Abstrakt: | The literature of the subject has treated Franciszek Oczko as the key figure for understanding
the history of the Polish province of the Dominicans at the end of the 14th century. He was
seen as among others a monastic organiser of Studium Generale and an initiator of moving
the capital of the province to Cracow. Today we know that a series of services was ascribed to
Franciszek unfairly, and his biography, reconstructed by Paweł Kielar, does not compare with
the sources in many respects. The same sources, however, allow for speaking of the aspects of
Oczko’s activity that has been underestimated in the historiography so far. The most important
of them was undoubtedly his probable engagement in the introduction of the observant reform
initiated by Rajmund from Kapua into the Polish province.
The author of the text reanalyses the sources that can be related to Franciszek Oczko,
and concludes that he was sent to studies to Cambridge in 1378, and received a degree of the
master of saint theology at the Prussian University not earlier than in 1393, and, as an assistant
curate of Rajmund from Kapua at least from 1393, he was engaged in a conflict initiated
by Piotr Wasserabe, and after finishing the argument around Wasserabe was in charge of the
Polish province, that Wasserabe’s withdrawal, which Franciszek Oczko impacted on, finished
the period of dominance Wrocław had in the Polish province. She also thinks that Franciszek
might have belonged to the first propagators of the idea of the observant reform in the Polish
Provence. Even though Franciszek worked on its introduction, he needed half a century to start
influencing Polish Dominicans for good. |