An Unknown Professor of the Medieval University of Pécs?

A középkori pécsi egyetem egy ismeretlen professzora

Abstract

Our information about the medieval University of Pécs unfortunately is very limited due to the Turkish occupation in the early modern period, thus we know just a few students and only one professor from this period (though Ede Petrovich tried to improve this number). In this article we sought to add another name to this short list, because there is a possibility that John, son of Wenceslas of Prague also belonged to the tutorial board of Pécs. According to the researches of Tamás Fedeles, we have information about a certain John of Prague, who held a canonry at Pécs in 1396. Fedeles reckon this canon as a noble person from Baranya County, but John, son of Wenceslas of Prague in 1378 also held a canonry at Pécs. Therefore probably these two person is the same. John of Prague in the mid 1370’s was one of the most famous professors of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Prague, whereby naturally comes up the question, whether John of Prague was a professor at Pécs too? As we mentioned we don’t know too much information about the University of Pécs, so we could only examine the possibility of this theory too, but there are some facts which ensure this option. Besides of the information about this canonry of Pécs John of Prague also had the opportunity to visit Pécs from Prague, when the first chancellor of Pécs, William of Koppenbach/Bergzabern, bishop of Pécs (former imperial chaplain of Charles IV) led several diplomatic missions to Prague in 1362/63 and at the end of the decade. In other words when John began his studies and exactly the same time when he disappeared from Prague. From 1369 to 1371/72 (when he probably became a promotor at Prague again) there is no evidence about his presence in the imperial city. Hence we could assume that John got acquainted with Bishop William at Prague around 1369, who invited him to Hungary and get his canonry in these years, but only two or a two and half years later he went back to Prague. If this statement is true, than maybe his good reputation was the reason why John of Buda had chosen him as his supervisor after he went to Prague in 1374. This also make clear the assumption that John of Buda, the latter founder of the College Christ in Esztergom, could began his studies at Pécs, where he get a Bachelor degree, which was recorded when he appeared at Prague without the name of the institution where he earned this title.