Okoliczności powstania Polskiej Prowincji Zakonu Pijarów (1642-1662)

The Order of the Pious Schools, in Poland referred to as the Piarist Order associ-ates its origins with the life and work of St. Joseph Calasanz (1557-1648). With the approval of the Holy See, he founded the first free school open to all children in Rome, in the year 1597. The main objective of Piarists was to raise and educate chil-dren and young people, regardless of their origin, religion or nationality. The Order, despite adversity, grew fast, also outside Italy. Due to the efforts of King Władysław IV, as early as 1642 it had the first foundations on Polish soil, namely in Podoliniec and Warsaw, and later also in other locations such as Cracow (1664), which is now the seat of government of the Province. In this way, by the end of the seventeenth century, the Polish Province had 15 colleges with two hundred monks and was one of the largest in the Order. The progressive territorial and personal increase of the Province led to the emergence of Lithuanian Vice-Province in 1695, which eventually became independent as a Province in 1736. The flowering of Polish and Lithuanian Piarist Province was interrupted by partitions of the Polish lands at the end of the eighteenth century. They resulted in a temporary dissolution of the Order in Poland. However, it was reborn in the late nineteenth century and thus to this day, the monks have been performing the task assigned to them by their founder.