A Polish Vernacular Eulogy of Wycliff
Though well known to specialists in the history of early Polish literature, the figure of Andreas (Andrzej) Galka of Dobczyn, an ardent admirer of John Wycliff, is probably not familiar to English students of Middle English. This fifteenth-century professor at the University of Cracow is notable for several reasons. Not only is his eulogy of Wycliff a precious monument of medieval Polish, but his Latin letters also have great interest, revealing as they do a colourful and pugnacious individual whose meteoric career is linked with some profound social changes occurring in his age and country. Both his literary activity and his personal adventures relate him to the movement for Church reform then sweeping over central and eastern Europe, as a precursor of the more decisive movement which was to occur in the early sixteenth century.