Chełmno Voivodeship
| Chełmno Voivodeship Województwo chełmińskie Palatinatus Culmensis | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voivodeship of Poland¹ Part of Royal Prussia and Greater Poland provinces | |||||||||
| 1454–1793 | |||||||||
 Coat of arms
| |||||||||
 Chełmno Voivodeship of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (in 1619) | |||||||||
| Capital | Chełmno | ||||||||
| Area | |||||||||
• | 4,654 km2 (1,797 sq mi) | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Established | 1454 | ||||||||
| 1466 | |||||||||
| 1772 | |||||||||
| 1793 | |||||||||
| Political subdivisions | Two lands divided into 7 counties | ||||||||
| |||||||||
| Today part of | Poland | ||||||||
| ¹ Voivodeship of the Polish Crown in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; Voivodeship of the Kingdom of Poland before 1569. | |||||||||
The Chełmno Voivodeship (Polish: Województwo chełmińskie) was a unit of administrative division and local government in the Kingdom of Poland since 1454/1466 until the Partitions of Poland in 1772/1793. Its capital was at Chełmno.
Together with the Pomeranian and Malbork Voivodeships and the Prince-Bishopric of Warmia it formed the province of Royal Prussia, and with several other voivodeships it formed the Greater Poland Province.[1]
History
[edit]
The Chełmno Land had been part of the Polish Duchy of Masovia since 1138. It was occupied by pagan Old Prussian tribes in 1216, who struggled against their Christianization instigated by Bishop Christian of Oliva. After several unsuccessful attempts to reconquer Chełmno, Duke Konrad I of Masovia in 1226 called for support by the Teutonic Knights, who indeed approached and started a Prussian campaign, after the duke promised to grant the Chełmno Land as a fief to the Teutonic Order.
In the course of the Order's decline after the 1410 Battle of Grunwald, the citizens of Chełmno, Toruń (Thorn), Lubawa (Löbau), Brodnica, Grudziądz, Nowe Miasto and Radzyń co-formed the anti-Teutonic Prussian Confederation. In 1454, the organisation led an uprising against the rule of the Teutonic Knights, and asked King Casimir IV of Poland to reincorporate the region to the Kingdom of Poland, to which the King agreed and signed the act of reincorporation,[2] which sparked the Thirteen Years' War between the Knights and the Kingdom of Poland. The towns and nobles of the region then took an oath of allegiance to Poland in Toruń in May 1454.[3] The Chełmno Voivodeship was established the same year. After the Order's defeat, the reintegration of Chełmno Land with Poland was confirmed in the Second Peace of Thorn and together with the adjacent Lubawa Land in the east it formed the Chełmno Voivodeship of the Kingdom of Poland, since the 1569 Union of Lublin part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The voivodeship was annexed by Prussia during the First Partition of Poland in 1772, except for the city of Toruń, which was not incorporated into the province of West Prussia until the 1793 Second Partition.
Administration
[edit]
Voivodeship Governor (Wojewoda) seat:
Regional council (sejmik generalny)
Regional councils (sejmik poselski i deputacki)
Administrative division:[4]
- Chełmno Land (Ziemia Chełmińska), Chełmno
- Chełmno County (Powiat Chełmiński), Chełmno
- Toruń County (Powiat Toruński), Toruń
- Grudziądz County (Powiat Grudziądzki), Grudziądz
- Radzyń County (Powiat Radzyński), Radzyń
- Kowalewo County (Powiat Kowalewski), Kowalewo
- Michałowo Land (Ziemia Michałowska), Lubawa
- Brodnica County (Powiat Brodnicki), Brodnica
- Nowe Miasto County (Powiat Nowomiejski), Nowe Miasto
Cities and towns
[edit]
The largest city of the voivodeship was the royal city of Toruń,[5] which as one of the largest and most influential cities of entire Poland enjoyed voting rights during the Royal free elections.[6] It was the birthplace of the renowned astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in 1473, and place of death of Polish King John I Albert in 1501.[7] It was the location of the Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (parliament) in 1576 and 1626,[8] and the Colloquium Charitativum, a three-month congress of European Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists, considered an important event in the history of interreligious dialogue, held in 1645 on the initiative of King Władysław IV Vasa at a time when religious conflicts occurred in many other European countries and the disastrous Thirty Years' War was fought west of Poland.[9]
Other royal cities and towns were Brodnica, Golub, Grudziądz, Kowalewo, Lidzbark, Łasin, Nowe Miasto, Radzyń, Rogoźno, whereas private church towns were Chełmno, Chełmża, Kurzętnik, Lubawa and Wąbrzeźno.[5] In 1750, also Ostromecko was granted town rights, which, however, it was deprived of shortly after its annexation by Prussia in the First Partition of Poland.[10]
The most prominent educational institutions of the province were the Academic Gymnasium in Toruń, founded in 1594 from a former municipal school, and the Chełmno Academy in Chełmno, transformed from a local gymnasium in 1692, which in 1756 became a branch of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, the oldest and leading Polish university.[11][12] Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki, one of the greatest Polish Baroque composers, was a lecturer at the Chełmno Academy in the 1690s.[13] Lubawa was the place where the decision was made to publish Copernicus' groundbreaking work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium.
