Maciej Miechowita (1457 – 8 September 1523) was a Polish renaissance scholar, professor of Jagiellonian University

Jagiellonian University

The Jagiellonian University was established in 1364 by Casimir III the Great in Kazimierz . It is the oldest university in Poland, the second oldest university in Central Europe and one of the oldest universities in the world....

, historian, chronicler, geographer, medical doctor (royal physician of king Zygmunt I the Old of Poland), alchemist

Alchemy

Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...

http://www.uj.edu.pl/dispatch.jsp?item=uniwersytet/historia/historiatxt.jsp&lang=en, astrologisthttp://www.uj.edu.pl/IRO/NEWSLET/IRO13/ZIEJKA2.html and canon

Canon (priest)

A canon is a priest or minister who is a member of certain bodies of the Christian clergy subject to an ecclesiastical rule ....

 in Cracow.

He studied at the Jagiellonian University (also known that as the Cracow Academy), obtaining his master's degree

Master's degree

A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

 in 1479. Between 1480-1485 he studied abroad. Upon his return to the country, he became a professor at the Jagiellonian University, where he served as a rector

Rector

The word rector has a number of different meanings; it is widely used to refer to an academic, religious or political administrator...

 eight times (1501–1519), and also twice as a deputy chancellor

Chancellor

Chancellor is the title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the Cancellarii of Roman courts of justice—ushers who sat at the cancelli or lattice work screens of a basilica or law court, which separated the judge and counsel from the...

 of the Academia.

His Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis (Treatise on the Two Sarmatias) is considered the first accurate geographical

Geography

Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

 and ethnographical

Ethnography

Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

 description of Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

. It provided the first systematic description of the lands between the Vistula

Vistula

The Vistula is the longest and the most important river in Poland, at 1,047 km in length. The watershed area of the Vistula is , of which lies within Poland ....

, the Don and the Caspian Sea

Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...

. This work also repeated after Jan Długosz and popularised abroad the myth

Mythology

The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

 of Sarmatism

Sarmatism

"Sarmatism" is a term designating the dominant lifestyle, culture and ideology of the szlachta of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Together with "Golden Liberty," it formed a central aspect of the Commonwealth's culture...

: that Polish nobility (szlachta

Szlachta

The szlachta was a legally privileged noble class with origins in the Kingdom of Poland. It gained considerable institutional privileges during the 1333-1370 reign of Casimir the Great. In 1413, following a series of tentative personal unions between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of...

) are descendants from the ancient Sarmatians

Sarmatians

The Iron Age Sarmatians were an Iranian people in Classical Antiquity, flourishing from about the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD....

.

His Chronica Polonorum (Polish Chronicle) is the developed, larger treaty about Polish history and geography. Contra pestem sevam regimen and Conservatio sanitatis are his two printed medical treaties, about how to combat epidemics and on benefit of sanitation.

He has also written other works, much of which was published only as manuscripts and not printed during his lifetime, like his biography of Saint John Cantius

John Cantius

Saint John Cantius was a renowned Polish priest, Scholastic philosopher, physicist and theologian. He is also known as John of Kanty or John of Kanti.-Biography:...

.

Selected works

• Contra pestem sevam regimen, print. 1508;
• De sanguinis missione, print. 1508;
• Conservatio sanitatis, print. 1512;
• Tractatus de duabus Sarmatis Europiana et Asiana et de contentis in eis, print. 1517;
• Chronica Polonorum, print. 1919, 1921.