Franciszek Oczko i początki reformy obserwanckiej w polskiej prowincji dominikanów

Abstract

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.