Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/111

 centuries western universities, particularly those of Italy in the period of the Renascence, were crowded with young Poles who were more numerous there than other foreigners. The University of Cracow, founded in the year 1400, became a great centre of science and intellectual culture not only for Poland but also for neighbouring countries. This movement, which rapidly raised the intellectual level of the ruling class, which led to refinement of manners and which gave birth to the Golden Period of Polish literature in the sixteenth century, came to a stop at the end of that century under the influence of new factors in Polish life.

Owing to her geographical situation and her social and political conditions, Poland was obliged to absorb many alien elements. The primitive kingdom of the Piasts was founded and expanded on a territory inhabited by kindred Western Slavonic tribes of Polish race. Only on its south-eastern border, in Red Russia, the Piasts had incorporated some eastern Slavs into their dominions. In the twelfth century, during the period of division, nearly the whole country was raided by the Tartars and to a great extent depopulated, a fact which caused the subsequent German immigration into the country. The princes encouraged German settlers, granted them privileges in the towns and in the country settlements and even gave them the right to be ruled according to German law. During that period Polish cities were organized on the basis of the Magdeburg law, and they even enjoyed the right of appeal to the High Court at Magdeburg. After the reunion of Poland in the fourteenth century the last king of the Piast dynasty, Casmir the Great, who gave