dignities and privileges, and the numerous monasteries were filled only with foreign monks.  Even as late as the fifteenth century, foreigners had decidedly the preference.  In the year 1237 Pelka, archbishop of Gnesen, directed the institution of schools by the priests; but added the recommendation to the bishops, that they should employ as teachers only Germans who understood Polish.  In A.D. 1285 at the synod of Leczyc, they went a step further in excluding all foreigners, who were ignorant of the Polish language, from the places of ecclesiastical teachers and instructors.  But more than eighty years later, it was found necessary at the synod of Kalish in 1357 to repeat the same decree; and even a century after this time, in A.D. 1460, John Ostrorog complained that all the rich convents were occupied by foreign monks.[12] These ignorant men were wont to throw into the fire the few writings in the barbarian language, which they could discover; and, as instructors of the youth, were able to fill the heads of the young nobility with the most unnatural prejudices against the vernacular tongue of their own country.  Besides the clergy, many other foreigners also settled in Poland, as mechanics and traders, especially Germans.  But as they all lived merely in the cities of Poland, they and their language had far less influence on the people, than was the case in Bohemia, where they mingled with all classes.

SECOND PERIOD.

From Casimir the Great to Sigismund I. A.D. 1333 to A.D. 1506.

Casimir is one of the few princes, who acquired the name of the Great not by victories and conquests, but through the real benefits of laws, national courts of justice, and means of education, which he procured for his subjects.  His father, Vladislaus Lokietek, had resumed the royal title, which hitherto had been alternately taken and dropped; and was the first who permanently united Great and Little Poland.  Under Casimir, the present Austrian kingdom of Galicia, which, together with Lodomeria, the present Russian government Vladimir, was then called Red Russia, was added by inheritance.  Lithuania became connected with Poland as a Polish fief in the year 1386. when queen Hedevig, heiress of the crown of Poland, married Jagello, duke of Lithuania; but was first completely incorporated as a component part of the kingdom of Poland only so late as the year 1569.  Masovia had been thus united some forty years earlier.  At the time of the marriage of Hedevig and Jagello, the latter caused himself to be baptized, and introduced Christianity into Lithuania, where he himself in many cases acted as an apostle.