Voivodes
[edit]
- Augustyn z Szewy, 1454–1455
- Gabriel Bażyński, 1455–1474
- Ludwik Mortęski, 1475–1480
- Mikołaj Dąbrowski, 1480–1483
- Karol z Napola, 1484–1495
- Jan Dąbrowski, 1498–1513
- Jan Luzjański, 1514–1551
- Stanisław Kostka, 1551–1555
- Jan Działyński, 1556–1583
- Mikołaj Działyński, 1584–1604
- Maciej Konopacki, 1605–1611
- Ludwik Mortęski, 1611–1615
- Stanisław Działyński, 1615-1615
- Jan Jakub Wejher, 1618–1626
- Melchior Wejher, 1626–1643
- Mikołaj Wejher, 1643–1647
- Jan Działyński, 1647–1648
- Jan Kos, 1648–1662
- Piotr Działyński, 1663–1668
- Jan Gniński, 1668–1680
- Michał Działyński, 1681–1687
- Jan Kos (died 1702),1688–1702
- Tomasz Działyński, 1702–1714
- Jakub Zygmunt Rybiński, 1714–1725
- Franciszek Bieliński, 1725–1732
- Jan Ansgary Czapski 1732–1738
- Michał Wiktor Bieliński, 1738–1746
- Zygmunt Kretkowski, 1746–1766
- Franciszek Stanisław Hutten-Czapski, 1766–1802
References
[edit]- ^ Gloger 1900, p. 81.
- ^ Górski, Karol (1949). Związek Pruski i poddanie się Prus Polsce: zbiór tekstów źródłowych (in Polish). Poznań: Instytut Zachodni. p. 54.
- ^ Górski, p. 76
- ^ Gloger 1900, p. 152.
- ^ a b Prusy Królewskie w drugiej połowie XVI wieku. Część I. Mapy, plany (in Polish). Warszawa: Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk. 2021. p. 1.
- ^ Polska encyklopedja szlachecka, Tom I (in Polish). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Kultury Historycznej. 1935. p. 42.
- ^ Gloger 1900, p. 153.
- ^ Konopczyński, Władysław (1948). Chronologia sejmów polskich 1493–1793 (in Polish). Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności. pp. 142, 148.
- ^ "Colloquium Charitativum". Toruński Serwis Turystyczny (in Polish). Retrieved 12 April 2025.
- ^ Krzysztofik, Robert (2007). Lokacje miejskie na obszarze Polski. Dokumentacja geograficzno-historyczna (in Polish). Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego. pp. 58–59. ISBN 978-83-226-1616-1.
- ^ "Historia szkoły". I Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Mikołaja Kopernika w Toruniu (in Polish). Retrieved 12 April 2025.
- ^ Mateusz Załuska. "Akademia Chełmińska". Zabytek.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 12 April 2025.
- ^ Mechanisz, Janusz (2012). Poczet kompozytorów polskich (in Polish). Lublin: Polihymnia. p. 50. ISBN 978-83-7847-012-0.
