Michalski, Konstanty

MICHALSKI, KONSTANTY. - Priest of the Polish Mission, distinguished scholar of medieval philosophy, b. 12 April 1879 at Mala Dabrowka (Upper Silesia), d. 6 Aug. 1947 at Kraków.

He completed his studies in his homeland and at Louvain. He then taught philosophy at the studentate of his Congregation in Kraków and from 1914 at the Jagiellonian University. He was dean of the Faculty of Theology and Rector of the University, a member of the Polish Academy of Kraków and of the Pontifical Roman Academy of St. Thomas, president of the Commission of the Corpus philosophorum medii aevi, established by the Union académique internationale of Brussels, and a member of that of the Corpus platonicum. In 1934 he was chosen to preside over the new «Societas Thomistarum Regionum Slavorum». In Nov. 1939, during the German occupation of Poland, he was arrested; he suffered seven months of deportation in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and only at the end of the war could he resume his teaching at the University. His many and accurate publications had notable resonance, in Polish, in German and in French. Particularly valuable are his various essays in the latter language, mostly offprints from the Bulletin de l'Académie polonaise des Sciences et des Lettres (Kraków), which make use of copious manuscript material and bring original contributions to the knowledge of the philosophical currents of the 14th century in vogue especially in Paris and Oxford. A great admirer of Dante, he dedicated some good studies to him, and closed his career with the preface to the Polish translation of the Divina Commedia by A. Swiderska.

Giacomo Crosignani