Maciej Miechowita
Maciej Miechowita was a Polish Renaissance scholar, professor of Jagiellonian University, historian, chronicler, geographer, medical doctor, alchemist, astrologer and canon in Kraków.
Life
He studied at the Jagiellonian University, obtaining his master's degree in 1479. Between 1480 and 1485 he studied abroad. Upon his return to the country, he became a professor at the Jagiellonian University, where he served as a rector eight times, and also twice as a deputy chancellor of the Academia. He lived in the Długosz House from 1514 to 1516.His Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis is considered the first accurate geographical and ethnographical description of Eastern Europe. It provided the first systematic description of the lands between the Vistula, the Don and the Caspian Sea. This work also repeated after Jan Długosz and popularised abroad the myth of Sarmatism: that Polish nobility are descendants from the ancient Sarmatians.
His Chronica Polonorum 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, many of which appeared only in manuscripts and were not printed during his lifetime, like his biography of Saint John Cantius.