MICHALSKY, KONSTANTY. — Priest of the Polish Mission, distinguished scholar of medieval philosophy, born 12 April 1879 at Mala Dabrowka (Upper Silesia), died 6 August 1947 at Cracow.
He completed his studies in his homeland and at Louvain. He subsequently taught philosophy at the seminary of his Congregation in Cracow and, from 1914, at the Jagellonian University. He was Dean of the Faculty of Theology and Rector of the University, a member of the Polish Academy of Cracow 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 newly established «Societas Thomistarum Regionum Slavorum». In November 1939, during the German occupation of Poland, he was arrested; he endured seven months of deportation in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and only at the end of the war was he able to resume his teaching at the University. His numerous and meticulous publications, in Polish, German, and French, attracted considerable attention. Particularly valuable are his various essays in the latter language, mostly reprinted from the Bulletin de l'Académie polonaise des Sciences et des Lettres (Cracow); they make use of abundant manuscript material and offer original contributions to knowledge of the philosophical currents of the fourteenth century, especially those prevalent in Paris and Oxford. A great admirer of Dante, he devoted several good studies to him, and capped his career with the preface to the Polish translation of the Divina Commedia by A. Swiderska.