casimir Kojalowicz, professor of architecture Andrey Zhabrowski, teacher of Latin language Maxim Wojciechowski, and Marcin Odlanicki Poczobutt – a Belarusian from Hrodna and future rector of Vilnius University.

In 1773, Pope Clement XIV clamped down on the Jesuit Order. However, the fate of the Belarusian Jesuits had a slightly different turn. After the first partition of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1772), the north-western part of today’s Belarus was ceded to the Russian Empire. The local Jesuits swore allegiance to Catherine II, as a result, the ban on the activities of the order had no effect in the new lands of the Empire. The city became the capital of the Jesuits, who were coming from Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Poland and other countries. At the end of the 18th century, one of the brightest figures of the Jesuit College in Polatsk was Gabriel Gruber, who became the General of the Order in 1802. A polymath, he was educated at the College of Graz and the University of Vienna, and then studied at the College of Ljubljana. After arriving in Polatsk, he began working on the design of the building for a museum that was finally opened in 1788. Gruber was not only an outstanding engineer and scientist, but he also contributed to the interior design of the museum: the walls were decorated with his frescoes.

In 1812, the Jesuit College in Polatsk received the status of an academy with the rights of a university. Initially, the Academy had 3 faculties: the Faculty of Philosophy, the Faculty of Theology, the Faculty of Languages and Literature. In 1815, however, only two of them remained: the Faculty of Theology and the Faculty of Philosophy and Languages. Training at the Academy lasted 4 to 5 years, the academic year lasted 10 months – from September 15 to July 15. Every day students had 6 lectures for an hour (3 lectures on Tuesdays and Thursdays), and the rest of the time students were engaged in gymnastics, drawing, music and dance classes.

The Academy had its publishing house and a printing house, where textbooks on various disciplines, calendars and literary collections were printed. Since 1787, the Academy had also been publishing an illustrated literary and scientific journal in Polish “Miesięcznik Polocki”.

Belarusian painter Valyantsin Van’kovich, Russian artist-medalist Fyodor Tolstoy and one of the founders of classical Belarusian literature in the 19th century, the author of the book “Nobleman Zawalnia, or Belarus in Fantastic Stories” Jan Barščeŭski were all educated at the Jesuit Academy.

In March 1820, however, Alexander I signed a Decree on the banishment of the Jesuits from the Russian Empire. It was ordered to liquidate the Polatsk Academy and its subordinate educational institutions. Polatsk Jesuits spread throughout the world. Representatives of the Polatsk Academy contributed to the establishment of the education system in the USA, where 20 Jesuits from Polatsk went to live. For example, Dr. Kurtyus, a native of Polatsk,  organized  a gymnasium in New York; a native of Orsha Franciszek Dzierożyński initiated the creation of a system of Catholic schools in the United States. Former professor of philosophy from the Polatsk Academy, a Belarusian Wincenty Buczyński who founded the almanac “Miesięcznik Polocki”, published his work in Vienna: “Metaphysics. Ethics. Logics”.

The Polatsk Higher Piarist School was operating in the buildings of the Academy from 1822 to 1830. When fleeding, the Jesuits left a rich library of over 20,000 volumes, as well as rooms for teaching physics and mineralogy, a museum, and a printing house. Teaching was conducted in Polish.

The rector and 13 highly educated teachers worked at the School, most of whom had graduated from Vilnius University. Piarists strived to create an educational center in Polatsk, a sort of a university. Higher science courses were divided into literature and math departments, where students studied mathematics, physics, public law, Latin, Greek and Polish, history, drawing, music, fencing and dance. It was at this department that our famous artist, the first academic of arts, Ivan Khrutski, received his education.

After the closure of the Piarist School, this national heritage was truly pillaged. Everything that had been created during over two and a half centuries was transferred to different parts of Russia. The property went to the state treasury, museum collections and paintings were taken to the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, the printing house was taken to Kyiv , 256 poods of books from the school library were sent to the capital’s Public Library, some books went to the University of St. Petersburg, and some to the Moscow University. 2,000 volumes of books were retained for the library of the future cadet corps. Physics devices were taken to the capital and the archive went to the East.

The Polatsk cadet corps was opened in the equipped buildings of the former Jesuit College in 1835.

Currently, the main buildings pertain to the Polatsk State University. Since 2005, the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Information Technologies have been located here. Thus, Polatsk became a university city once again.

Since 2002, the Art Gallery, a branch of the Polatsk National Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve, has been operating in the eastern wing of the former College.