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 THE GOTHIC AGE events connected with her person. For a time it seemed that Archduke William of Austria, who was betrothed to the young Queen, would become master of the Castle of Cracow, but the bond of hearts was torn by the force of politics; for prospects were looming of gaining, by a marriage of the Queen, a new large province for the kingdom and for Christianity—viz., heathen Lithuania. And the Queen, who was the idol of her people, did sacrifice her heart to the good of her subjects and kingdom: on February 15, 1386, the Lithuanian Prince Jagiello was baptized in Cracow Cathedral, and three days later he was married to Hedwig and crowned. Wawel became the seat of the Jagellonian idea. The Queen, before her death, made provision for the growth of the work which her grand-uncle had begun, by bequeathing to the University all her jewels. Ladislaus Jagiello, in fulfilment of this, her last will, renovated and completed the University, which has ever since, for half a thousand years now, borne witness to Polish civilization and intellectual activity. The original organization of the University had been imitated from that of Paris; it was a common place of residence both for professors and pupils. In its new form as refounded by Ladislaus Jagiello, the University was modelled on the Italian ones. The professors, being mostly clergymen, lived in common, in semi-monastic seclusion; the students lived in town—only later, colleges were founded, called bursæ, where part of them were lodged. The staff of professors had their dwellings in a complex of houses bought for the purpose, in the Jewish quarter (now St. Ann Street). This, through rebuildings in the course of the fifteenth and in the beginning of the sixteenth century, was united into one admirable Gothic structure, of which we shall yet have to speak.

Since this, its re-establishment, the University, now called Jagellonian, played a leading part in the progress of civilization, controlling and protecting all the schools of the realm; its scientific importance was recognized all over Europe. At the Councils of Constance and of Basle in the fifteenth century, where ecclesiastical problems of the utmost importance were